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Book Overview
The scion of a political dynasty ushers in the era of big government
Politics was in Benjamin Harrison's blood. His great-grandfather signed the Declaration and his grandfather, William Henry Harrison, was the ninth president of the United States. Harrison, a leading Indiana lawyer, became a Republican Party champion, even taking a leave from the Civil War to campaign for Lincoln. After a scandal-free term in the Senate-no small feat in the Gilded Age-the Republicans chose Harrison as their presidential candidate in 1888. Despite losing the popular vote, he trounced the incumbent, Grover Cleveland, in the electoral college. In contrast to standard histories, which dismiss Harrison's presidency as corrupt and inactive, Charles W. Calhoun sweeps away the stereotypes of the age to reveal the accomplishments of our twenty-third president. With Congress under Republican control, he exemplified the activist president, working feverishly to put the Party's planks into law and approving the first billion-dollar peacetime budget. But the Democrats won Congress in 1890, stalling his legislative agenda, and with the First Lady ill, his race for reelection proceeded quietly. (She died just before the election.) In the end, Harrison could not beat Cleveland in their unprecedented rematch. With dazzling attention to this president's life and the social tapestry of his times, Calhoun compellingly reconsiders Harrison's legacy.Customer Reviews
Rated 5 starsBH
BH and I share the same fraternity, so he is high on my list. Brief book, but a great example of a President overlooked due to his era.
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Rated 5 starsThorough Yet Concise Take on the Hoosier President
Calhoun's biography came highly recommended by the staff at President Harrison's home and museum in Indianapolis. I found Calhoun's book to be concise and thorough. The author's self-confessed OCD is evident in the amount of footnotes included (more than most of the other American Presidents Series books I've read thus far). These footnotes, I must admit, inspired me to further reading on Harrison in early biographies by Harry...
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Rated 5 stars"Little Ben" was bigger than we thought
Benjamin Harrison lived most of his adult life in Indianapolis, and his handsome brick Victorian home on Delaware Street has long been a memorial open to the public. Yet even the citizens of his hometown are vague on who he really was. Many confuse him with his grandfather, William Henry Harrison, "Old Tippecanoe" as he was called, who also served in the White House, albeit for only thirty days. Some see the signature of...
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Rated 5 starsNice presentation of a lesser-known president
If you ask most people what they know about Benjamin Harrison they might tell you two things they remember from history class...that he was the grandson of a president (William Henry Harrison) and that his term was sandwiched in between the two non-consecutive terms of Grover Cleveland. Beyond that, Benjamin Harrison remains a mystery to most, but author Charles Calhoun has done a crisp and clear job of relating Harrison's...
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Rated 5 starsA fine work on a little-known president
Unlike some of the authors in the AP series, Charles Calhoun is a professional historian who has written previously about his subject's era. He clearly has the depth of knowledge to analyze Harrison and place him properly in the context of his time. While Benjamin Harrison had a successful career prior to his election as President, he really was no more distinguished than any number of 1880s politicos. A respected Civil...
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