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| A dazzling panorama of presidential personalities, ambitions, plots and counter-plots--and of a newly-modern America at the crossroads--grounded in solid historical research, insightful social commentary, a compelling and innovative structure, and riveting historical profiles. In 1920, a record six past, present, or future chief executives eye the great prize of the Presidency, each with a unique style and vision of the office and the nation: Theodore Roosevelt: The Rough Rider himself. President. Historian. Cowboy. Police Commissioner. Trust-Buster. Explorer. Naturalist. Big-Game Hunter. Noble Prize-winner. He has been president once--and wants the job again. Only the hand of God can keep him from the White House in 1920. Woodrow Wilson: Brilliant, eloquent, progressive, and self-confident. But also bigoted, self-centered, stubborn, and messianic. He desperately plans for a League of Nations to prevent future wars, but lacks the diplomatic and political skills to sell the idea either at home or abroad. In the bargain, he fatally compromises article after article of his Fourteen Points and sows the seeds of another war. "Woodrow Wilson is an exile from the hearts of his people," says Eugene V. Debs, "The betrayal of his ideals makes him the most pathetic figure in the world." An October 1919 stroke leaves him too crippled to lead the nation, but the nation is never told. Fantastically, he clings to hopes of an unprecedented third term. Warren G. Harding: Ohio small-town newspaper editor, Republican politician, and serial adulterer. His strengths: he looks like a president, sounds like a president (if you don't listen too carefully), and is sufficiently vague on the issues to be nominated. "America's present need," he intones, "is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums but normalcy." America agrees. Calvin Coolidge: Silent Cal. The taciturn Vermonter who became Massachusetts's coldly efficient governor. His actions during the September 1919 Boston police strike ("There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime") make him presidential timber. In Chicago, the GOP convention stampedes and anoints him its vice-presidential candidate. Herbert Hoover: The Great Engineer. International gold mining adventurer. Multi-millionaire. Savior of war-ravaged Europe's starving masses. A political progressive and member of the Wilson administration. A national hero. In 1920 Hoover wants to be president but has one big problem: he can't decide if he's a Republican or a Democrat. Franklin D. Roosevelt: Wilson's ambitious, but not yet properly-seasoned, under secretary of the Navy. If the Republicans can't nominate a dead Roosevelt, the Democrats will nominate a live one--Franklin--for vice-president. |
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| Featured on C-SPAN (BookTV)'s After Words, interviewed by ABC News Correspondent Ann Compton Order a DVD |
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| From the Publisher: The presidential election of 1920 was among history's most dramatic as six once-and-future presidents--Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Harding, Hoover, and Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt--jockeyed for the White House. With voters choosing between Wilson's League of Nations and Harding's frontporch isolationism, 1920's election shaped modern America like no other. 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. We 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. |
| Named by Richard Norton Smith on C-SPAN as one of his favorite presidential campaign books. |
| #1 Amazon Sales Ranking in Three Non-Fiction Categories |
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