1920: The Year of Six Presidents

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.

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!

Each chapter was an individual history lesson. Women's rights, each individual President gets at least one chapter, KKK and racism, Harding being accused of being black, his girlfriends, and his presidency and death. Eugene Debs is given a chapter as is Sacco and Venzetti.
History really came alive for me.

Each of the President's portrayed here became human beings, warts and all. If anything, I learned that Presidents are some of the most flawed men that have ever existed. Winning is everything.

I don't remember ever listening to any of his other performances. I enjoyed this book and his reading of it immensely.

The women's rights movement was harrowing. The women who fought for our rights were more than heroes, they were warriors. The moment that particularly moved me was the vote by the Tennessee congressman for the amendment, changing his vote because his mother wrote him a letter asking him too.

This is a complete and comprehensive narrative of the year 1920 election. It encompasses other years to explain what lead up to this election and the results after the election. I did not find any biases towards any of the presidents. They all were treated fairly. An eye-opening 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.

This is an interesting book that does a respectable job setting the tone & providing facts relative to the election of 1920. The author makes the characters very human, and overall I found the story interesting. The narrator is clear, providing appropriate inflection & good timing.

There is one overwhelming aspect of this audio presentation that is just awful, however: there are many, many instances where the story provides long lists of voting-related data. These are lists of things like: how much campaign money each candidate raised per state, how delegates voted over the course of national conventions, how many votes each candidate received, etc... Numbers are read long-hand (e.g. "Brown had one hundred twenty-two thousand, seven hundred and ninety votes. Wood had one hundred and five thousand, one hundred and sixty-one votes. Harding had ninety-eight thousand, one hundred and twelve votes..." and more), and the lists tend to be long, having eight or ten numbers in them...they feel interminable. Unfortunately, this book is chock-full of these lists; they simply do not translate well aurally.

The result is that the listener is subject to minutes-on-end of lists of numbers...this makes an otherwise good story, trying. In a hard copy version, the reader may glance at the numbers, quickly determine who was best, who was worst, etc., and be done with a list of statistics in a few seconds. In this audio presentation, the lists - and there a many - drone on and on and on... and on. I stopped listening to this book twice, to listen to other books.

Good story, but I can't recommend it in audio format.

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.

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.

I would definitely listen again. There are a lot of details here. That may scare some people off, but I thought it made the story that much richer. I loved the snarly quotes that the folks made about each other. Politicians haven't really changed much. The background material about each man was great--stuff I never knew about how they related to each other before they came to prominence.

I guess my favorite guy of the six was Calvin Coolidge. He was unflappable, and had nothing to hide. He knew what he wanted to do and did it. And he had great quips too!

I haven't listened to Paul Boehmer before, but I enjoyed his narration. I have another book upcoming that he narrates.

It wasn't a particularly moving book, I don't think it was intended so. It was fast paced and full of fascinating people, most of whom were slightly shady, each with an angle and a goal--personal gain. If there was one moment that did make its mark on me was Coolidge's description of how difficult it was for him to meet new people. He described how he always found himself "back at that big kitchen door" not really wanting to push it open to meet new people. I could relate to this. I admire him for accomplishing all he did.

I very much enjoyed this book. I have also read 1960 by the same author. Also a fine story with similar style and fascinating tidbits!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I would have liked a tighter focus. It seemed the author reached in some areas to provide background and side stories that detracted from the main theme. Also the reading off of the vote tally in round after round of convention polling was tedious. It may have been less so in the printed book.

Not sure.

The first portion of the book, part 1 of the recording, was the strongest. It weakened after that.

No

I learned quite a bit about Harding, Wilson and Coolidge, presidents I had little knowledge about. Also I enjoyed reading about that time in U.S. history. I either never learned over forgot about some of the issues, such as the violence and bombings.