1920: The Year of the Six Presidents [Paperback]

David Pietrusza (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 8, 2008

The presidential election of 1920 was among history’s most dramatic. Six once-and-future presidents-Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt-jockeyed for the White House. With voters choosing between Wilson’s League of Nations and Harding’s front-porch isolationism, the 1920 election shaped modern America. 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. America 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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Pietrusza's (Rothstein) chronicle of the presidential election of 1920 is absorbing, despite the subtitle's rather tangential claim that the election involved six men who had served or would serve as president: Harding, Wilson, Coolidge, Hoover and both Roosevelts (though Teddy had died in 1919). This book isn't really about them, nor is it merely the story of one electoral race. Rather, Pietrusza is telling a grander tale, of a country toppling into "modernity, or what passed for it." In 1920, the automobile had overtaken the horse, jazz and the fox-trot were replacing the camp meeting as popular entertainment, people were learning to buy on installment, and more and more of those fox-trotting shoppers lived in cities. Presidential candidates, for the first time, courted women voters. (Democrat Cox was divorced, which was expected to play badly with the fairer sex.) Both parties waffled on the so-called race question, seeking black votes while either tacitly or explicitly endorsing white supremacy. Given Harding's electoral victory and death during his term, Pietrusza could have devoted more space to the abiding importance of this election. All in all, Pietrusza has produced a broad, satisfying political and social history, in the style of Doris Kearns Goodwin. 16 pages of b&w illus. (Feb. 7)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Under the slogan "Let us return to normalcy," Republican Warren Harding crushed Democrat James Cox in the 1920 presidential election. Taking the politics-minded back to that poll, this account handicaps the field of contestants for each major party's nomination. While not neglecting the third-party standard bearers, such as the Socialist Party's jailed Eugene Debs, Pietrusza homes in on the Republican and Democratic nomination races. Remember Leonard Wood? William McAdoo? They were the leading contenders in 1920, whose dark-horse rivals played for deadlocked party conventions and stampeded toward a compromise candidate. This political formula, with its smoke-filled rooms, sets up Pietrusza's narrative structure, which he fills in with relevant biography, headline news of 1920, incidents on the campaign trail, and contemporaries' acid commentary about the caliber of Harding and Cox. In addition to dramatizing the election's yielding, in various manners, of four future presidents (Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and FDR), Pietrusza recounts how two past executives (Wilson and TR) strangely angled for one more term in 1920. An ably popular treatment that fans of campaign histories will enjoy. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 592 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (April 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786721022
• ISBN-13: 978-0786721023
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.6 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (68 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #166,943 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Called one "of the best historians in the United States," "one of the great political historians of all time," and "the undisputed champion of chronicling American Presidential campaigns." David Pietrusza has produced a number of critically-acclaimed works concerning 20th century American history. Critics have compared his work to that of H. L. Mencken, Theodore H. White, Edmund Morris, and Doris Kearns Goodwin.

His "1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year that Transformed America," a study of the dramatic 1948 presidential campaign, is a selection of the History Book Club, the Book-of-the-Month Club, and the Literary Guild.

ForeWord Magazine designated his book "1960: LBJ vs JFK vs Nixon: The Epic Campaign that Forged Three Presidencies" as among the best political biographies. Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Caro has termed "1960" "terrific."

Pietrusza's "1920: The Year of the Six Presidents" received a Kirkus starred review, was honored as a Kirkus "Best Books of 2007" title, and was named an alternate selection of the History Book Club. Historian Richard Norton Smith has listed "1920: The Year of the Six Presidents" as being among the best studies of presidential campaigns.

Pietrusza's biography of Arnold Rothstein entitled "Rothstein: The Life, Times & Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series" was a finalist for the 2003 Edgar Award. Rothstein's audio version won an AUDIOFILE Earphones Award.

Pietrusza has edited three volumes on the career and works of Calvin Coolidge: "Silent Cal's Almanack: The Homespun Wit & Wisdom of Vermont's Calvin Coolidge," "Calvin Coolidge: A Documentary Biography," and "Coolidge on the Founders: Calvin Coolidge on the American Revolution & the Founding Fathers." Says Amity Shlaes: "an authority on the 1920s and [Calvin] Coolidge . . . David Pietrusza has brought Coolidge back to life with his volumes about the president . . ."

Pietrusza's "Judge and Jury, his biography of baseball's first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis," received the 1998 CASEY Award and was also a Finalist for the 1998 Seymour Medal and nominated for the NASSH Book Award.

Pietrusza collaborated with baseball legend Ted Williams on an autobiography called "Ted Williams: My Life in Pictures."

His books have been utilized as texts by such colleges as George Washington University, the City University of New York,  the University at Buffalo, Baylor University, Bellevue College, the University of Illinois, the University of San Francisco, and Portland State College. "1920" has been part of the syllabus for the course "Congress, The Presidency & 21st Century Media" offered by C-SPAN, The Cable Center and the University of Denver. His talk on "Silent Cal's Almanack" is included in the curriculum for the C-SPAN Classroom initiative.

Pietrusza served as president (1993-97) of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), and as editor-in-chief of the publishing company Total Sports.

He has been interviewed on NPR, MSNBC, C-SPAN Book TV (including "In Depth"), C-SPAN American History TV, ESPN, the Fox News Channel, the History Channel ("The Ultimate Guide to the Presidents"), EBRU-TV, GBTV, the Voice of America, "Secrets of new York," and the Fox Sports Channel. He has produced and written the PBS-affiliate documentary, "Local Heroes." He has served as a regular panelist for FoxNews.com Live.

An internationally recognized expert on American presidential elections, he has been interviewed by Le Figaro, Le Monde, Radio-France, Radio-France International, Greece's To Vima, and Denmark's Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten.

Pietrusza holds both bachelor's and master's degrees in history from the University at Albany and has served on the City Council in Amsterdam, New York. He has served as public information officer for both the NYS Governor's Office of Regulatory Reform and the NYS Office of the Medicaid Inspector General.

Pietrusza is the Recipient of the 2011 Excellence in Arts & Letters Award of the Alumni Association of the University at Albany.

Learn more at www.davidpietrusza.com

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

82 of 84 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Pietrusza Triumph January 17, 2007

By Robert N. Going Esq

Format:Hardcover

Once again David Pietrusza has produced an outstanding work of history and biography, this one dealing with the fascinating machinations that went into the presidential election of 1920. The author of numerous works on the history of baseball and major biographies of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis and gangster Arnold Rothstein now returns to his favorite era to bring us the wisdom, the wit, the follies and the foibles of not only the six once and future presidents, but of a supporting cast that includes the colorful and the quirky, the lovable and the loathsome, the brilliant and the batty of the political and social world of 1920.

In many ways it was a time not unlike our own, but in many others so completely different that the America of 85 years ago seems barely recognizable.

This is a story so well-told that only the duties of life kept me from reading its 544 pages straight through. This is no plodding tome. Every page is alive, every chapter a well-constructed gem. He begins with sketches of the major players, then masterfully weaves them into the events of the day: the peace negotiations ending World War I, the battle over the League of Nations, prohibition, the women's suffrage amendment, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the peculiar hobby of lynching, the effect of the Bolshevik Revolution on domestic radicals, Sacco and Vanzetti, the Boston Police Strike.

We see a young (38) and vigorous Franklin D. Roosevelt, pre-polio, dashing across the street from his own driveway to the home of the Attorney General, on whose front steps a domestic radical has just accidentally blown himself up. We find a calm and rather dull Warren G. Harding promising the country a return to normalcy in foreign and domestic affairs (with domestic affairs of his own anything but normal). There's the genuine world hero Herbert Hoover who toys with the idea of running for president and manages to win several primaries both as a Republican and a Democrat, and who is presented with the enticing possibility of joining forces with FDR in a kind of fusion candidacy.

Then there is the sitting president Woodrow Wilson who has lost nearly all his grip on the presidency and quite a bit of his grip on reality as he vainly attempts from his sick bed to engineer a third term for himself. And, larger than life, looms the all but annointed obvious candidate and odds-on favorite for 1920, Theodore Roosevelt, whose sudden death in 1919 suddenly throws the race wide open. The story of his old friend, and sometime opponent, former president William Howard Taft attending TR's funeral should bring a tear to your eye.

And Calvin Coolidge. A man of few words, perhaps, but the ones he chooses are sheer poetry, and a collection of his speeches distributed at the Republican convention leads to a stampede to nominate him for Vice President against the choice of Harding and the party bosses. A look ahead at his ascendancy on the death of Harding, being sworn in by his notary public father in the old family homestead at Plymouth Notch, Vermont in the middle of the night beneath the flickering light of a kerosene lamp, then walking alone to his mother's grave is one of the book's many highlights.

But then, every sentence is a highlight.

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Splendid History June 16, 2007

By Steve Iaco

Format:Hardcover

This is a splendidly written chronicle of the contest to succeed President Wilson in 1920. For a person not steeped in the era, there are many unexpected twists and turns. Among the most surprising: the zeal with which the ailing, wildly unpopular Wilson pursued a potential third term. Another: the vigorous courtship -- equally ardent among Dems and Reps alike -- of Herbert Hoover, the Great Humanitarian hero of WWI. One scenario had Hoover at the top of the Democratic ticket, with, of all people, FDR as his runningmate. Talk about ironies of history!

Harding emerges as a sympathetic, but flawed figure, with a penchant for personal risk-taking that makes Bill Clinton or Gary Hart seem cautious by comparison. His serial affairs nearly undid his candidacy. Instead, we learn how fellow Ohioan Harry Daugherty brilliantly engineered Harding's nomination by not alienating anyone at the Republican convention. Daugherty would later meet an ignominous end as Harding's AG. Another tragic figure, Interior Secretary Albert Fall, might have avoided infamy -- and spared the country the Teapot Dome scandal -- had Harding's first choice for the cabinent post not been shot dead in a lover's quarrel. This is one of many eye-opening revelations -- too numerous to recount -- for anyone who thinks that salacious affairs are only the stuff of modern politics.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Pietrusza is a gifted wordsmith who's penned well paced, highly accessible popular history.

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Snapshot Of America March 2, 2008

By D. Mataconis

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

The Election of 1920 is unique in American history. Never before had so many men who either had been, or one day would be, President vied for the office at the same time.

But for an untimely death, Theodore Roosevelt would have been the presumptive Republican nominee and, given the political conditions of the time, probably would have returned to the White House. In the White House, Woodrow Wilson remained felled by a stroke but stubbornly held onto power and the idea that he could run for a third term. From New York, a young, vigorous Franklin D. Roosevelt laid the groundwork for what would become the longest Presidency in history. Herbert Hoover, the hero of wartime procurement and post-war famine relief, struggled to with the idea of whether he was a Republican or a Democrat. Up in Massachusetts, a mild-mannered Calvin Coolidge was on the verge of shocking everyone. And, in Ohio, Warren G. Harding, a man with a past so checked that he couldn't possibly be considered a viable candidate today, was convinced by party insiders that he could in fact be President of the United States.

In 1920: The Year Of The Six Presidents, David Pietrusza tells the story of this election, but, more than that, he tells the story of what was happening in America in the years after World War One and on the cusp of the Jazz Age. Through it all, Piestruza weaves together a compelling narrative that brings to life events whose consequences reverberated through the 20th Century.

There are plenty of surprises here. The stubbornness with which the ailing Woodrow Wilson, who probably should have been removed from office to begin with, pursued the idea of a third term in office (to the point where he was willing to sabotage the campaigns of Democratic rivals) was rather shocking, but it was also consistent with the unbending, uncompromising zeal with which he pursued the doomed League of Nations. Similarly, the star power of Herbert Hoover, who is remembered by history as one of America's great failed Presidents, is something that is missing from the version of history that is popular today. There was even, at the time, a suggestion that Hoover would run as a Democrat on a ticket with Franklin D. Roosevelt, the man who would replace him in 1932.

Pietrusza also writes about the great social issues of the day and how they impacted the Presidential election. Prohibition, once the cause of religious leaders and gadflys, had become so popular that even previously "wet" politicians felt compelled to support it and, in Harding's case, vote for the 18th Amendment in the Senate. Women's suffrage, which had been largely ignored by the Wilson Administration, picked up steam; but nobody really knew how it might affect the 1920 election. And, of course, race was an issue. Not just in the South but everywhere and, at one point, a crackpot Ohio college professor, aided by state Democrats, published several anonymous tracts claiming that Harding was 1/8th negro.

There are other stories throughout the book that bring the era to life. William Howard Taft meeting his old friend and rival Theodore Roosevelt in a Chicago hotel dining room and then crying publicly at TR's funeral in 1919. Eugene Debs sitting in an Atlanta Federal Prison while running what would prove to be the last Socialist Party Presidential campaign. Warren Harding having at least two affairs prior to running for office, one of which resulted in a child, and Franklin Roosevelt doing the same including one incident that resulted in the woman in question sailing to Europe, never to return.

I should also mention Calvin Coolidge. Silent Cal has generally been derided and dismissed by historians, but this books brings him to life and shows him to be a decent, honorable, hard-working man of the people.

There's more, of course, but you get the idea. This book is well-written, well-researched (except for a few mis-statements that clearly were missed by the editor such as when the 17th Amendment is mistakenly referred to as the 16th Amendment) and flows much faster than its 438 pages might indicate. It's well worth the time of anyone interested in American political history.