The Stevensons: A Biography of an American Family [Hardcover]

Jean H. Baker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1996

In this major work of American biography and history, Jean Baker tells the compelling story of four generations of Stevensons, from the earliest Scotch Irish settlers to the present, framed by the life and career of the icon of liberal politics, Adlai E. Stevenson II. In an early appeal for party support, Adlai Stevenson once confessed to "a bad case of hereditary politics." He revealed more than he knew. From the family dinners in the Stevenson home in Bloomington, Illinois, when Grandfather - an inveterate pol - held forth on his life in Democratic politics and young Adlai flipped butterballs at the ceiling, to Adlai's unstable upbringing by an overbearing mother and an absent father, the Stevenson family shaped its favorite son. The political stance for which Stevenson is remembered, a searching, high-minded independence, communicated with striking eloquence, drew on the history his family transmitted to him and the emotions it forged. In Jean Baker's hands, the Stevenson story is an American saga. It is the story of Scotch Irish immigrants scratching out a farm existence first in Pennsylvania, then Virginia, Kentucky, and finally Illinois, where they rose to social and political prominence. In the ways they bore, raised, and educated their children, worshiped in their churches, married in their communities, built their houses, followed the paths of women and men, and moved from country to town to city over four generations, we see the ways of Americans over the life of this country.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Jean Baker chronicles the history of the Stevenson family from its roots in Scotland to its transplantation in America. Its members would become farmers, businesspeople, and politicians--the most famous being Adlai Stevenson, the perennial also-ran in several presidential elections. Although he is widely regarded as something of an intellectual saint (Dwight Eisenhower famously derided him as an "egghead"), in Baker's view Adlai Stevenson's career was less than spotless. As governor of Illinois, he illegally paid political aides from a private slush fund. He conducted several extramarital affairs. He often behaved foolishly and arrogantly. For all that, writes Baker, he was unfairly abused as a supposed Communist fellow traveler and ultraliberal, when in fact his politics were resolutely centrist. Baker gives due attention to this important figure in recent political history. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Cultivated, witty Adlai Ewing Stevenson II (1900-1965)?Illinois governor, two-time Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. ambassador to the U.N.?is portrayed in this engrossing, often surprising revisionist biography as a moderate conservative (not a liberal) who "dramatized the complex feelings of educated elites." Framing AES II's life with the saga of four generations of Stevensons, Goucher College history professor Baker (Mary Todd Lincoln) attributes his sense of unworthiness and diffidence to his unstable upbringing by a doting, overzealous mother who stifled his initiative and an absent, frequently unemployed farm-manager father whose health never recovered from a hunting accident at the age of 14. Beginning with the family's Scotch-Irish ancestors who became slaveholding pioneers in North Carolina and Kentucky, Baker moves ahead to AES II's indefatigable grandfather, Adlai Stevenson I (1835- 1914), who was Grover Cleveland's Vice-President, and closes with AES III, born in 1930, a disillusioned former U.S. senator from Illinois who now runs a merchant banking firm. Photos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 577 pages
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc; 1st edition (February 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393038742
• ISBN-13: 978-0393038743
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.7 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,459,778 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Family Worthy of Our Attention, January 31, 2001

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Stevensons: A Biography of an American Family (Paperback)

It is important to keep in mind that this is not a biography of Adlai, the most famous of Stevensons. Baker examines his family and his place within that family's development...as well as his place within the American political system. I grew up in Chicago in a family of Democrats who adored FDR and, later, Adlai Stevenson. (They really didn't know quite what to make of Truman nor, for that matter, did Truman know quite what to make of Stevenson.) I begn to follow Stevenson's career when he was governor of Illinois, delighted by his dry wit. Unlike Lincoln's, his career did not lead from Springfield to the White House. His manner was that of a patrician and his demeanor that of an intellectual. (Eisenhower once called him an "egghead.") On occasion, he seemed to lack an appetite for politics or at least for campaigning for public office. Thanks to Baker, I now have a much better understanding of his Scottish ancestry, of his youth, and of the formative years preceding his governship. Contrary to what the elders in my family firmly believed, Stevenson was no saint. For me, that makes him all-the-more interesting. Perhaps his finest moment in public life occurred when, as our ambassador to the U.N., he challenged the ambassador from the U.S.S.R. to admit that it had deployed missiles in Cuba. That took courage and eloquence which Stevenson possessed in abundance. So many fine books have been written about the Kennedys, the Rockefellers, and the Roosevelts. Another family, the Stevensons, has now received the attention it deserves.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Man For All Seasons, May 19, 2000

By 

Charles W. Adams "Charles W. Adams" (Adel, Iowa USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Stevensons: A Biography of an American Family (Paperback)

"The Stevensons" is a sweeping story of the American experience, a story of a great American family.

Jean Baker begins the story of the Stevenson saga with Adlai Stevenson II's 1948 campaign for governor in Illinois. As the popular governor is about to run for the presidency in 1952, the author takes readers back to governor's ancestors, following the family's migration to America - moving from Pennsylvania to the Carolinas, on to Kentucky and eventually to Bloomington, Illinois -- a sweeping and inspiring journey.

While the book's focus is Adlai Stevenson II, two time Democratic presidential candidate in 1952 and 1956, the family biography thoroughly recounts the life and political career of his famous grandfather, Adlai Stevenson I (1835-1914), a Democratic Party icon in 19th century Illinois politics.

Of special interest to those who remember Adlai Stevenson II's two campaigns for the presidency and his tenure as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, the book presents the complexities of the personality of probably the best known liberal of the post-World War II era.

The only missing link in the story is the period between 1956 and 1960.

Among all the tragic figures in this saga, Adlai Stevenson II, although flawed, shines with a luster that will be remembered as a liberal statesman head and shoulders above his contemporaries.

The author lists 35 interviews and has included 74 pages of bibliographic

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Saga of An American Family, February 21, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Stevensons: A Biography of an American Family (Hardcover)

Jean Baker's chronicle of the Stevenson family contains Baker's usual hallmarks-- thought-provoking sagacity, a remarkable ability to objectively look at all issues from all angles, and research that in its scope and accuracy is second to none. The Stevensons should be required reading for all Americans who care about postwar American politics and culture. An excellent piece of work by one of America's outstanding biographers.