The Jazz Age President, Ryan S. Walters
The Jazz Age President, Ryan S. Walters
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The Jazz Age President
Defending Warren G. Harding

Author: Ryan S. Walters

Narrator: Mark Bramhall

Unabridged: 8 hr 50 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/15/2022

Synopsis

He's the butt of political jokes, frequently subjected to ridicule, and almost never absent a "Worst Presidents" list where he most often ends up at the bottom. Historians have labeled him the "Worst President Ever," "Dead Last," "Unfit," and "Incompetent," to name but a few. Many contemporaries were equally cruel. H. L. Mencken called him a "nitwit." To Alice Roosevelt Longworth, he was a "slob." Such is the current reputation of our 29th President, Warren Gamaliel Harding. In an interesting survey in 1982, which divided the scholarly respondents into "conservative" and "liberal" categories, both groups picked Harding as the worst President.

But historian Ryan Walters shows that Harding, a humble man from Marion, Ohio, has been unfairly remembered. He quickly fixed an economy in depression and started the boom of the Roaring Twenties, healed a nation in the throes of social disruption, and reversed America’s interventionist foreign policy.

About Ryan S. Walters

Ryan S. Walters, an independent historian, teaches at Collin College and is the author of Grover Cleveland: The Last Jeffersonian President and Remember Mississippi: How Chris McDaniel Exposed the GOP Establishment and Started a Revolution. He lives in North Texas with his wife, Candice.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Steve on November 19, 2022

[URL not allowed]-60k Warren Harding has long been disparaged as a historically poor president - a man ill-suited to the intellectual and ethical demands of the office, possessing a defective moral compass and perennially plagued both personal and professional scandal. In this newly-published defen......more

Goodreads review by Jameson on July 09, 2022

Taking the unpopular position of advocating for a president colloquially synonymous with corruption and immorality is a difficult task, but the job was well done. This account highlights Harding's successes and harshly counters the negative narratives set upon him after his untimely death in 1923, w......more

Goodreads review by Josh on January 12, 2025

I would actually rate this book 3.5/5. I legitimately had a hard time finishing this book despite its relatively short length. While I appreciate that someone took the time to give a defense of Harding, and agree that it was needed, I came away with two big issues. First, this book reads like the pa......more

Goodreads review by Thomas on August 26, 2022

My high school history teacher, Mrs. Chitwood, dismissed Warren Harding as a "feckless president." She argued that he was nothing but a "ladies man" who spent his presidency playing poker in The White House, and he drank in the early morning hours with his "chums." After all these years I well recal......more

Goodreads review by Ronald on February 22, 2022

To his credit, author Ryan Walters has broken ranks with nearly all other presidential historians who for decades have ranked Warren G. Harding as one of the nation's worst presidents. Most Americans know little of Harding other than, perhaps, being vaguely aware of the Teapot Dome scandal and Hardi......more

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