Grover Cleveland: A Study in Character (Hardcover)

by Alyn Brodsky (Author) "The name Cleveland is of Saxon origin, from a district near the Suffolk town of Whitby, seventy miles northeast of London, that was celebrated for..." (more)
Key Phrases: silver faction, tariff message, second presidency, New York, White House, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
This admiring (indeed near-hagiographic) revisionist biography seeks to portray Grover ClevelandAthe only Democrat elected to the presidency between the Civil War and WWI-as a model of integrity and honor: "To compare Cleveland with our four most deplorable post-Harding presidentsANixon, Reagan, Bush, and ClintonAis to contrast a paradigm of virtue with the quintessence of duplicity." Brodsky, a historian and book critic for the Miami Herald and other papers, praises this Presbyterian minister's son for attacking corruption, cleaning up the civil service, enacting tariff and pension reforms and opposing the spoliation of the West by a land-grabbing clique of railroads, cattle barons and lumber companies. Yet Cleveland was basically a political and social conservative. Though he ran for president in 1884 as one who would challenge the power of monopolies and big business, once in office, he essentially served their interests. Cleveland called out federal troops to crush the Chicago Pullman strike in 1894 (12 were killed, 515 arrested). Brodsky lamely argues that Cleveland was sympathetic to the labor movement, but saw his primary duty as upholding the law, ensuring mail delivery and supporting interstate commerce. The author justifiably praises our 22nd/24th president as an anti-imperialist who refused to recognize a Hawaiian government set up largely by U.S. planters, yet he concedes that, in foreign affairs, Cleveland's achievements were insignificant. Cleveland may arguably have been the best president between Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, but that's not saying much, and this earnest if colorful biography fails to provide the kind of hard-nosed reassessment that might restore the luster to a president whose missteps severely weakened the Democratic Party for decades. Photos. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Grover Cleveland bought his way out of the Civil War draft, may have fathered an illegitimate daughter, and married someone 27 years his junior. Whereas some may see a theme in these events that helps explain his later conservative Victorian behavior, popular historian Brodsky (The Kings Depart; Madame Lunch & Friend) writes an old-fashioned political biography of America's 22d and 24th chief executiveDthe first major one in more than a half-century. He regards the split-term president as the nation's most underrated chief executive and the best of the eight who served between Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. In the short run, notes Brodsky, Cleveland lost public favor but lived long enough to regain it. On the other hand, his workaholic and inflexible style often undermined his effectiveness. Except for an occasional negative comparison to some recent contemporary presidents, this account is balanced, readable, and worthwhile. Recommended for public and academic libraries.DWilliam D. Pederson, Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Truman Talley Books; 1st edition (September 11, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312268831
• ISBN-13: 978-0312268831
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #840,839 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Honoring and Honorable Man, October 14, 2000

By	Robert Beeson "rbsun" (Fort Myers, Florida USA) - See all my reviews

A first rate biography of the only man to win two non-consecutive terms as U. S. president and one who captured the popular vote three consecutive times. Brodsky has struck a good stylistic balance between the readable and the informative, between bringing to an engaging personality to life and rendering an accurate historical narrative. It is the finest Cleveland biography since Allan Nevins' definitive work of nearly seventy years ago. I anxiously await his forthcoming work on Cleveland's wife, Frances, one of the more remarkable first ladies who figures predominantly in the current work.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Welcome, but only adequate, November 20, 2000

By	David A. Caplan "dave659" (Greenwich, CT USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Despite the vast number of professors of American History in our colleges and universities, it's hard to find biographies of many of our presidents. Therefore, we must be grateful for Brodsky's "Grover Cleveland." It is a readable, but not scholarly treatment of Cleveland and his presidencies. Brodsky, almost always sympathetic to Cleveland, effects a good balance between the personal and political, and is especially good in dealing with Cleveland's retirement years. His treatment of the presidencies concentrates on several principal issues like the tariff and silver controversies, and the Pullman strike. I would have wished for greater detail of the presidential years, the election campaigns, and fuller sketches of Cleveland's allies and competitors. I don't want to be too harsh about the book's comprehensiveness because I don't think Brodsky had any pretensions about writing a full academic biography. Accepting the book as a popular biography, I wish Brodsky were a more elegant writer. The book would have benefitted from tighter editing, if only to curb some of Brodsky's graceless metaphors. Nonetheless, it can be recommended in view of the dearth of available biographies of President Cleveland.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Absorbing, If Stolid, Elegy, September 8, 2001

By	A. H. Lynde "ahlynde" (Ewa Beach, HI United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Let's not make more of this than it is: as sturdy and stolid as its subject, it's a lengthy paean to a clearly above-average President and a round condemnation of the Gilded Age in which he so earnestly labored. If you take this 'biography' on its terms, you may be charmed by Alyn Brodsky's plain spoken affinity for the man, his very young wife, and those generally fine men around him. But this is no true biography, it is a popular history and a mid-length life and times. To the author's credit, he makes no pretense otherwise. Here even Cleveland's surreptitious jaw cancer surgery, a well-kept secret for a quarter century, is not a malicious deception, but virtually the cross the great and good man deems right to bear in silence. The President's firm stands, fist slammed down on his desk, on the thorny issues of the day - high tariffs, gold standard, Hawaiian misadventure, veteran pensions, monopolistic practices, treatment of minorities - are all placed in a context of good civic ethics. This would be too much puffery were it not for Brodsky's sound defense, well researched, of Cleveland's thoughtful positions and sincerity as contrasted with his rivals'. Of course, in relation to such virtual or literal crooks and fools as Arthur, Blaine ('Continental Liar from the State of Maine'), Harrison ('is he as small as all that?'), Hanna ("king maker"), McKinley ("a bronze statue looking for his pedestal"), Tammany Hall, the robber barons, and Bryan, Cleveland is every inch (and pound) the hero. In sum, a worthy read, always absorbing, at times elevating.