Gerald Ford went from the House Minority Leader to Vice President to President in less than one year. He became our nation’s first unelected Vice President and first unelected President under the 25th amendment. Ford’s life mirrored the roller-coaster of his times—the 1970s.
The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library & Museum, and Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at GVSU welcomed H.W. Brands back to West Michigan. Bill’s command of history and his skill as a storyteller will deepen our insights into the 1970s and Ford’s place in that pivotal decade.
Watch the Program Here
When
December 13, 2022
Program Supporters
Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation
Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library & Museum
About H.W. Brands
H.W. Brands was born in Portland, Oregon, where he lived until he went to California for college. He attended Stanford University and studied history and mathematics.
After graduating he became a traveling salesman, with a territory that spanned the West from the Pacific to Colorado. His wanderlust diminished after several trips across the Great Basin, and he turned to sales of a different sort, namely teaching. For nine years he taught mathematics and history in high school and community college. Meanwhile, he resumed his formal education, earning graduate degrees in mathematics and history, concluding with a doctorate in history from the University of Texas at Austin.
He worked as an oral historian at the University of Texas Law School for a year, then became a visiting professor of history at Vanderbilt University. In 1987 he joined the history faculty at Texas A&M University, where he taught for seventeen years.
In 2005, he returned to the University of Texas, where he is the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History.
He has written twenty books, coauthored or edited five others, and published dozens of articles and scores of reviews. His books include The Money Men, Andrew Jackson, The Age of Gold, The First American, TR, The Strange Death of American Liberalism, What America Owes the World, and The Devil We Knew.
