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The definitive biography of Herbert Hoover, one of the most remarkable Americans of the 20th century - a revisionist account that will forever change the way Americans understand the man, his presidency, and his battle against the Great Depression. A poor orphan who built a fortune, a great humanitarian, a president elected in a landslide and then routed in the next election, arguably the father of both New Deal liberalism and modern conservatism - Herbert Hoover is also one of our least understood presidents.
Today Grover Cleveland is mainly remembered as the only president to be elected to two non-consecutive terms. But in his day, Cleveland was a renowned reformer, an enemy of political machines who joined forces with Theodore Roosevelt to fight powerful party bosses, a moralist who vetoed bills he considered blatant raids on the Treasury, a vigorous defender of the Monroe Doctrine who resisted American imperialism.
James A. Garfield may have been the most extraordinary man ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked Garfield down and shot him in the back. But the shot didn’t kill Garfield. The drama of what happened subsequently is a powerful story of a nation in turmoil.
Prize-winning historian Glen Jeansonne delves into the life of our most misunderstood president, offering up a surprising new portrait of Herbert Hoover - dismissing previous assumptions and revealing a political Progressive in the mold of Theodore Roosevelt and the most resourceful American since Benjamin Franklin.
Peter Schweizer explains how a new corruption has taken hold, involving larger sums of money than ever before. Stuffing tens of thousands of dollars into a freezer has morphed into multibillion-dollar equity deals done in the dark corners of the world. President Donald Trump’s children have made front pages for their dicey transactions. However, the media has barely looked into questionable deals made by those close to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Mitch McConnell, and lesser-known politicians who have been in the game longer.
Calvin Coolidge, president from 1923 to 1929, never rated highly in polls, and history has remembered the decade in which he served as an extravagant period predating the Great Depression. Now Amity Shlaes provides a fresh look at the 1920s and its elusive president, showing that the mid-1920s was in fact a triumphant period that established our modern way of life: The nation electrified, Americans drove their first cars, and the federal deficit was replaced with a surplus.
The definitive biography of Herbert Hoover, one of the most remarkable Americans of the 20th century - a revisionist account that will forever change the way Americans understand the man, his presidency, and his battle against the Great Depression. A poor orphan who built a fortune, a great humanitarian, a president elected in a landslide and then routed in the next election, arguably the father of both New Deal liberalism and modern conservatism - Herbert Hoover is also one of our least understood presidents.
Today Grover Cleveland is mainly remembered as the only president to be elected to two non-consecutive terms. But in his day, Cleveland was a renowned reformer, an enemy of political machines who joined forces with Theodore Roosevelt to fight powerful party bosses, a moralist who vetoed bills he considered blatant raids on the Treasury, a vigorous defender of the Monroe Doctrine who resisted American imperialism.
James A. Garfield may have been the most extraordinary man ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked Garfield down and shot him in the back. But the shot didn’t kill Garfield. The drama of what happened subsequently is a powerful story of a nation in turmoil.
Prize-winning historian Glen Jeansonne delves into the life of our most misunderstood president, offering up a surprising new portrait of Herbert Hoover - dismissing previous assumptions and revealing a political Progressive in the mold of Theodore Roosevelt and the most resourceful American since Benjamin Franklin.
Peter Schweizer explains how a new corruption has taken hold, involving larger sums of money than ever before. Stuffing tens of thousands of dollars into a freezer has morphed into multibillion-dollar equity deals done in the dark corners of the world. President Donald Trump’s children have made front pages for their dicey transactions. However, the media has barely looked into questionable deals made by those close to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Mitch McConnell, and lesser-known politicians who have been in the game longer.
Calvin Coolidge, president from 1923 to 1929, never rated highly in polls, and history has remembered the decade in which he served as an extravagant period predating the Great Depression. Now Amity Shlaes provides a fresh look at the 1920s and its elusive president, showing that the mid-1920s was in fact a triumphant period that established our modern way of life: The nation electrified, Americans drove their first cars, and the federal deficit was replaced with a surplus.
One of today's premier biographers has written a modern, comprehensive, indeed ultimate book on the epic life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This is a portrait painted in broad strokes and fine details. We see how Roosevelt's restless energy, fierce intellect, personal magnetism, and ability to project effortless grace permitted him to master countless challenges throughout his life.
Author of the best-seller FDR, Jean Edward Smith is a master of the presidential biography. Setting his sights on Dwight D. Eisenhower, Smith delivers a rich account of Eisenhower’s life using previously untapped primary sources. From the military service in WWII that launched his career to the shrewd political decisions that kept America out of wars with the Soviet Union and China, Smith reveals a man who never faltered in his dedication to serving America, whether in times of war or peace.
Worst. President. Ever. flips the great presidential biography on its head, offering an enlightening - and highly entertaining - account of poor James Buchanan's presidency to prove once and for all that, well, few leaders could have done worse. But author Robert Strauss does much more, leading listeners out of Buchanan's terrible term in office to explore with insight and humor his own obsession with presidents, and ultimately the entire notion of ranking our presidents.
This is a major political biography of a great American president - who won a war, transformed the government, and doubled the size of the United States...in four years. When Polk was sworn in as the 11th president, what followed was one of the most consequential presidencies in history.
A hundred years after his inauguration, Woodrow Wilson still stands as one of the most influential figures of the 20th century, and one of the most enigmatic. And now, after more than a decade of research and writing, Pulitzer Prize-winning author A. Scott Berg has completed Wilson - the most personal and penetrating biography ever written about the 28th President. This is not just Wilson the icon - but Wilson the man.
By January 1968, despite an influx of half a million American troops, the fighting in Vietnam seemed to be at a stalemate. Yet General William Westmoreland, commander of American forces, announced a new phase of the war in which "the end begins to come into view". The North Vietnamese had different ideas. In mid-1967, the leadership in Hanoi had started planning an offensive intended to win the war in a single stroke.
The First World War is one of history’s greatest tragedies. In this remarkable and intimate account, author G. J. Meyer draws on exhaustive research to bring to life the story of how the Great War reduced Europe’s mightiest empires to rubble, killed 20 million people, and cracked the foundations of the world we live in today. World War I is unique in the number of questions about it that remain unsettled. After more than 90 years, scholars remain divided on these questions, and it seems likely that they always will.
From one of America's most talented historians and winner of a LA Times Book Prize comes a brilliant new account of Richard Nixon that reveals the riveting backstory to the red state/blue state resentments that divide our nation today. Told with urgency and sharp political insight, Nixonland recaptures America's turbulent 1960s and early 1970s and reveals how Richard Nixon rose from the political grave to seize and hold the presidency.
A major new biography of the Civil War general and American president, by the author of the New York Times bestseller A. Lincoln. The dramatic story of one of America's greatest and most misunderstood military leaders and presidents, this is a major new interpretation of Ulysses S. Grant. Based on seven years of research with primary documents, some of them never tapped before, this is destined to become the Grant biography of our times.
No Ordinary Time describes how the isolationist and divided United States of 1940 was unified under the extraordinary leadership of Franklin Roosevelt to become the preeminent economic and military power in the world.
Two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize David McCullough tells the dramatic story behind the story about the courageous brothers who taught the world how to fly: Wilbur and Orville Wright.
On December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Wilbur and Orville Wright's Wright Flyer became the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard. The Age of Flight had begun. How did they do it? And why?
The Battle for Berlin was the culminating struggle of World War II in the European theater. The last offensive against Hitler’s Third Reich, it devastated one of Europe’s historic capitals and marked the final defeat of Nazi Germany. It was also one of the war’s bloodiest and most pivotal battles, whose outcome would shape international politics for decades to come.
In the first full-scale biography of Calvin Coolidge in a generation, Robert Sobel shatters the caricature of our 30th president as a silent, do-nothing leader.
Sobel instead exposes the real Coolidge, whose legacy as the most Jeffersonian of all 20th-century presidents still reverberates today. Sobel delves into the record to show how Coolidge cut taxes four times, had a budget surplus every year in office, and cut the national debt by a third in a period of unprecedented economic growth.
Though his list of accomplishments is impressive, Calvin Coolidge was perhaps best known and most respected by his contemporaries for his character. Americans in the 1920s embraced Coolidge for his upstanding demeanor, which came as a breath of fresh air after the scandal-ridden administration of Warren G. Harding. The sleaze that characterizes much of American political life today was absent in the Coolidge administration.
I thought I knew Cal but I did not, now I have a better understand. A cool guy. Good story well told. Enjoyable and informative
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
What made the experience of listening to Coolidge: An American Enigma the most enjoyable?
This book attempts to flesh out the relatively one dimensional view of Calvin Coolidge which has been provided to most students of American history. It is generally successful in this regard, however the book relies too much on various verbatim readings of his speeches and writings. This gets a bit tiresome. Overall however the book does provide a better description of the personality and political philosophy of President Coolidge than found in other books on this era.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Obviously the personality of Coolidge dominates the book.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Would you listen to Coolidge: An American Enigma again? Why?
Yes. Extremely interesting.
What other book might you compare Coolidge: An American Enigma to and why?
Any book about a historical figure whose accomplishments are overlooked.
Did Charles Bice do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?
Yes, Mr. Bice did an excellent job of separating and acknowledging pros and cons of decisions made by the characters in the book, as well as the reasoning behind those decisions.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
I had not intended it to be completed in one sitting. I wanted to read it in segments and slowly consider what had been written, in order to get a better understanding of the man, and not overlook anything.
Any additional comments?
I'd recommend the book to anyone who cares to compare politics in Coolidges day to the over-reaching style of the current process.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
I like the book but the reader could have been a whole lot more exciting. I found that I had to leave the story from time to time to get back into the storyt; but I did learn and I didn't realize he was a progressive liberal turned conservative. I wish other Presidents would read this book and take some lessons from him. Hell I wish everyone in Congress would read his book. I think I will ask my congressman to read his book.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful
Ok... I wanted a biography of Coolidge which wasn't dragged through a left wing filter. This book isn't... It seemingly is without bias. It is also without original research, a fact the author makes clear up front. The author has no ability to fashion a well-turned phrase or to execute a slashing insight. Instead Robert Sobel through Charles Bice's yeoman's reading goes from point A to point Z, a ride much like one would take on an old-timey trolley car through the last century's first half. The rider peers outward as the book points out the sites (I believe you can hear Sousa if you listen reeeeeely closely :-) and there's little chance to get out and walk into the scenes at depth.
Still, I now know what I wanted to know about Coolidge. The book gave me what I needed to think about... Rather than giving me the writer's thoughts about it. Living in the Northampton, then Boston area for 25 years, my curiosity grew especially since the Western Mass region ignores its ex-President.
If you are interested in one of America's most popular Presidents and wonder why he's been essentially forgotten - you'll find this book satisfying if a tad boring.
A last thought... this is an old-fashioned history book. It is not driven to entertain, nor to indoctrinate. Rather it appears to be an orderly collection of facts which the reader can use appropriately. It will not spark a movie or TV show. I will allow you to fit Coolidge into your personal live-view. Today, that's a pretty high standard.
5 of 9 people found this review helpful
I found this to be a very interesting book about a relatively obscure president from the early 20th century. President Calvin Coolidge was very sucessful throughout his entire political career, including the presidency, and yet peculiarly he is largely forgotten. This book allows one to wonder if he should not be afforded the same consideration as say President Bill Clinton who also oversaw a very successful American economy during his tenure. Perhaps the opposite is true and President Clinton will join President Coolige and will end up largely forgotten by future historians.
If you could sum up Coolidge: An American Enigma in three words, what would they be?
Interesting because tepid.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Coolidge: An American Enigma?
His handling of various strikes during his time.
Which scene was your favorite?
References to his integrity and unflappableness
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
Just enjoyed it.
Any additional comments?
Fascinating to not only learn about him but the era in which he lived.
An excellent and satisfying biography of one of the great, if underrated, US Presidents and the era in which he lived.