Martin L. Fausold

Being a slightly substandard entry in this series. To some extent it shares the virtues of its brethren; sturdy, concrete narrative conjoined with brief passages of analysis and opinion. However, the author is no stylist and was not helped by his editor, if the book even had one; approximately two-thirds of the occurrences of the word 'great' need to be excised. He also includes an entire chapter devoted to a pedants-only debate over whether Hoover was a 'corporatist', whatever that means, which is of little interest. He half-heartedly tries to rehabilitate Hoover's historical reputation: good luck with that.… (més)

2128 James W. Wadsworth, Jr. The Gentleman from New York, by Martin L. Fausold (read 11 Feb 1988 ) This is a rather pedestrian biography. Wadsworth was born to a patrician west New York family 12 Aug 1877, entered the Army as a private in the Spanish-American War and came out a private, was U.S. Senator from New York from 1915 to 1927, was defeated in 1926 by Robert F. Wagner, was U.S. Representative from 1933 to 1951, and died 21 June 1952. The account of his senatorial career was interesting and the account of the 1926 Senatorial race was all new to me. He was very conservative, but a strong wet and very supportive of intervention before World War II. The book is rather amateurishly written, but was not bad reading.… (més)