1920

The Year of Six Presidents

By: David Pietrusza

Narrated by: Paul Boehmer

Length: 20 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

The presidential election of 1920 was among history's most dramatic. Six once-and-future presidents--Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt--jockeyed for the White House. With voters choosing between Wilson's League of Nations and Harding's front-porch isolationism, the 1920 election shaped modern America. Women won the vote. Republicans outspent Democrats by 4 to 1, as voters witnessed the first extensive newsreel coverage, modern campaign advertising, and results broadcast on radio. America had become an urban nation: Automobiles, mass production, chain stores, and easy credit transformed the economy. 1920 paints a vivid portrait of America, beset by the Red Scare, jailed dissidents, Prohibition, smoke-filled rooms, bomb-throwing terrorists, and the Klan, gingerly crossing modernity's threshold.

©2008 David Pietrusza (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Narrator Paul Boehmer involves himself and listeners by employing subtle emotions. One can hear appropriate inflections—sadness, joy, and petulance—in his words. His sentences flow into a comfortable narrative that sometimes includes poetry. Not resorting to any vocal characterization, he distinguishes the quotations with short pauses." (AudioFile)

A fascinating view into the US at the end of WWI

This book by David Pietrusza is a fascinating view into US politics, and related social conditions, in the decade of WWI. Readers will learn much about Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Teddy Roosevelt, Eugene Debs, FDR and a broad cast of other main and supporting characters. Pietrusza uses the election of 1920 as the lever for putting all of these characters together, although much of the book's story really isn't dependent on that event.

Critical reviewers of a book like this typically call the thing "sprawling," by which they mean it is only loosely connected together, and perhaps a bit superficial in parts. And that might be a fair characterization of this book. But as long as you understand it is "sprawling" going in, not a scholarly work and not a narrowly circumscribed, in-depth work, you can enjoy it for the way in which it describes America (its despicable politics of that day, along with some admirable characters it would be cool to meet face-to-face) in the teens and twenties.

The book is well-written (if sprawling) and very well narrated. My interest did not abate even though it is overlong.

Good, Not Great

Interesting premise -- that 6 past, present, and future presidents--were involved in the 1920 election. The author does a good job of painting the backdrop of the 1920 race. My rating, just 3 stars, actually should be 3.5 stars--to be fair.

Not bad but...

Gives a pretty good back story to each of the "six presidents" with enough filled in details to satisfy this history buff. It took me a while to get used to the narrator's delivery as I found it choppy and slightly reminiscent Bob and Ray's routine of "slow-talkers-of-America" but faster.

Women's first election to vote in

Pietrusza begins with sketches of the major players and the lesser players and masterfully weaves them into the events of the day, the peace negotiation ending WW1, the battle over the League of Nations, prohibition, the women's suffrage (19th amendment), the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the peculiar hobby of lynching, the effect of the Bolshevik revolution on domestic radicals, Sacco and Vanzetti and the Boston Police Strike.

The sitting president Wilson who has lost nearly all his grip on the presidency and reality from a stroke vainly attempts from his sick bed to engineer a third term. Theodore Roosevelt who's sudden death in 1919 suddenly throws the race wide open. The election of 1920 was one of the most dramatic ever seen. For one time in the nation's history six once and future presidents hoped to end up in the white house. Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover and Theodore Roosevelt.

With the advent of advent of phone and radio the election saw unprecedented level of publicity. It was also the first election Women could vote. The book covers the suffrage movement and provides some interesting information on people and events leading up to the passage of the 19th amendment. This book also discusses significant also rans from 1920 like William Jennings Bryon, Al Smith and Socialist Eugene Debs.

David Pietrusza is a 20th century historian. He produced a critically acclaimed presidential electoral history trilogy of which 1920 was the first. The trilogy also includes 1948 and 1960. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Pietrusza is a gifted wordsmith who's penned well paced, highly accessible popular history. The book is well written and well researched except for a few small editing errors such as writing 16th amendment instead of 19th amendment. If you like history you will enjoy this book.

Very detailed

This book would be awesome if someone needed to do research on voting details of various pre-election and election materials. The information on all the Presidents was great and I found their personal histories fascinating. Just got a bit dry around election types of details, but otherwise a book for a historian.

Superb reading on 6 great leaders

Would you consider the audio edition of 1920 to be better than the print version?

Have not read the print version. But the audio was pretty good. At times really having to concentrate on the narration. But overall a superb performance.

What was one of the most memorable moments of 1920?

The telling of the riots and protests and general unrest in 1919. This even leading to mail bombs sent to judges and other elected officials, including the bombing of the home of the Attorney General of the US, who lived directly accross the street from FDR who was Assistant Sec. of War at the time.

Which character – as performed by Paul Boehmer – was your favorite?

Calvin Coolidge, he held more different elected offices then any other president in US history.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Neither. As a lover of history, it filled in some of the more detailed portions of that era that I was not totally aware of.

Any additional comments?

Overall this book is so intriguing and why I think books don't need to be made up to be as thrilling as real history. I enjoyed the details of the campaigns and lives of more then just those 6 men. I think it is interesting to make the comparisons between the protests and unrest of 1918-1919 to what we saw in 2011 with the occupy wall street protests. The unrest of the early 20th centry was much more widespread, but the socialist/anti-capitalist narrative of the two eras was/is pretty much the same.

Fascinating but incomplete

The election of 1920 would have been unimportant had it not been for the fact that its participants affected our political history for the entire first half of the twentieth century. And often not in the noblest of ways. But the book points out how our history has been shaped by the most improbable of events, eerily repeated in the Bush/Chaney election at the dawn of the 21st century.

I agree with several of the criticisms put forth by other readers: that of the incomplete telling of our society around this election. There is some: women suffrage, black rights, socialism, but the 1920s were more than this. It was a period of women's liberation, wealth inequality, lack of government control, and isolation that are nearly off handedly touched on.

And there seems to be a certain prejudicial slant to the proceedings. Wilson and Delano Roosevelt (Democrats) are written to look particularly bad, whereas Harding's sins are touched on, but never developed, until the various people in Harding's cabinet are exposed briefly in the last chapter consisting of "what happened to them all." Harding was an adulterer, and his administration was riddled with scandal. The Teapot Dome scandal was brushed over in a few words, whereas Delano Roosevelt's disastrous handling of perversion in the Navy was given an entire chapter. Very little, in fact, was written about Harding's three year administration.

So, in all a very good book, but could have been much better.

The recording is beautifully produced, although you can hear the edits. The reader's diction impeccable.

All wanted the presidency...

Now this is a book that links men of different political aspirations and regional persuasions to all collide around 1920. The author connects the men through the links to the office of the president. Included in this book are interesting tidbits about each man, such as a thorough background on Herbert Hoover, --who knew his was a geologist by trade and spent quite a bit of time in China early in his career? The book is packed with all kinds of threads between men and how their presence changed the course of American history.
After reading this book I became more interested in finding out more in depth information on three of the men detailed, especially Woodrow Wilson.
Really enjoyed it!

Very Good Book

This era of our history is probably one of the least understood or studied it seems among the general public, and this book does a fantastic job of filling in the blanks.


The only negative is the narration. The speaker has a great voice, and his style would probably fit any number of other books quite well, but it borders on distracting for this particular book. Melodramatic I guess is what comes to mind, but it just doesn't work.

Four stars based on the book itself though.

good history lesson

It was good to listen to this during the 2016 presidential campaign. People think things are so bad now but they've been bad (could say worse) in before.