Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.3 | The History Cooperative

The Presidency of Calvin Coolidge . By Robert H. Ferrell. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998. xii, 244 pp. $29.95, isbn 0-7006-0892-3.)

The Presidency of Calvin Coolidge by Robert H. Ferrell is the latest entry in the American Presidency series published by the University Press of Kansas. Aiming to dispel caricatures, the book is mercifully free of the usual Coolidge anecdotes. Instead, Ferrell provides a balanced and highly readable account of Calvin Coolidge and his administration. 1

Ferrell readily acknowledges that Coolidge was a simple and shy man who became president in large part because of fortuitous circumstances such as his Boston police strike telegram and the death of Warren G. Harding. But Ferrell also contends that Coolidge was no simple-minded rustic spouting the virtues of New England country life. He was, rather, a hardworking politician who was ambitious to advance his career, maintained a fairly consistent, if limited, public philosophy, and possessed shrewd, even cunning, political instincts. He possessed as well a deeply felt belief that politics was an honorable form of public service. It was these traits and skills that explain his success in Massachusetts and his presidential victory in 1924. . . .

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