Rating: 
Summary: The Story Behind a Seminal Election
Review: This is a great story. The election of 1912 was one of the few times since 1804 when the country was given the opportunity to debate its future.James Chace, a history profession Bard College, spins an interesting and readable story about the four men who sought office. Theodore Roosevelt, a former President, sought to redirect the Republican Party's focus towards nationalism and social justice. William Howard Taft, his chosen successor, wanted only to sit on the Supreme Court. Woodrow Wilson, the former president of Princeton, who surprised himself and the nation by snatching New Jersey governorship without the support of the state's political bosses. Eugene Debs, running for the third time as a Socialist, sought economic justice for all the country's workers. What made the 1912 campaign unusual by today's standards was the race was punctuated by a basic decency, honesty and quality of debate rarely seen in my lifetime. Chace recounts it all. 1912 changed America. Had Roosevelt been the Republican nominee he almost surely would have been re-elected president. His platform would have transformed his party into the party of reform.
Instead, the GOP passed into a conservative ascendancy that peaked with Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Today, the party still struggles between reform and reaction, isolationism and internationalism. If you are tired of our current quadrennial circus, this trip into our nation's past may restore your faith in our system. The election of 1912 dealt with substantive issues. The candidates staked out differentiated positions. The nation spoke. Chace relates the story with all the zeal and passion it held for participants and voters in 1912.
Rating:
Summary: The Story Behind a Seminal Election
Review: This is a great story. The election of 1912 was one of the few times since 1804 when the country was given the opportunity to debate its future. James Chace, a history profession Bard College, spins an interesting and readable story about the four men who sought office. Theodore Roosevelt, a former President, sought to redirect the Republican Party's focus towards nationalism and social justice. William Howard Taft, his chosen successor, wanted only to sit on the Supreme Court. Woodrow Wilson, the former president of Princeton, who surprised himself and the nation by snatching New Jersey governorship without the support of the state's political bosses. Eugene Debs, running for the third time as a Socialist, sought economic justice for all the country's workers. What made the 1912 campaign unusual by today's standards was the race was punctuated by a basic decency, honesty and quality of debate rarely seen in my lifetime. Chace recounts it all. 1912 changed America. Had Roosevelt been the Republican nominee he almost surely would have been re-elected president. His platform would have transformed his party into the party of reform.
Instead, the GOP passed into a conservative ascendancy that peaked with Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Today, the party still struggles between reform and reaction, isolationism and internationalism. If you are tired of our current quadrennial circus, this trip into our nation's past may restore your faith in our system. The election of 1912 dealt with substantive issues. The candidates staked out differentiated positions. The nation spoke. Chace relates the story with all the zeal and passion it held for participants and voters in 1912.
Rating: 
Summary: Engaging but superficial history of the 1912 election
Review: Though ostensibly about the 1912 presidential election, James Chace's book is really about the contest between two of the candidates in that race - Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson - and the ideologies that they espoused. This focus is understandable, given how these two major figures dominate the political history of the period, but it stints the forces represented in the candidacies of William Howard Taft and Eugene Debs, both of whom (Taft especially) get short shrift by comparison.
This in itself may not have been a problem had Chace provided a thoughtful analysis of the campaign. Instead, he has written a familiar, if engaging, narrative of events. All of the standard anecdotes are here, with little explanation of what they might reveal about the people mentioned. Worse, there is no sense of the broader background beyond a few vague statements about the progressive movement. Nor has Chace undertaken any original research, preferring instead to rely on the many books that have already been written about this memorable cast of characters.
The result is disappointing. The author has done little to show how the 1912 election was, as the subtitle states, "the election that changed the country." While a readable account of the events of a remarkable campaign (one that saw the near-assassination of Roosevelt and the death of a vice president), it provides no deeper examination of the candidates or the nation and offers nothing that hasn't been written elsewhere already. In the end, while the book makes for entertaining reading it is not the thoughtful analysis this momentous contest deserves.
Rating: 
Summary: The Rebirth of Presidential Power
Review: While the focus of Chace's book is the pivotal election of 1912, the book is much more than that: it is a first rate premier on the political currents and the men that dominated the first two decades of the 20th Century, which not coincidently, also is the period during which the modern Presidency was born. The book contains short, but meaningful biographies of both the principal characters (Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson and Debts)m\, but also of a number of supporting players (Bryan, Brandies, Root, Wild Bill Haywood, Archie Butt, Col. House, among others), all woven seamlessly into the text. It also places the election of 1912 in the context of TR's progressive reform and discuss the consequences to American policy resulting from the voters' decision. The book is not a in depth examination of the Progressive Era, but it is as excellent introduction.
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