Review: 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents

1920: The Year of the Six Presidents by David Pietrusza
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The presidential election of 1920 was dramatic. The book's title comes from six once-and-future presidents angling in the race: Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, and Theodore Roosevelt. There as many non-president actors of significance, including socialist leader Eugene V. Debs, leading American progressive and isolationist politician from California Hiram Johnson, the Democratic U.S. presidential candidate in 1928 Al Smith, and more. Is it that unusual a half-dozen former and future presidents populate the stage? I don't know about that, but the drama of the year includes women's suffrage, U.S. post-WW I isolationism (League of Nations, fear of "internationalism", immigration), the high tide of organized socialism, the end of the Progressive Era period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States from the 1890s to 1920s, the two major parties evolving into the shape we now know, the maturing of the primary process, and the political effects of American urbanization.

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