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Product Details
Simon & Schuster, July 2005
Trade Paperback, 336 pages
ISBN-10: 0743273559
ISBN-13: 9780743273558
Description
Beginning with former president Theodore Roosevelt's return in 1910 from his African safari, Chace brilliantly unfolds a dazzling political circus that featured four extraordinary candidates. When Roosevelt failed to defeat his chosen successor, William Howard Taft, for the Republican nomination, he ran as a radical reformer on the Bull Moose ticket. Meanwhile, Woodrow Wilson, the ex-president of Princeton, astonished everyone by seizing the Democratic nomination from the bosses who had made him New Jersey's governor. Most revealing of the reformist spirit sweeping the land was the charismatic socialist Eugene Debs, who polled an unprecedented one million votes.
Wilson's "accidental" election had lasting impact on America and the world. The broken friendship between Taft and TR inflicted wounds on the Republican Party that have never healed, and the party passed into the hands of a conservative ascendancy that reached its fullness under Reagan and George W. Bush. Wilson's victory imbued the Democratic Party with a progressive idealism later incarnated in FDR, Truman, and LBJ.
1912 changed America.
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Table of Contents"Illuminating and absorbing....An engrossing narrative that is essential reading."
-- Ronald Steel, The New York Review of Books
-- Ronald Steel, The New York Review of Books
One of the "Best Books of 2004."
-- Los Angeles Times Book Review
-- Los Angeles Times Book Review
"A brisk, consistently entertaining narrative that is alive both to politics and personality."
-- Michael Kazin, Washington Post Book World
-- Michael Kazin, Washington Post Book World
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.In 1912, four formidable personalities of mythic proportions clashed in their quest for the presidency. This was a unique event in American history, and James Chace does full justice to a dramatic story.
Richard Norton Smithauthor of Patriarch James Chace is a great storyteller, capturing in prose as vivid as the year itself all the poignancy and egotism, crusading zeal and authentic passion of an electrifying contest for America's soul.
Kansas City Star, September 18, 2011
...marriage. Preparing to leave one dream job, she visualized another: author. ??? Millard had spoken with Roosevelt scholar James Chace, author of a book on the 1912 presidential race. Chace said he was surprised no one had written much about ...
Booktv, December 15, 2008
...Author: James Chace Upcoming Schedule Sunday, December 21, at 5:00 AM About the Program From the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC, James Chace discusses his new book '1912' which covers ...
