In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

BOOK REVIEWS FALL 2010 91 The prose is crisp and lively. The book, once begun, is difficult to put down. Lewis L. Gould’s engaging The William Howard Taft Presidency will appeal to several audiences: historians of progressivism, scholars of conservation, pundits of tariff reform, and experts in Latin American affairs. The book is most suited to political insiders who learn what Taft thought about a range of issues and of how he acquitted himself with friends and enemies. Above all, The William Howard Taft Presidency examines the relationship between Taft and Theodore Roosevelt between the 1890s and 1912. So large does Roosevelt loom that he, rather than the book’s subject, opens the first chapter . Significantly, Roosevelt is a key figure in four of the remaining thirteen chapters and his shadow looms large throughout. Indeed, Gould’s careful calibration of Taft’s relationship with Roosevelt separates it from earlier biographies of Taft. Otherwise, Gould covers the ground that earlier writers trod: Latin America and Asia, conservatism versus progressivism, the tariff, trusts, the U.S. Supreme Court, conservation, Canadian reciprocity , the 1910 midterm elections, and the election of 1912. A vivid depiction of the chief executive emerges from the pages of The William Howard Taft Presidency. Gould is able to give readers a substantive portrait of Taft’s presidency in part because he is the first historian to have incorporated the papers of Taft’s personal secretaries and his cabinet officials. The result is unclear, as are a number of the author’s conclusions. Remarking that James “Tama” Wilson, America’s longest serving secretary of agriculture, had been in office too long, Gould neither explains this judgment nor clarifies whether it is the author’s or the president’s. Woodrow Wilson may have had a role in the Richard Ballinger-Gifford Pinchot controversy given that Wilson was Pinchot’s boss, but Gould devotes only one sentence to Wilson’s place in it. Beyond noting Taft’s fondness for chief chemist Harvey Wiley, Gould offers little about the U.S. Department of Agriculture, an important regulatory and scientific agency. In fact, Taft appears to have had nothing to say to farmers ; the author lets Taft allowing the death of Roosevelt’s Country Life Commission do the talking. This silence about farmers contrasts The William Howard Taft Presidency Lewis L. Gould Lewis L. Gould. The William Howard Taft Presidency. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009. 269 pp. ISBN: 9780700616749 (cloth), $34.95. BOOK REVIEWS 92 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY with Paolo E. Coletta’s earlier treatment of their agitation in the context of the decline of populism in The Presidency of William Howard Taft (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1973). Gould is equally silent about the relationship between Taft and the pseudoscience of eugenics. Eugenicists opposed the immigration of people from southern and eastern Europe in the belief that their genes were inferior to those of the Anglo Saxons who had built America. Eugenicists convinced state legislatures across the country to sterilize criminals and the mentally ill. Why Taft courageously vetoed a bill mandating a literacy test of all new immigrants, largely from southern and eastern Europe, triggering a conflict with eugenicists and others who opposed the admission of people of certain heritages to the United States, is left unaddressed. The William Howard Taft Presidency offers equally little interpretation of Taft’s relationship with African Americans and the supreme court. Conventional in his racial views and eager to entice white southerners to the Republican Party, Taft deprived many blacks of federal jobs. Booker T. Washington chided the president for his actions, leading readers to wonder about other black leaders’ perceptions. One would have liked from this book an examination of Taft’s relationship, if any, with black intellectuals such as W. E. B. DuBois. Given that in just one term in office Taft, himself a jurist, appointed six justices to the nation’s high court, Gould is critical of his choices but offers remarkably little to explain them. Of the six Gould rates, only Charles Evans Hughes is high on his list. Detailing the shortcomings of the other five, Gould remarks that the quality of the president’s picks was not as high...

pdf

Share