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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent book on an obscure and tragic president,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times (Hardcover)
I read this book over 30 years ago and was fascinated with it. It gave a detailed look at one of our most obscure presidents. I've been interested in him ever since. Perhaps the only flaw of the book was the forced omissions of the letters between Mr.Harding and his mistress in Marion, Ohio. This tragic presidency was brought to life with the fascinating writing of Mr. Russell.
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent biography of a most maligned, obscure President,
By dpbelle@aol.com (North Carolina) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times (Hardcover)
I discovered this book in high school. Required to research a President "off the beaten track," I chose Harding. Even more so than Richard Nixon, Harding's reputation has been tarnished since his death, and historians have seldom gone back to re-examine the man's life. Francis Russell's book, currently out-of-print, remains a fascinating study of a man who made no bones about being from an obscure hometown, a man who, although a successful newspaper editor, often misused the English language, and (last but not least) someone who had advanced in the rough and tumble world of Ohio politics not through being a shrewd policy-maker or a great statesman, but rather a good-looking public speaker and partygoing back-slapper. He had other faults as well, namely his roving eye regarding the fairer sex. One of the most interesting sections of the book concerns his decade-long affair with a married woman. They wrote many love letters back and forth, but excerpts from these letters were suppressed; dashes (---) appear in Russell's book instead of the expected prose. Perhaps someday these letters will be published, and with them an unexpurgated version of this otherwise wholly satisfactory Presidential biography.
11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Warren the Bad,
By Bomojaz (South Central PA, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times (Hardcover)
The worst of our presidents? That's the usual judgment, but it's hard to say because nothing of real consequence occurred during Harding's two years in office that would have tested his mettle: calling the Washington Conference in 1921 to limit naval armaments, perhaps his biggest (positive) accomplishment, doesn't exactly go down in history as memorable. His reputation, though, much of it hidden from the public until long after his death, is horrendous. He would rather play poker than do anything else, and he revelled in his own pomposity. He fathered a child out of wedlock as a Senator and had other affairs as well. His presidency was one of the most corrupt in history: many of his cabinet cronies were involved in one scandal after another, the biggest being the Teapot Dome affair, which was all about selling off the government's oil reserve to the highest bidders behind everyone's back. Not much to admire, and Russell pulls no punches in expressing his disdain for his subject. The book is solidly written, though it is overly long, especially where Russell goes into Harding's death (food poisoning?) in California. One of the better Presidential biographies out there, however. Recommended.
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