Table of Contents
Praise for David Pietruszas 1920
A colorful, nonacademic account ... Most of all, there are the characters. Pietrusza draws them sharply: the imperious Wilson, the obliging Harding, the dour and honest Coolidge and the ambitious and dissembling Franklin Roosevelt. Fans of political history will enjoy this book.
Seattle Times
Fascinating and compelling ... Highly recommended.
Library Journal
An ably popular treatment that fans of campaign histories will enjoy.
Booklist
More than just a story of six men who either already had been president or would be, this is the story of America as it moved into the modern age.
Denver Post
A very vivid portrait of each of these presidents.
Ann Compton, ABC News
Through a lens trained on a long-ago election, David Pietruszas 1920: The Year of Six Presidents, delivers a rich and compelling narrative of American politics. Exploring a year when giant figures of American history were waxing and waning, he deftly explains how we ended up with a presidential showdown between two largely unknownyet surprisingly randyeditors of small-town Ohio newspapers, which Warren Harding won principally by being nice.
David O. Stewart, author of The Summer of 1787:
The Men Who Invented the Constitution
Sweeping and original.
The History Book Club
In 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents, writer David Pietrusza shows the right way to pull together disparate characters into a coherent narrative ... this book portrays an America that has stopped looking backward and has begun to craft a new country and a new world role.
The Washington Times
An absolutely wonderful book ... I loved [it], absolutely marvelous, absolutely wonderful research ... just a great read, marvelously done, brilliantly constructed and really integrates the entire story of one year1920 ... if I were teaching a history class of early twentieth century America this is the book I would use ... It reads like a novel but its fact ... a great book.John Rothman, KGO (San Francisco)
I just love 1920: The Year of Six Presidents by David Pietrusza. Its not historical fiction, but plain old history that zips along like good fiction. I just wish Id read it before I wrote my book.
Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online
With a storytellers eye for characters and drama, Pietrusza re-creates America at a post-World War I turning point, when the country wanted steady leadership but got scandal instead.
Washington CEO Magazine
A fine and lively recommendation both for high school and college collections strong in American history and politics in particular, or even public lending libraries.
California Bookwatch
Pietruszas volume brings the vivid history of the 1920 election to life. Both entertaining and insightful, it provides exceptionally well crafted mini biographies of the Six Presidents and how their careers intersected that year. The narrative is rich and compelling as it peeks into the backrooms and describes the national mood. Pietruszas handling of the personalities, issues, trends and techniques that went on to define American politics in the first half of the 20th century is to be recommended to anyone with an interest in presidential biography or U.S. political history.
Dr. Ron Faucheux, former Editor-in-Chief,
Campaigns and Elections magazine and
Campaign Insider newsletter; Former Louisiana
legislator and Secretary of Commerce
To
the folly of Man
and
the mercy of God
The Players in Our Drama
Nan BrittonA small-town girl with a big crush; shes taken a shine to the next president of the United States, United States Senator Warren G. Hardingand she will bear his child.
Heywood BrounThe Republican New York Tribunes in-house radical. Trenchantly brilliant observer of the 1920 Democratic and Republican conventions.
William Jennings BryanThe Silver-Tongued Orator of the Platte. Legendary voice of the old agrarian-based populism. Three-time Democratic presidential nominee. Woodrow Wilsons disgruntled pacifist Secretary of State. Waiting in the wings in 1920, but the times have passed him by.
Carrie Chapman CattProhibitionist. President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. In August 1920, her battle for womens votes races to its conclusion.
Professor William Estabrook ChancellorThe obsessively racist Ohio college professor whose accusations that Warren Harding is part black tosses the election into last-minute turmoil.
Calvin CoolidgeSilent Cal. The taciturn Vermonter who became Massachusettss coldly efficient governor. His words following the September 1919 Boston police strike (There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime) transform him into presidential timber. In Chicago, the GOP convention stampedes to anoint him its vice-presidential candidate.
Grace Goodhue CoolidgeCalvins charming and ever-patient wife. Her husband writes: She has borne with my infirmities, and I have rejoiced in her graces. No one disagreed with the assessment.
Governor James Middleton CoxWarren Hardings feisty Democratic twin, a small-town Ohio newspaper editor who dabbles in state politics, has his own marital troubles, and, when no other candidate proves suitable, wins a presidential nomination of dubious value.
Josephus DanielsThe North Carolina segregationist and prohibitionist newspaper baron. Woodrow Wilsons Secretary of the Navy and FDRs long-suffering boss.
Harry Micajah DaughertyThe unsavory Ohio politico and lobbyist who attaches himself to Warren Harding and rides him all the way to the Attorney Generalshipand ultimately to disgrace.
Eugene Victor DebsImprisoned anti-war Socialist Party ideologue and editor. Federal Prisoner 9653 campaigns for the presidency from his Atlanta Penitentiary jail celland garners nearly a million votes.
Henry FordHero of the American industrial revolution, father of the burgeoning auto industry, pacifist, politician, and, as publisher of the Dearborn Independent, the nations premier anti-Semite.
Marcus GarveyJamaican-born founder of the mass-movement Universal Negro Improvement Association. Self-proclaimed Provisional President of Africa. Garvey launches a black-owned steamship company, numerous other black businessesand the back-to-Africa movement.
Admiral Cary GraysonWoodrow Wilsons personal physician. With Edith Wilson, Grayson hides President Wilsons crippling infirmities from the American people.
Florence Kling DeWolfe HardingThe Duchess. Warren Hardings strong-willed older wife. The brains behind his modest newspaper empire. The Duchess prophesizes: I can see but one word written above his head if they make [Warren] President, and that word is Tragedy.
