snap

Much like Margaret Leech before him, Edmund Morris is really good at the political biography insult. Here are just two of his descriptors that I've come across recently:

"that jovial Methodist bison Senator Jonathan P. Dolliver"

"a senator who generally displayed a public appetite for pork such as the Armour Brothers meat-packing company might fail to satisfy"

Roosevelt's high horse

Roosevelt loved horse-jumping, of course. Even more, he loved pictures of himself. So when he got a picture of himself on a horse jumping over a fence he gave AUTOGRAPHED COPIES TO MEMBERS OF HIS CABINET. I hope these copies still exist as treasured family heirlooms.

I have picked up where I left off almost a year ago, as Roosevelt is settling in to his role of president in 1902. The main issues he has to deal with in the term he inherited from McKinley are trusts, monopolies, a coal strike, and its consequences for labor nationwide. Although these are not the mythical tasks Roosevelt dreams himself to be born for, he's uniquely suited for them — as someone who grew up among the upper class in New York and Harvard but has also ranched in North Dakota and fought on the front lines (of a war that he started), he can identify with both the industrialists and the workers, and both sides trust him to understand their position, if not to back it.

Edmund Morris's chapters are mercifully short - averaging around 10 pages - during this time, as if he knew that he'd have to break railroad merger negotiations into digestible bits. God bless Edmund Morris.

And if I may; thanks so much to those of you who have contacted me via the comments, twitter, or email over the past year to ask if At Times Dull was going to be Forever Dull. I did not intend to neglect it for so long. I've been much busier with other writing projects for the past year, which is a great thing, but unfortunately ATD is the easiest thing to put off. I'm hoping to balance them more successfully going forward. After all, I made it to the 20th century! I must make it to the 21st!

Fred Grant

Recognize this sad face?

This is Ulysses S. Grant's oldest son Fred, who inherited his father's puppy face but none of his talent.

Fred was one of four Police Commissioners in New York City in the 1890s, alongside Theodore Roosevelt, who thought he was boring.

historical bromance #3

Theodore Roosevelt spent a lot of time in North Dakota, where he owned a ranch, Elkhorn, and sometimes a herd of cattle (ask me about the winter of 1867 when half his cows froze). During one of his yearly trips to Elkhorn, in August 1892, he took a trip down to South Dakota, where he met - are you ready for this? - DEADWOOD SHERIFF SETH BULLOCK.

In a bit of historical trivia seemingly tailor-made to my interests, Seth Bullock and Theodore Roosevelt were afterwards lifelong friends.

  

I am just as sad as you are to discover that Seth Bullock did not actually look like this,

but, delight yourself with this drawing.

presidential facts #24 & #25

In 1870, Theodore Roosevelt, 11, met John Hay, 32, a colleague of his father's. Thirty-one years later, the latter would become his Secretary of State.

Theodore Roosevelt started a lifetime practice of weight lifting at the age of 12. A year later he started boxing as well because he was getting bullied.

[Side note: the presidential facts are going to start coming fast and heavy because TR's life is nothing if not a long string of interesting facts.]

McKuriosities

There are two kinds of presidential biographies, and you can quickly ascertain which of the two you're reading by how far into the book the president gets married. This is assuming the president gets married in his early life, which is true of all but 2 of them so far (Buchanan and Cleveland).

If the president gets married in the first 50 pages, you're reading a What Kind of President Was He? biography. These get the formative years out of the way as quickly as possible, and generally eschew the personal details throughout. The Madison biography, I think it was, mentioned Dolly for the first time by saying "he was married at this point."

If the president gets married after the first 50 pages, you're reading a What Kind of Man Was He? biography. These take the time to build a character portrait. I prefer these because I am a woman and I like to empathize with people.

Margaret Leech married off McKinley with all haste so she could get right to the war stuff, which is kind of strange because her Garfield biography was the opposite.

This is just a miscellaneous McKinley fact, as are the following:

Look at how many conservatories used to take up the White House lawn. They had orange trees and all that.

 

In Sound Familiar? news, McKinley decided to go to war after praying about it and deciding that God wanted him to.

Ida McKinley was epileptic. Her seizures, or "fainting spells" as the McK's called them, were so frequent that she rarely left the house except at William's side. When he was governor of Ohio, they lived across the street from the state house. Every morning when he would walk across the street to work, he turn around once he got to the state house gates and wave to his wife in the parlor window. Then, at precisely 3pm every day, he would stop whatever he was doing and wave to her again from his office window with a white handkerchief. McKinley was generally a very staid man, not prone to flights of emotion, but this devotion to his wife won him many admirers.

They had no way to treat Ida's epilepsy, so their tactic was to never speak of it. Many of their friends and family had witnessed Ida's attacks, but had never heard the family explain what was going on. In fact, when an attack came on, McKinley would throw either a handkerchief or a napkin over his wife's face until it passed. Sometimes this would be in the middle of like, bridge with the Hobart's (his VP), and he would just throw the hanky, play her turn for her, remove the hanky when she stopped, and they wouldn't mention it at all. It was pretty strange, but everyone gets to experience their ailments the way they want to.

Margaret Leech is pretty good at the political biography insult. Here are my two favorites, both about McKinley's colleagues:

"Into the deep waters of the national life, the pebble of Dewey's availability [for nomination] had dropped with scarcely a trace but the widening ripples of laughter."

"After the beef inquiry, Miles rapidly declined into the political unimportance which he so richly merited."

How do you decide which books to read?

As it is Presidents Day, and I feel duty-bound to write something, but don't feel compelled to write  about Harrison the second at this exact minute, I am going to answer one of the questions I am most asked in regards to this blog, so that from now on I can point people to this post instead of answering them.

How do you decide which books to read?

I am surprised at how often I get asked this question, for many reasons. Mostly, I don't see how people can expect an interesting answer. I don't have a process that differs much from the one I use to decide what pants to buy. I kind of look around and then I pick. But, since you asked:

STEP 1: Consult my presidential 12" ruler to learn which president is next.

STEP 2: Type "{{that president's name}} biography" into Amazon.

STEP 3: Eliminate children's books, books that are not full biographies (ex: "The Year Franklin Pierce Bought a Horse"), books that have obvious agendas (ex: "Grover Cleveland: The Original Tea-Party President"), and books by Jon Meacham (never again).

STEP 4: Compare the remaining biographies

NOTE ON STEP 4: I feel most people who ask me this question are overestimating the American historical community and its readers. I am not wading through piles of potential biographies for each president. In most cases, there are one or two in print. In some cases, notably Franklin Pierce and Benjamin Harrison, a one-volume biography does not exist.

The eligible biographies are judged on the following criteria:

Length: My sweet spot is 300-600 pages. Shorter is a waste of time, longer is too boring, unless we're talking about a Roosevelt or Adams or someone who merits 1,000 pages. It's also important to remember than an Amazon page count usually includes about 100 pages of bibliography and notes.

Bias: I read apologists across the board, rather than the "Millard Filmore Killed America" types, but the length requirement usually rules those out anyway, because they're short and stupid.

Reputation: Glancing through the editorial and guest reviews gives an easy picture of whether or not a book was critically well-received. Presidential biography reviews are pretty fond of identifying the new biographies against the old ones, so direct comparisons come up a lot. This is helpful.

Publication Date: I usually read biographies that are less than 20 years ago. Firstly because those are the ones that are still in print. Secondly because the genre of biography has evolved into a more readable form so newer books are more fun.

Recommendation: Sometimes I get biography recommendations from other people. This has happened like two times. And one of them was from Edmund Morris.

ANOTHER NOTE ON STEP 4: Sometimes there are biographies of certain presidents that are indisputably the best. Having worked in bookstores for 10 years, I know about most of them. So, in the cases of John Adams (the David McCullough biography), Ulysses S. Grant (the Jean Edward Smith biography), or Teddy Roosevelt (the Edmund Morris trilogy), I just skip the first 4 steps and go to -

STEP 5: Buy the book (in a new tab, not from Amazon).

There you have it.