Throughout, he is explored as both an ambitious orator and the renowned "Silent Cal." The author also explores the contrast between the beloved leader who balanced the budget, introduced presidential radio addresses and the White House Christmas tree to the nation, and mourned the death of his son while in office with the vilified leader who fired the striking Massachusetts police force and refused federal aid for floods in Mississippi and Vermont to prove a point about states' rights. This biography tells the story of Calvin Coolidge from childhood through his presidency and return to civilian life. 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. Renowned as a throwback, Coolidge was in fact strikingly modern-an advocate of women’s suffrage and a radio pioneer. 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. 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. 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.
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.
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