| The Life And Times of William Howard Taft - Vol 1
(1939)
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| Book Details |
| Genre |
Biography; Non-Fiction |
| Subject |
Judges - United States - Biography; Presidents - United States - Biography; Taft, William H. (William Howard), 1857-1930. |
| Publication Date |
1939 |
| Format |
Hardcover (9.4
mm)
|
| Publisher |
Farrar & Rinehart, Inc |
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| Product Details |
| LoC Classification |
E762 .P75 |
| Dewey |
973.91/2/092 B |
| Edition |
[1st ed.] |
| No. of Pages |
555 |
| First Edition |
Yes |
| Rare |
No |
|
| Notes/Review |
This review covers both volumes.
American Political Biography Press republishes a series of books - single volume, whole life biographies, of American presidents. Although these Taft books are definitely two volumes on my shelf, they are a part of this series. Perhaps they've done this because the first page of the second volume is page 557 and Chapter XXX. The second volume contains the bibliography and index for both books. (My books are the Farrar & Rhinehart first editions.)
As president, Taft was in the shadow of Theodore Roosevelt. Without TR, we'd almost certainly not had a President Taft, and I find it doubtful that we'd have had a Chief Justice Taft without having had a President Taft.
Most biographies, in my experience, begin well before their subjects, sometimes many generations before. They also tend to have a bit of a denouement, covering the funeral and often some aftermath. This work pretty much starts and ends with Taft. The final words (other than "the end") are "Taft died on Saturday night, March 8, 1930." Published just nine years later, perhaps the author felt insufficient time had passed for him to add any more.
The book is pretty much exclusively devoted to Taft. Many of the presidential biographies I've read spent a fair number of pages telling us about the man's family. Here we get very little, not much more than sketches. This is fine by me - I'm generally more interested in what these men did, their actions and policies, than their families. Here I think Pringle did a fine job of putting Taft in the context of his times.
We get the key cases of his tenure as Sixth Circuit Judge, his policies as governor of the Philippines and Cuba, and his activities as Secretary of War, as President, and his affect on the Supreme Court as Chief Justice. |
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