Overall Grade: A
It's been a while because I've been working my way through the second book on the Carnegie nonfiction shortlist, The Bully Pulpit. This is a massive book but it's worth it. As the title suggests, it covers three stories, those of two presidents and that of investigative journalism in the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries, and their relationships with each other. Since I live in Ohio and have been to a few historic sites involving our presidents, including Taft's home, I've probably more familiar than most general readers with his history, the concept that he was perhaps always more disposed towards the Supreme Court than the White House (where he did indeed wind up after his administration), et cetera. Roosevelt is of course more familiar to the public at large, but telling their stories side by side here illuminates the similarities and differences in their philosophies and temperaments that makes them more comprehensible than reading them separately, with one just featuring as a supporting character for the other. Sometimes it seems that journalism gets the shortest shrift, since it's a broader category and therefore individual journalists may appear only for brief sections, but I'm also happy to have the chance to learn even as much as I did about Ida Tarbell. This is not only a large book, it's one that can't be rushed through, but I highly recommend it to any history reader who's willing to invest the time.
Overall Grade: A
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AuthorJust another nerdy librarian Archives
December 2023
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