Coolidge -- Amity Shlaes, Paperback

"Amity Shlaes's new biography carries a different and highly relevant message. . . . Read Coolidge, and better understand the forces bearing on the President and Congress almost a century later." -- Paul Volcker

From the bestselling author of The Forgotten Man comes a brilliant and provocative biography of our thirtieth president that reexamines this restrained, soft-spoken man -- and the decade of growth that grew from his leadership.

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.

Author: Amity Shlaes
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 02/04/2014
Pages: 592
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 8.09h x 5.33w x 1.01d
ISBN: 9780061967597

Review Citation(s):
New York Times Book Review 02/16/2014 pg. 28