| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Passion and Preferences: William Jennings Bryan and the 1896 Democratic National Convention. By Richard Franklin Bensel. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. xviii, 318 pp. Cloth, $90.00, ISBN 978-0-521-88888-2. Paper, $29.99, ISBN 978-0-521-71762-5.)

With this excellent book Richard Franklin Bensel, a political scientist who has written award-winning studies about significant political and economic transformations in modern U.S. history, provides a meticulous reconstruction of the 1896 Democratic Convention. A number of scholars such as Walter Dean Burnham, Stanley L. Jones, Paul W. Glad, and Robert F. Durden have demonstrated the importance of the 1896 presidential election. Moreover, biographers have scrutinized William Jennings Bryan's role in that election. What sets Bensel's work apart is the extensive focus on the Democratic Convention itself—"one of the great turning points in American political development" (p. 305). Through diligent use of newspaper coverage of the event, Bensel dissects the convention's anatomy, astutely examining its political culture, spaces, and dynamics. Ultimately, he shows the complex process behind how Bryan's famous "Cross of Gold" speech catapulted the young Nebraskan to the top of the Democratic ticket.

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