Customer Reviews

Ruth Hanna McCormick: A Life in Politics, 1880-1944

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I usually shy away from reading biographies written by relatives of the subject, since I suspect they may not be objective. This book is by Ruth Hanna McCormick's granddaughter but she never knew her grandmother - and was probably better able to gain information which her relatives had. I found this account of the life of the first woman ever to be nominated by a major political party for a US Senate seat to be well-written and to tell well the interesting life which Ruth Hanna MCCormick Simms led. Ruth was the daughter of Mark Hanna, the man who made William McKinley president, and she married the brother of Colonel Robert McCormick, longtime boss of the Chicago Tribune. Her husband won a Senate seat in 1918 defeating the legendary J. hamilton Lewis. After her husband was defeated for reelection and took his own life, his widow was elected to Congress in 1928, and then ran for the Seante in 1930, defeating the incumbent Senator in the Republican primary but in turn losing to--J. Hamilton Lewis, the man her husband had beaten 12 years earlier. Thereafter she married a man who was a New Mexico Congressman when she met him--he exchanged seats with a Congressman who before the exchange would lean past Mrs. McCormick to use the spittoon. The book also includes a detailed account of Mrs. Simms' effort to make Tom Dewey President in 1940 and reveals interesting aspects of the 1940 campaign and tells how Dewey rebuffed her help in 1944. I found the book a fascinating look into political life from the woman's suffrage effort (in which Mrs. McCormick played a leading role) to the 1940s. Don't avoid this book merely because it was written by a granddaughter.