I've been reading one biography on every president, and to be fair, there wasn't a whole lot of choice when it came to Arthur. I bought this book because of the good reviews, and because I wanted the most in-depth look at this obscure president as I could get. Reeves does a good job of showing Arthur's character and giving his actions and behaviors their correct context, however, he treats some issues extremely unfairly. To read his accounts of Rutherford B. Hayes, for instance, you would think that the 19th President was a misguided, inconsequential man who walked into his office full of starry-eyed idealism, instead of someone who labored to do the right thing under a corrupt system and left the office ultimately defeated because he couldn't get anything accomplished when faced with the stalemate perpetrated by Roscoe Conkling and his political machine. Conkling himself gets an inordinate amount of attention in this book--I'd say the first 200 pages are full of twice the mentions of Conkling as Arthur, which I found odd in a book that claims to be about Arthur. Additionally, I took issue with Reeves' presentation of the 1876 election. There was plenty of time devoted to the Republican cheating and corruption, but absolutely no mention of the tactics of the Democrats (which in many cases were worse). It was a very strange event to be one-sided about, since it's been well documented that everyone cheated during that election.
Reeves also contradicts himself at one point about Arthur's wife, who was either on such bad terms with her husband that they were on the verge of separating upon her death, or they were so in love that Arthur was crushed by her departure. Additionally, Reeves provides two lengthy explanations of the star route frauds about a hundred pages apart from each other that are nearly identical.
If you're just looking for a biography on a random president, I would choose another book. But if you're specifically looking for a work on Arthur, be forewarned that you'll get a lot of information about Roscoe Conkling and that the book's treatment of Hayes (and, even in someplaces, of Garfield) leaves out a lot of the redeeming qualities of the man who previously held the office.
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