2024 the best us presidents of all time review

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When President James Garfield was shot in 1881, nobody expected Vice President Chester A. Arthur to become a strong and effective president, a courageous anti-corruption reformer, and an early civil rights advocate.

Despite his promising start as a young man, by his early fifties Chester A. Arthur was known as the crooked crony of New York machine boss Roscoe Conkling. For years Arthur had been perceived as unfit to govern, not only by critics and the vast majority of his fellow citizens but by his own conscience. As President James A. Garfield struggled for his life, Arthur knew better than his detractors that he failed to meet the high standard a president must uphold.

And yet, from the moment President Arthur took office, he proved to be not just honest but brave, going up against the very forces that had controlled him for decades. He surprised everyone -- and gained many enemies -- when he swept house and took on corruption, civil rights for blacks, and issues of land for Native Americans.

A mysterious young woman deserves much of the credit for Arthur's remarkable transformation. Julia Sand, a bedridden New Yorker, wrote Arthur nearly two dozen letters urging him to put country over party, to find "the spark of true nobility" that lay within him. At a time when women were barred from political life, Sand's letters inspired Arthur to transcend his checkered past--and changed the course of American history.

This beautifully written biography tells the dramatic, untold story of a virtually forgotten American president. It is the tale of a machine politician and man-about-town in Gilded Age New York who stumbled into the highest office in the land, only to rediscover his better self when his nation needed him.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B06XR93QXH
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Da Capo Press; Illustrated edition (September 12, 2017)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 12, 2017
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 52017 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 303 pages
Reviewer: IndyGirl in Boca
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Corruption to Courage Indeed!
Review: This was my first biography reading on my track to reading a biography on every president [save for one which I will pass on]. This idea came to me after listening to every episode - in order - of the PRESIDENTIAL podcast from The Washington Post, Lillian Cunningham. I found this book to be very easy to read and very interesting. Such an obscure and "unexpected" president, made so purely in advance of the political machine. Arthur seemed to be a people-pleaser who may have been sucked in by the bullies of that age and was unsure how to escape that circle of friends. The book really expressed the profound sadness and fear experienced by Arthur at the slow death of Garfield and his new role as President. How torturing to step into the highest ranking position in the human world, knowing you are unliked and unwanted; however, the author indicated Arthur pulled it off and stepped up. I left with the opinion that he was a kind and respectable man, once given the opportunity to prove that to the country.

Reviewer: Dan
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Excellent Biography
Review: Surprised to learn so much about a history I thought I knew. Well documented. Easy clear read. A good biography.

Reviewer: A customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: An excellent read
Review: This is an excellent biography written with rich description and astute context. What a story and cast of characters. Well done through and through.

Reviewer: Allison Minnick
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Such an interesting book!
Review: This is a great book, mostly because the author has focused on detailed events that make it extremely interesting. I am in the process of reading a biography about each U.S. president in chronological order. I am now on Chester Arthur. Some books have been good, others not so much, and it mostly has to do with the author's focus and writing. One wouldn't necessarily think that Arthur would stand out as an exciting president, but Scott Greenberger is so good at humanizing him and creating a living, breathing environment, that I find myself wanting more! Out of the 20 biographies I have read, this is absolutely one of the best!

Reviewer: Jon Hunt
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Arthur revisited
Review: Chester Arthur has always been at the end of a line of four nineteenth century unlucky vice presidents who became president unexpectedly. The fact that he was probably the best of the lot doesn't really say much about the others, but in Scott S. Greenberger's new peppy and stylized biography of Arthur, we get a fresh feeling that Arthur wasn't so bad after all. The book combines an historical perspective of the day with the personal life of our twenty-first president. The reader can only come away with the notion that Arthur's service as president was generally a good one, especially when it came to Civil Service reform. Greenberger gives a good account of Arthur's personal connections with fellow politicians of the time. Roscoe Conkling, his initial backer-turned-opponent, figures heavily in the account.Where "The Unexpected President" falls short is in its assessment that the personal letters sent to Arthur by Julia Sand, a young, invalid admirer, had any bearing on Arthur's decisions as president. Reading excerpts from Sand's letters indicate to me that she was what we would now call a "stalker". It's very creepy prose and one cannot imagine that President Arthur took much notice of her, except for a visit he made to Sand in 1882.The end of the book is poignant as Arthur decides to go ahead and seek renomination without disclosing the fact that he is dying. Less than two years after leaving the White House, Chester Alan Arthur was dead. "The Unexpected President" is worth a read, if only to get to know more about this nearly invisible president who has come up a couple of notches in presidential standings over recent years. It's a breezy read and I recommend it.

Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Great read for an overlooked person in an overlooked period
Review: The book is a great quick read about an important person in an often overlooked period of American history. His story tells any reader a lot about Gilded Age America including its society, its politics and its problems.The book does fall short in providing the amount of detail I would like about the period when he was president. That period is glossed over especially where it comes to explaining the politics and process behind the decisions that were made.

Reviewer: W. J. Streeter
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A very good biography about a very incompetent president.
Review: Chester A. Arthur was a highly effective political lacky who became wealthy supporting New York political boss Roscoe Conkling. When James Garfield got the dark horse, compromise Republican nomination for president in 1880 instead of the nomination of Grant for a third term that Conkling was supporting, Conkling's lacky Chester A. Arthur was selected for VP to pacify Conkling and attempt to unite the sharply divided Republican party. Arthur was not at all qualified and his performance during his three and a half years as president place him as the second worst president in America's history. Strangely, most presidential historians rate Arthur above that ineffective series of presidents between Van Buran and Lincoln, but that's only because Arthur was not nearly as bad as everyone feared when Garfield died. It's quite an accomplishment for a biographer to produce such an outstanding biography about such a bad president.

Reviewer: Ricardo
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Hi. A great book. A well written and very informative historical account. Thank you. LRB.

Reviewer: Richard Schwindt
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Presidential biographies are something of a sub-genre and I found myself wondering how many I had read. Not many. So why this one; of all places to start? I guess it has to do with my fascination with gilded age New York and the unpredictability of life and politics. Who was this Arthur guy anyway? The general consensus defines him as a corrupt political fixer who ended up being a better president than anyone expected. Was he interesting, or was it the intensely political post-bellum times in which he lived? I don't know but Greenberger has a good feel for the era; the cusp between the civil war and the dawn of the twentieth century. The book is well researched and moves along nicely. Arthur burned most of his letters and papers before death, which leaves gaps. Most of all; this gregarious man lost his wife young and you are left with an impression of loneliness and nascent conscience. That said, in the end, you crave more psychological insight. Watch for interesting character studies of political boss, Roscoe Conkling and Julia I. Sand, the president’s thoughtful correspondent.