Summer Reading for Potus Geeks: David Pietrusza
David Pietrusza is probably my favorite author when it comes to history and books about presidents or presidential elections. His writing is anything but dry, and he as a wonderful ability to tell me something about the subjects of his books that I didn't know (usually a lot of somethings.) It helps that, in addition to his keen interest in presidential history, he's also a baseball fan, and has written extensively on that subject as well.
Born on November 22nd (a day hard to forget for any historian) in 1949 in Amsterdam, New York, Pietrusza has written four excellent books about presidential elections, and any one of them would make for great summer reading. In chronological order (of the years of the elections, not the years they were written), they are:
1920: The Year of Six President (reviewed here in this community). The title refers to the six men, each of whom either had been or would be President, and who had their eyes on the big prize in the Presidential election of 1920. There were the has-beens: the disillusioned incumbent President Woodrow Wilson, who believed that he could be re-elected to a third term despite his being waylaid by a debilitating stoke; and Theodore Roosevelt (although TR was the odds on favourite to win the big prize in 1920, he wouldn't live that long, passing away early in 1919.) There was Warren Harding, a likeable man who lacked the ability to control his libido when it came to the fairer sex, and who no one really saw as presidential timber. Calvin Coolidge was the boring but efficient up and comer whose cold efficiency was both a blessing and a curse. Then there were the young men of the future: the affable back-slapping Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the whiz kid Herbert Hoover, who was eyed by both parties as a possible candidate. It's a real page-turner, full of stories of all of the idiosyncrasies of all of the candidates and other cast of characters of the day and of the election
1932: The Rise of Hitler and FDR (reviewed here): Let's face it, any book with Hitler as a main character is not going to be a feel-good story and it must have been a mentally exhaustive exercise for the author to research and write this book, especially given the volume of treachery and human misery that is part and parcel of the Nazi rise to power, not to mention the struggle for those living through the depression. Despite this, this book is a fascinating accounting of the time when, as reporter Dorothy Thompson observed, "post-war Europe was finished and pre-war Europe had begun." Ditto for America. This is a very interesting but also very readable account of how two different nations transitioned through hard times, one abandoning democracy, the other treasuring it.
1948: Harry Truman’s Improbable Victory and the Year That Transformed America (reviewed here): Pietrusza is king of the anecdote, and that comes through in spades in this book which tells the story of Harry Truman's incredible upset victory in the 1948 election. It was an amazing time in political history, when Republican Thomas Dewey blew a huge lead over his opponent, the leader of a very divided Democratic Party who authored perhaps the greatest comeback in electoral history.
1960--LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies: This is my favorite of all of Pietrusza's books. I had trouble putting it down once I began to read it. The story of the 1960 election was interesting enough in itself. (A young John F. Kennedy, backed by his family's money, challenged veteran politicians Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey, and Democratic icon Adlai Stevenson for the Democratic nomination, while GOP Vice-President Richard Nixon, burdened by his party's record in office for the past 8 years, fought off a challenge by liberal New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. The two men would meet and run in one of the closest election campaigns in years.) Pietrusza tells a lot that the newspapers would never have dared report, including Nixon's tantrums (kicking the back of a car seat in Iowa like a petulant child), Kennedy's rampant infidelity, his father Joe Kennedy's behind-the-scenes maneuverings, voter payoffs in West Virginia as well as payoffs to African-American politicians like Adam Clayton Powell to campaign for Kennedy. The story of how the television debates came about is masterfully told. It is something which not only affected the outcome of the 1960 election, but changed presidential elections forever. You could read 50 biographies of JFK or Nixon and still learn many new things in this book. If you're a history geek and want a read that's fun, but informative and historically accurate, I highly recommend this book for your reading pleasure.
Pietrusza has also edited two books about Calvin Coolidge (Silent Cal's Almanack: The Homespun Wit and Wisdom of Vermont's Calvin Coolidge and Calvin Coolidge on The Founders: Reflections on the American Revolution & the Founding Fathers) as well as a number of great books about baseball history (including biographies of former Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis and gambler Arnold Rothstein, the man who fixed the 1919 World Series). He is a frequent guest on TV shows and documentaries and his calendar of speaking engagements can be found on his website http://davidpietrusza.com/
Historian Richard Norton Smith has said "David Pietrusza has a gift for making the past both real and dramatically gripping." If you want your summer history reading to be interesting, informative, and most of all fun, this is the first author I would recommend.
Born on November 22nd (a day hard to forget for any historian) in 1949 in Amsterdam, New York, Pietrusza has written four excellent books about presidential elections, and any one of them would make for great summer reading. In chronological order (of the years of the elections, not the years they were written), they are:
1920: The Year of Six President (reviewed here in this community). The title refers to the six men, each of whom either had been or would be President, and who had their eyes on the big prize in the Presidential election of 1920. There were the has-beens: the disillusioned incumbent President Woodrow Wilson, who believed that he could be re-elected to a third term despite his being waylaid by a debilitating stoke; and Theodore Roosevelt (although TR was the odds on favourite to win the big prize in 1920, he wouldn't live that long, passing away early in 1919.) There was Warren Harding, a likeable man who lacked the ability to control his libido when it came to the fairer sex, and who no one really saw as presidential timber. Calvin Coolidge was the boring but efficient up and comer whose cold efficiency was both a blessing and a curse. Then there were the young men of the future: the affable back-slapping Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the whiz kid Herbert Hoover, who was eyed by both parties as a possible candidate. It's a real page-turner, full of stories of all of the idiosyncrasies of all of the candidates and other cast of characters of the day and of the election
1932: The Rise of Hitler and FDR (reviewed here): Let's face it, any book with Hitler as a main character is not going to be a feel-good story and it must have been a mentally exhaustive exercise for the author to research and write this book, especially given the volume of treachery and human misery that is part and parcel of the Nazi rise to power, not to mention the struggle for those living through the depression. Despite this, this book is a fascinating accounting of the time when, as reporter Dorothy Thompson observed, "post-war Europe was finished and pre-war Europe had begun." Ditto for America. This is a very interesting but also very readable account of how two different nations transitioned through hard times, one abandoning democracy, the other treasuring it.
1948: Harry Truman’s Improbable Victory and the Year That Transformed America (reviewed here): Pietrusza is king of the anecdote, and that comes through in spades in this book which tells the story of Harry Truman's incredible upset victory in the 1948 election. It was an amazing time in political history, when Republican Thomas Dewey blew a huge lead over his opponent, the leader of a very divided Democratic Party who authored perhaps the greatest comeback in electoral history.
1960--LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies: This is my favorite of all of Pietrusza's books. I had trouble putting it down once I began to read it. The story of the 1960 election was interesting enough in itself. (A young John F. Kennedy, backed by his family's money, challenged veteran politicians Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey, and Democratic icon Adlai Stevenson for the Democratic nomination, while GOP Vice-President Richard Nixon, burdened by his party's record in office for the past 8 years, fought off a challenge by liberal New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. The two men would meet and run in one of the closest election campaigns in years.) Pietrusza tells a lot that the newspapers would never have dared report, including Nixon's tantrums (kicking the back of a car seat in Iowa like a petulant child), Kennedy's rampant infidelity, his father Joe Kennedy's behind-the-scenes maneuverings, voter payoffs in West Virginia as well as payoffs to African-American politicians like Adam Clayton Powell to campaign for Kennedy. The story of how the television debates came about is masterfully told. It is something which not only affected the outcome of the 1960 election, but changed presidential elections forever. You could read 50 biographies of JFK or Nixon and still learn many new things in this book. If you're a history geek and want a read that's fun, but informative and historically accurate, I highly recommend this book for your reading pleasure.
Pietrusza has also edited two books about Calvin Coolidge (Silent Cal's Almanack: The Homespun Wit and Wisdom of Vermont's Calvin Coolidge and Calvin Coolidge on The Founders: Reflections on the American Revolution & the Founding Fathers) as well as a number of great books about baseball history (including biographies of former Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis and gambler Arnold Rothstein, the man who fixed the 1919 World Series). He is a frequent guest on TV shows and documentaries and his calendar of speaking engagements can be found on his website http://davidpietrusza.com/
Historian Richard Norton Smith has said "David Pietrusza has a gift for making the past both real and dramatically gripping." If you want your summer history reading to be interesting, informative, and most of all fun, this is the first author I would recommend.