Coolidge

By Amity Shlaes

Book Overview

Amity Shlaes, author of The Forgotten Man , delivers a brilliant and provocative reexamination of America's thirtieth president, Calvin Coolidge, and the decade of unparalleled growth that the nation enjoyed under his leadership. In this riveting biography, Shlaes traces Coolidge's improbable rise from a tiny town in New England to a youth so unpopular he was shut out of college fraternities at Amherst College up through Massachusetts politics. After a divisive period of government excess and corruption, Coolidge restored national trust in Washington and achieved what few other peacetime presidents have: He left office with a federal budget smaller than the one he inherited. A man of calm discipline, he lived by example, renting half of a two-family house for his entire political career rather than compromise his political work by taking on debt. Renowned as a throwback, Coolidge was in fact strikingly modern--an advocate of women's suffrage and a radio pioneer. At once a revision of man and economics, Coolidge gestures to the country we once were and reminds us of qualities we had forgotten and can use today.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061967556
• ISBN13: 9780061967559
• Release Date: February 2013
• Publisher: Harper
• Length: 565 Pages
• Weight: 1.89 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.1" x 6.1" x 1.8"

Customer Reviews

We Could Use Another Coolidge Today

Calvin Coolidge is one of those people from history who every American needs to learn about. What he accomplished while President does not get the respect it deserves. He managed to lower the federal budget, lower the national debt, WITHOUT raising taxation. In fact, he lowered in income tax rate down from 70% (where it had been under Wilson). Throughout his administration, he believed that if the American Spirit were to thrive and if America was to be a great and good nation, it needed to happen on the level of the citizen. It could not (for the health and safety of the nation) happen on the level of the government. This book really makes you appreciate the kind of man Coolidge was and makes you wish we could have another president like him. I knocked off a star from this book, because occasionally the author would talk about people as though you should know who they were, and also could occasionally switch topics right in the middle of paragraphs. (I would also HIGHLY recommend reading Coolidge’s autobiography either before or after reading this book. I read it before and it really helped my understanding).