Coolidge

New York Times Bestseller “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 “America’s 30th president has been much misunderstood. . . . Shlaes’s biography provides a window onto an unfairly tarnished period. It deserves to be widely read.”—The Economist Timed to the centennial of the Calvin Coolidge presidency, an updated edition of Amity Shlaes’s brilliant and provocative New York Times bestselling biography examines an underrated chief executive who offered a model of presidential service strikingly different from that seen in America today. This new edition features a preface by Washington Post columnist George F. Will. Seemingly unbreachable political divisions, war and pandemic, unrest in cities, a budgetary crisis, economic disruption –all troubles we confront today—also challenged America a century ago. When President Warren Harding passed away suddenly in 1923, America seemed to be heading deeper into uncertainty. Many considered the vice president who suddenly succeeded Harding, the modest Silent Cal, a mere lame duck. Yet over the course of the 1920s, through breathtaking discipline and determination, this unexpected president set America on a new course and restored the nation’s confidence in itself. In this magisterial political biography, bestselling author Amity Shlaes traces Coolidge’s dramatic story, and the roots of his strength, from a childhood in a New England hamlet to his rise from town lawmaker to governor of Massachusetts and his dramatic handling of the Boston Police strike. Through bipartisanship, civility, and sheer perseverance, the thirtieth president ended the era of crisis and delivered both a solvent government and a better life to working Americans. More importantly, Coolidge carefully rebuilt Americans’ trust our own government.