Gun control, voting rights, family planning, and environmental protection – these are all hot-button issues today, but they were also the same difficult and intractable issues that Sen. Joseph D. Tydings of Maryland faced during his tenure in the Senate in the 1960s.

In this reflective and timely memoir, Tydings looks back on a life of public service, from the Maryland General Assembly to chief federal prosecutor in Maryland and ultimately to the United States Senate. As an early “Kennedy Man,” Tydings’s political stock initially soared but it quickly crashed because of his willingness to go “against the grain” on perhaps one progressive issue too many.

As the adopted son of a U.S. senator, grandson of an adviser to three U.S. presidents, and step-grandson of perhaps the wealthiest woman of her era, Tydings nevertheless made his own way, rising from horse platoon corporal in war-ravaged Germany to legislative reformer. As a U.S. senator, Tydings declared that the Vietnam War was “a mistake” even as the war expanded and division at home deepened. He prosecuted fellow Democrats for savings and loan fraud and stood up to presidents over issues of war and Supreme Court nominations. He challenged segregationists in his own party and beyond as he pushed for civil rights legislation to ensure voting rights for all Americans and an end to segregation. He was among the first in Congress to advocate for government-sponsored family planning services, and his initiatives are still in effect today. Tydings took on the National Rifle Association as a persistent supporter of gun control – and suffered the political consequences for doing so.

Tydings’s stance on controversial issues put him at odds with conservative and liberal politicians alike. After a decade of student protests against the war, race riots in major cities, violence against civil rights workers, and the sad specter of political assassination – from the Kennedy brothers to Martin Luther King, Jr. – America’s political climate soured for progressive politicians and turned to the right with the election of Richard Nixon. By 1970, Tydings found his progressive approach had created too many enemies and he narrowly lost his bid for reelection. Toward the end of his life (he died in 2018), Tydings remained hopeful that politicians would transcend the constraints of their parties to adopt meaningful solutions that would guide the United States into the future.

My Life in Progressive Politics is an important, insider account of a landmark era in twentieth-century American politics. The turbulent 1960s, experienced through the eyes of Tydings, will captivate readers and inspire new engagement in the democratic process today.