Journalists have called the U.S. Senate an empty chamber; politicians have lamented that the institution is broken--yet the Senate was once capable of greatness. Senators of the 1960s and 1970s overcame southern opposition to civil rights, passed Great Society legislation, and took the lead in opposing the Vietnam War and holding Richard Nixon accountable for the abuses of Watergate. The Last Great Senateis a vivid portrait of the statesmen who helped steer America during the crisis years of the late 1970s, transcending partisanship and overcoming procedural roadblocks that have all but strangled the Senate since their departure.