| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Buncombe Bob: The Life and Times of Robert Rice Reynolds. By Julian M. Pleasants. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. xiv, 357 pp. $34.95, ISBN 0-8078-5064-0.)

Buncombe Bob is an appropriate title for a book on a politician from Buncombe County in western North Carolina who was mostly known for his bombast and showmanship. Julian M. Pleasants quotes approvingly a Harper's Magazine analysis that Bob Reynolds (1887–1963) was "by temperament a cross between a carnival broker, a shell-game operator, and a traveling salesman." Except for two terms in the United States Senate, Reynolds led an unremarkable public life; his more spectacular private life included five marriages. Despite his lack of experience, organization, and resources, Reynolds in 1932 defeated the incumbent Democratic senator in a major upset. Assessing the campaign, Pleasants carefully concludes that Reynolds "never resorted to racism or to anti-Semitism"; he appealed instead to voters' emotions, not to their prejudices, and was, therefore, a "populist demagogue." . . .

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