Coolidge Calvin - Calvin Coolidge

Table of Contents

Many people helped me in the writing of Calvin Coolidge, and I would like to thank them briefly here. At Times Books, Paul Golob first expressed interest in having me write for this series. He offered enthusiasm for the project and excellent advice throughoutand, lest I forget, edited the manuscript brilliantly. Also at Times Books, David Wallace-Wells ably assisted with a variety of tasks, always with good cheerno surprise, given his Slate pedigree. Thanks to Chris OConnell for overseeing the production editing as well. Once again, I am indebted to Peter Matson, agent par excellence, for his steady guiding hand, as well as to his talented assistants at Sterling Lord Literistic.

America has no greater historian than Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. I was honored to receive his invitation to write for this series, and doubly honored to benefit from his perspicacious comments on a manuscript draft. If the privilege of his interest werent enough, I was also fortunate to have another of Americas most eminent historians and experts on the 1920s, William Leuchtenburg, read and comment on a draft. The final version profited immensely from his careful edits, down to suggestions about sentence structure. Warren Bass, Christopher Capozzola, Jim Cooke, Robert Greenberg, Andrew Jewett, Kevin C. Murphy, and Sheldon Stern all read manuscript drafts and offered valuable comments. I thank them for sharing their time, energy, and knowledge of history. Sheldon, whoran an important conference on Coolidge at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in 1998, offered helpful advice throughout the process. David Shreve, a superb historian of political economy, read the chapters on Coolidges economics, saved me from many errors, and generously sent me articles and citations.

I very much appreciate the assorted favors, large and small, rendered by Alan Brinkley, Jonathan Chait, Gus Friedrich, David Kennedy, Yehuda Mirsky, John Pavlik, Steven Ponder, Matt Rees, Colleen Shogan, Linda Steiner, Steve Weisman, and Eric Yellin. I have probably omitted others who helped me; I thank them not only for their help but also for forgiving my lapses.

My thanks, too, to the archivists at the Library of Congress for their assistance, and to the White House Historical Association, the Rutgers University Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, and the Rutgers Initiative in the Interdisciplinary Study of Issues in Privacy and Security for funds that helped defray research expenses. The Aresty Center at Rutgers gave me the chance to benefit from Prudence Chos excellent research assistance. I thank David Noyola, Kate Sell, and Dan Su for their indispensable research help as well.

My family, as always, provided much-appreciated support, ideas, and encouragementthanks, Mom and Dad, Judith and Ira, Jon and Megan, and Renee. Suzannes love, support, and companionship were critical in helping me get to the finish line. Most of all, Im grateful to Leo for those times he came into my office, said, Daddy working, and figured out that he should leave the roomand even more grateful for those times that he insisted I leave with him.

Nixons Shadow: The History of an Image

Presidential Doodles

In this book endnotes will be used not to cite every fact but to attribute quotations, certain statistics, and potentially controversial claims, as well as to elaborate on detail beyond that found in the main text.