1920: The Year of the Six Presidents
Pietrusza's (Rothstein) chronicle  of the presidential election of 1920 is absorbing, despite the subtitle's  rather tangential claim that the election involved six men who had served or  would serve as president: Harding, Wilson, Coolidge, Hoover and both Roosevelts  (though Teddy had died in 1919). This book isn't really about them, nor is it  merely the story of one electoral race. Rather, Pietrusza is telling a grander  tale, of a country toppling into "modernity, or what passed for it." In 1920,  the automobile had overtaken the horse, jazz and the fox-trot were replacing  the camp meeting as popular entertainment, people were learning to buy on  installment, and more and more of those fox-trotting shoppers lived in cities.  Presidential candidates, for the first time, courted women voters. (Democrat  Cox was divorced, which was expected to play badly with the fairer sex.) Both  parties waffled on the so-called race question, seeking black votes while  either tacitly or explicitly endorsing white supremacy. Given Harding's  electoral victory and death during his term, Pietrusza could have devoted more  space to the abiding importance of this election. All in all, Pietrusza has  produced a broad, satisfying political and social history, in the style of  Doris Kearns Goodwin. 16 pages of b&w illus.(Feb.  7)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.