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Incredible era: The life and times of Warren Gamaliel Harding
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- GenresPresidents
Paperback
First published January 1, 1939
12 people want to read
About the author
Samuel Hopkins Adams
152 books7 followersFrom the book jacket of "Sunrise to Sunset", (c) 1950
At seventy-nine Samuel Hopkins Adams attributes his longevity, vigor and vim to neither smoking nor drinking, except when he feels like it. This is typical of the intelligent attitude toward the vagaries of life that has maintained him through the years in which he has authored more than forty books, written countless magazine articles and, as a crusading reporter, almost single-handedly accounted for the passage of the Federal Food and Drug laws which pave protected millions of his fellow citizens.
Mr. Adams' amazing knowledge of the history of upper New York State is the result of his lifelong interest in the region in which he was born. His home is Wide Waters, on the shore of Owasco, "loveliest of the Finger Lakes." From Wide Waters he still makes forways into the surrounding countryside, attending antique-auction sales "for the purpose of sneering at the prevalent junk," which he says he wouldn't put in his open hearth Franklin stove for fear of insulting it.
A graduate of Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, class of 1891, Mr. Adams introduced football to the campus, played tackle on its first team, and won the Intercollegiate Tennis Championship. For these contributions to scholarship, his college conferred on him the degree of L.H.D. in 1926.
Adams also wrote under the pseudonym Warner Fabian.
At seventy-nine Samuel Hopkins Adams attributes his longevity, vigor and vim to neither smoking nor drinking, except when he feels like it. This is typical of the intelligent attitude toward the vagaries of life that has maintained him through the years in which he has authored more than forty books, written countless magazine articles and, as a crusading reporter, almost single-handedly accounted for the passage of the Federal Food and Drug laws which pave protected millions of his fellow citizens.
Mr. Adams' amazing knowledge of the history of upper New York State is the result of his lifelong interest in the region in which he was born. His home is Wide Waters, on the shore of Owasco, "loveliest of the Finger Lakes." From Wide Waters he still makes forways into the surrounding countryside, attending antique-auction sales "for the purpose of sneering at the prevalent junk," which he says he wouldn't put in his open hearth Franklin stove for fear of insulting it.
A graduate of Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, class of 1891, Mr. Adams introduced football to the campus, played tackle on its first team, and won the Intercollegiate Tennis Championship. For these contributions to scholarship, his college conferred on him the degree of L.H.D. in 1926.
Adams also wrote under the pseudonym Warner Fabian.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 4, 2011
One of very few bios of Warren G Harding ever written. This was done by an author who was a contemporary of Harding and who was also at the time already an accomplished author as well as somewhat famous 'muckraker', or what we might call today and 'investigative journalist'.
Incredible Era was highly readable, well-documented and footnoted. The copy I have was a 1964 reprint of the 1939 original. I enjoyed it and found it very interesting. Excellent coverage of the Teapot Dome scandal.
Highly recommended, especially if you are interested in unbiased Presidential biographies.
Incredible Era was highly readable, well-documented and footnoted. The copy I have was a 1964 reprint of the 1939 original. I enjoyed it and found it very interesting. Excellent coverage of the Teapot Dome scandal.
Highly recommended, especially if you are interested in unbiased Presidential biographies.
March 1, 2020
If people know anything at all about Warren G. Harding, the 30th President of the United States, it probably has to do with the Teapot Dome scandal. If you really dredge up the memory of a few minutes in an American History class or recall reading a few paragraphs in a long-ago replaced textbook, you may recall that Naval oil reserves in Wyoming (Teapot Dome) and California (Elk Hills) were leased (without competitive bidding) to some shady oil tycoons by a shamelessly mercenary Secretary of the Interior.
If that is indeed the extent of your knowledge about Harding, you’ve missed a lot! If you want to know more, have I got a book for you! It’s a hard one to find in that it was written in 1939 and I believe that the most recent edition was a paperback released in 1964. This is one you’ll probably have to get through interlibrary loan. Of the approximately seventy presidential biographies that I’ve read in the last 20 months, “Incredible Era: The Life and Times of Warren Gamaliel Harding” by Samuel Hopkins Adams is unquestionably the most intriguing.
The author, Samuel Hopkins Adams, is a fascinating character in his own right. He was a muckraking journalist for McClure’s Magazine when that publication boasted what is perhaps the most distinguished group of investigative reporters ever gathered. His colleagues included Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, and Ray Stannard Baker. Adams was prolific and his works ran from expose articles on food safety in McClure’s and Collier’s to book-length risqué novels, several of which became blockbuster films (It Happened One Night and The Harvey Girls).
I discovered this book only because there is a dearth of other biographical material about Harding. Since my goal is reading three or four biographies of each president in an attempt to gain a balanced view of each, I was digging a bit to unearth my quota. This one was definitely worth the digging. This is certainly NOT an academic historian’s ideal of a biography and Adams says as much in his introduction. Rather than being based on primary sources (many were destroyed by Harding’s wife and by Harding associates fearing prosecution), it is the result of a journalistic style of research involving scores of interviews and direct correspondence with individuals with firsthand (and sometimes secondhand) information.
What emerges is a somewhat sympathetic view of Harding as an all too human small-town newspaperman and politician who through numerous twists of fate ends up way over his head in the White House. The story that unfolds is that of a basically honest and compassionate man who trusts his friends too much and takes into his inner circle some despicable people either because they were simply fun to have around or because he recognized how inadequate he was to cope with the scope of his presidential duties.
A renegade Department of Justice and eye-popping greed and corruption unfold. It’s clear that Harding should have been more aware and more proactive in handling his subordinates and friends. He admitted as much when he observed that he could deal with his enemies and that it was his damned friends that caused him trouble. Harding is credited with a few notable accomplishments including restructuring federal budget management, efforts to slow the post WW I arms race and convincing the steel magnates to end 12-hour work days. While Adams book doesn’t overemphasize Harding’s long-time relationship (and child) with a woman who was not his wife (Nan Britton), neither does he ignore this reality.
Finally, “Incredible Era” offers an exceptionally fine look at the brokered Republican Convention of 1920. This is the Convention that featured THE ORIGINAL smoke-filled room at Chicago’s Blackstone Hotel. This book is worth the expenditure of a little effort to get. Reading it will be no effort at all!
If that is indeed the extent of your knowledge about Harding, you’ve missed a lot! If you want to know more, have I got a book for you! It’s a hard one to find in that it was written in 1939 and I believe that the most recent edition was a paperback released in 1964. This is one you’ll probably have to get through interlibrary loan. Of the approximately seventy presidential biographies that I’ve read in the last 20 months, “Incredible Era: The Life and Times of Warren Gamaliel Harding” by Samuel Hopkins Adams is unquestionably the most intriguing.
The author, Samuel Hopkins Adams, is a fascinating character in his own right. He was a muckraking journalist for McClure’s Magazine when that publication boasted what is perhaps the most distinguished group of investigative reporters ever gathered. His colleagues included Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, and Ray Stannard Baker. Adams was prolific and his works ran from expose articles on food safety in McClure’s and Collier’s to book-length risqué novels, several of which became blockbuster films (It Happened One Night and The Harvey Girls).
I discovered this book only because there is a dearth of other biographical material about Harding. Since my goal is reading three or four biographies of each president in an attempt to gain a balanced view of each, I was digging a bit to unearth my quota. This one was definitely worth the digging. This is certainly NOT an academic historian’s ideal of a biography and Adams says as much in his introduction. Rather than being based on primary sources (many were destroyed by Harding’s wife and by Harding associates fearing prosecution), it is the result of a journalistic style of research involving scores of interviews and direct correspondence with individuals with firsthand (and sometimes secondhand) information.
What emerges is a somewhat sympathetic view of Harding as an all too human small-town newspaperman and politician who through numerous twists of fate ends up way over his head in the White House. The story that unfolds is that of a basically honest and compassionate man who trusts his friends too much and takes into his inner circle some despicable people either because they were simply fun to have around or because he recognized how inadequate he was to cope with the scope of his presidential duties.
A renegade Department of Justice and eye-popping greed and corruption unfold. It’s clear that Harding should have been more aware and more proactive in handling his subordinates and friends. He admitted as much when he observed that he could deal with his enemies and that it was his damned friends that caused him trouble. Harding is credited with a few notable accomplishments including restructuring federal budget management, efforts to slow the post WW I arms race and convincing the steel magnates to end 12-hour work days. While Adams book doesn’t overemphasize Harding’s long-time relationship (and child) with a woman who was not his wife (Nan Britton), neither does he ignore this reality.
Finally, “Incredible Era” offers an exceptionally fine look at the brokered Republican Convention of 1920. This is the Convention that featured THE ORIGINAL smoke-filled room at Chicago’s Blackstone Hotel. This book is worth the expenditure of a little effort to get. Reading it will be no effort at all!
October 27, 2021
Not the most influential US President, but this book portrays Harding as a nice ordinary man. I think the author worked very hard to keep this book objective and non-judgemental. For that alone the author should be complimented.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews