Good basic bio of a less-than-significant president. ( )

This short work is a part of the American Presidents series of short biographies of our nation’s chief executives.

I wouldn’t recommend the American Presidents series for Presidents such as Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, either Roosevelt or most of the Presidents in the 20th century. However, for many of the 19th century Presidents, 200 pages of material will contain about all the material you need to know about Presidents such as Harrison, Tyler, Buchanan, Arthur, Garfield, Van Buren, Fillmore, Hayes, etc.

Benjamin Harrison was an Indiana attorney who became the Republican nominee for President, immediately following the first term of Grover Cleveland. Harrison was something of a pragmatist and a hard-working reformer who ensured his subsequent re-election defeat by refusing to satisfy the party regulars with sufficient patronage appointments.

Interestingly, there is much discussion throughout the book about his “relationship” with his wife’s niece, Mame Dimmitt, thirty years his junior. It was pretty obvious throughout the book that the relationship was not platonic, though the author never comments on it until Harrison’s wife dies and he marries Dimmitt a short time later.

Harrison is a perfect subject for the series, because 200 pages of material is about all you need to know about the man. ( )

Brief but excellent examination of the 23rd U.S. president and the second president named Harrison. This short biography covers the prominent portions of Harrison's life without the massive detail, but also without the turgid drudgery, of Harry Sievers's three-volume biography, the only substantial biography of Harrison thus far available. ( )

There are a lot of candidates for Worst Ever American President -- Richard Nixon, Warren G. Harding, Franklin Pierce, and of course the incomparably worthless James Buchanan. Benjamin Harrison surely does not belong in that company. But he may well deserve an award for "most bloodless."

This book tries hard to make something of Harrison. It stresses all the work he was constantly doing, and the many roles he played in government and society. But Harrison never comes to life -- and it's by no means clear that it's the author's failing. I was struck, for instance, by just how much Harrison's presidency resembled that of James A. Garfield. They had similar backgrounds -- civilians who had joined the Union army as generals, been made colonels in the armies of their states, reached brigade command by seniority, then ended up as generals. Both were dark horse candidates at the Republican convention. They both won 48% of the vote (in Garfield's case, that gave him a bare plurality; in Harrison's, it left him just short, but the percentages were very close). They won almost the same states -- the only differences were that Garfield lost and Harrison won California and Nevada. They even picked two of the same senior cabinet officers, Secretary of State James G. Blaine and Treasury Secretary William Windom. Harrison got to serve out his term, of course, unlike Garfield who had been assassinated -- but it's as if nothing had changed. Harrison changed the emphasis of his administration, but there were no new ideas, just new people to disagree with.

In the end, I came away from this book utterly cold. That could be Harrison's personality; it could be author Calhoun's inability to describe that personality. But I strongly suspect it was Harrison. Harrison is unusual in that he was twice nominated for president, and lost the popular vote both times. Little surprise. His opponent Grover Cleveland may not have been quite as intellectually gifted as Harrison, but he was a warm and lively man. And warm candidates beat cold fish almost every time. ( )

It's quite amazing that so often biographers of US presidents tend to make the subject of their biographies look better and to demean other presidents. This is my main gripe with this work. Groover Cleveland - although not without his own problems (who doesn't have them) - arguably had more positive influence on the course of US history than Benjamin Harrison. Yet, author practically ignores Cleveland as some hack and glosses over problems associated with Harrison's term. ( )