The Harding Affair: Love and Espionage during the Great War

by James David Robenalt

Warren Harding fell in love with his beautiful neighbor, Carrie Phillips, in the summer of 1905, almost a decade before he was elected a United States Senator and fifteen years before he became the 29th President of the United States. When the two lovers started their long-term and torrid affair, neither of them could have foreseen that their relationship would play out against one of the greatest wars in world history--the First World War. Harding would become a Senator with the power to vote for war; Mrs. Phillips and her daughter would become German agents, spying on a U. S. training camp on Long Island in the hopes of gauging for the Germans the pace of mobilization of the U. S. Army for entry into the battlefields in France.

Based on over 800 pages of correspondence discovered in the 1960s but under seal ever since in the Library of Congress, The Harding Affair will tell the unknown stories of Harding as a powerful Senator and his personal and political life, including his complicated romance with Mrs. Phillips. The book will also explore the reasons for the entry of the United States into the European conflict and explain why so many Americans at the time supported Germany, even after the U. S. became involved in the spring of 1917.

James David Robenalt's comprehensive study of the letters is set in a narrative that weaves in a real-life spy story with the story of Harding's not accidental rise to the presidency.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, American History, Presidents, World War I

416 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2009

Reviews

[Jan C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but does focus too much on the affair. I should have been tipped off by the title. Apparently not the know nothing/do nothing that he has always been portrayed as. Became a leader in the Senate when he wasn't involved with Carrie Phillips. The question arose (maybe it was answered early on) as to whether he had the affair with her BECAUSE she was his next door neighbor. Lousy trick to play on her husband. Florence Harding's father had a newspaper where Harding became the editor. So she had the money but not good health.

Not sure that we ever have definite information that Carrie and her daughter Isabelle are German spies but the Phillips family is pro-German at a time when it is not a good idea to be pro-German - during the First World War - and she is outspoken about it. Came close to getting arrested for trying to deter "the boys" from enlisting. And they are frequently found staying near military installations which makes them look suspicious.

Apparently they wrote lengthy letters to each for 15 years - 40-60 pages - and on Senate stationery. Today they would be outed in a moment! She apparently attempted to sway him to her point of view, especially regarding the War and the Germans. To no avail.

So if you like scandal this book might be up your alley. My major problem with it was that the excerpts from the letters were italicized and in quite small print and there were a lot of excerpts. Frankly, they got boring after a while.

It is noted that Harding wrote his friend in San Antonio that he was fearful of the Republicans winning too big in the off-year election - stupid things can happen when one party has too much power. [As if we didn't know that now.]

There was an Afterword that intrigued me. Robenalt noted that the Democrats knew all about his affair (the future FBI had connected Carrie and Harding and with all those letters how could they not!) and other materials but did not use it against him in the campaign. The explanation provided was that the people on Wilson's staff wanted still to be able to practice law, etc., after the Republicans were in power.

[Cwl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jacques Barzun has a great system for book recommendations. Of the good ones, some are marked "to read" and some are marked "to browse in". This is a "browse in" book.

Approximately half of the content concerns Harding's dalliance with Carrie Philips. The author includes scads of excerpts from Harding's love letters, which are sometimes pretty in a Thomas Campion/Barry White "ooh girl, you girl" kind of way, but get sort of tedious after a while. This, and the tangential material about a traitorous baroness, is skippable.

The good stuff details Harding's pre-Presidential political career and the nation's social temper in the pre-War/War era. This is a book about an affair, but it is also a book about Teddy Roosevelt whipping up war fever and Wilson's proto-Bushian Presidency and the creepy American Protective League. I walked away with even more respect for Harding the politican because of his firm stance on free expression. And his foreign policy, which was more farewell-speech Washington than Lex Luthor (our current way). I also, as usual, felt bad for Florence Harding, who had the most loveless life. Recommended, with reservations.

[Lancelot Link · Rating 3 out of 5]

A difficult book to review because I found it fascinating to read Harding's very private love letters to Carrie Phillips. I can't recall running across letters this candid -- and occasionally R rated -- from a politician during this era. So, that was quite interesting.

As an aside, when the Warren Harding Presidential Center opens in 2020, I encourage you to go and very innocently ask "Who's Jerry and can I see the special exhibit on him?" Just trust me on this one. Or not.

This book is not a biography of the president by any stretch. It uses love letters written by Harding to his mistress, Carrie Phillips, as a jumping off point to tell a story and follow Harding's career. If you want a biography -- well, you really need to read two, and not that Shadow of Blooming Grove crap. "The Rise of Warren Gamaliel Harding" by Randolph Downes covers his life up to 1920, but granted is a tough slog. Robert Murray's "The Harding Era" covers his presidential years, and is a first-rate, extremely fair book that covers the highlights and lowlights equally.

The problem with this book is two fold. First, and most importantly, the author doesn't prove his case, I think, that Carrie Phillips was a spy. A German sympathizer -- absolutely. But a spy, no. Not at all. And when your title is Love and Espionage -- well, you better have some serious espionage. The author throws in periodic chapters on a Baroness and her trial for espionage, but that doesn't cut it when the obvious inference is the espionage is supposed to pertain to Phillips.

Second, as was proven after the book was released, Nan Brittan -- another Harding mistress who supposedly engaged in sexual adventures with Warren in a White House closet among other places -- did have the president's baby. The author throws a great deal of shade on Nan's story. Now I know one could claim hindsight, and I'm no expert on the subject, but I always bought Nan's story. I believed she knew too many details about Harding. (Yes, I am a proud owner of "The President's Daughter, which I picked up in a used bookstore in Gettysburg, Pa. of all places.) And, I think her having an affair is a far-more likely event then Nan breaking into Carrie Phillips's house and reading her letters.

I thought the more interesting fact of the story was how Carrie used those letters to bribe Harding, and that should have been more of the focus of the book.

One life lesson from the book: I think if you write long letters to someone, and constantly admonish them to burn the letters after reading them, you probably shouldn't write the letter in the first place. Just saying!

Oh, and guys, don't nickname your penis. It was stupid in 1920, it's even worse now. But, do ask about Jerry if you go to Marion, Ohio.

[David Dunlap · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is based on a cache of love letters written by Warren G. Harding (before he was President) to his paramour Carrie Phillips, a neighbor in Marion, Ohio, and a friend of his wife Florence. The letters were discovered following Phillips's death in 1960 and became the focus of litigation that resulted in their being sealed until July 2014. (This book is based on a smaller, microfilmed, collection of the letters to which the author was given access.) The portrait of Harding that emerges from these pages is an interesting one: passionate, considerate, level-headed. Since we are not privy, for the most part, to Mrs. Phillips's side of the correspondence, we must draw conclusions about her from what Harding wrote in response. That she was pro-German during WW I is well-documented and was a source of conflict between the lovers. For a time, Carrie, her husband, and their daughter Isabelle were under federal surveillance. -- Due to my personal connections to Marion, I found this book of no small interest. It is a bit lopsided and I'm not entirely sure why we are treated to periodic entree into the life of Baroness Iona Zoller, the American wife of a German officer, and her legal woes as an accused spy for the Germans. (There was a tangential connection between Isabelle Phillips and a relative of the Baroness, but I did not think it well-explained or well-integrated into the main narrative.) The author also touches on Nan Britton (a young woman who claimed Harding fathered her daughter) and he debunks many of her claims through the Harding-Phillips letters. -- So, on the whole, an interesting book -- for those interested in Warren Harding -- but hardly a vital read for anyone else.

[Dona Krueger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Icame away from this reading thinking that perhaps Harding would be reevaluated as a president and perhaps gain credibility for the positive things he accomplished during his time in the senate and as president. It's a fascinating look into the innermost thoughts of a man completely and totally in love. Expressing explicit feelings for a woman who was probably in the employ of the Germans during WWI. Most intimate letters written by presidents didn't survive, but Carrie kept them to read and reread - or to use as blackmailing Harding. He was so amazingly popular - apparently a marvelous orator - handsome - charming and the people were anguished by his death. That was before the Teapot Dome surfaced - did he know anything about it. He surrounded himself with his cronies - much as Grant did - which is apparently not a good idea. Not very well written, but the bits of information I ran across made it worth my time.

[Colin · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you're looking for a book about the Harding presidency this is not it. It has some interesting parts about the affair with him and Carrie Phillips but it get old hearing the same letters. It then lightly touches on another affair he might have had with a younger women but the book barely touches it. Finally the part about the baroness is worthless. Just sum it up in 1 paragraph.... A baroness on trial for treason almost led to the affair being found out. That's it. Why devote uninteresting chapters on it? Finally, its a pet peeve of mine but a blank page before each chapter is just a way to stretch out a book that didn't have enough in it. Which is what this is, a book that could have had a lot in it but instead choose to have very little of worth. Very disappointing.

[JK · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well written and reads fairly easily. Ad nauseum (emphasis on "nauseum") quotes from Harding's love letters. Failed to prove his case about Carrie Phillips being a potential spy for the Germans during WWI; that theory, along with the passages about Baroness Zollner, just kind of petered out. Also needs to be updated to show that Nan Britton did have a child fathered by Warren Harding (this may have been done; paternity was established in 2015, well after this book was initially published).

[Riq Hoelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Basically a discussion and contextualization of the love letters President Harding sent to one of his mistresses from 1905-1920. While it seems intriguing, there's not much to see; this book needn't have existed. The letters are fairly pedestrian and apart from a few unsent drafts, we don't have the ones she wrote, so it's not a dialog. One of the worst presidents, he is not much of a letter writer either. There is really little here different than one would imagine.

The spy story is far shorter and smaller, almost a nothing, and only connected rather tenuously to the main plot.

The author espouses some pretty "out there" opinions, praising Harding more than once as a president and politician, though offering little supporting evidence. The accomplishments cited were done by his cabinet members - he had little to do with enacting them. There are plenty of examples of his bad ideas, such as proposing that the US make the president a dictator, which somehow are just mentioned and passed over. We don't read much here of Harding the politician anyway - mostly it's his carefree, playboy life of drinking, smoking, golfing, cardplaying and taking expensive trips - once to Hawaii on the government dime, no less. Otherwise it was on money earned from his newspaper, which failed until he married his wife (who got things into shape while he was suffering from depression in the sanatorium) such that the third newspaper in town became the first. She in fact seems the much more interesting character and one would do better to read a book on her, but here we find little, not even the cause of a long illness, an odd omission.

Another topic the author gets completely wrong is akin to the way most biographers used to write about President Jefferson and Sarah Hemings. The author is strongly skeptical of Harding's affair with Nan Britton - which overlapped this period - but after the book came out DNA tests proved that Harding was indeed the father of Britton's child.

On a smaller note, there is bashing of The New York Times for, in 1917, "misspelling" the name "Lenin" as "Lenine". The author seems unaware that Russian is written in a different alphabet and there are often different ways of transliterating names. Even these days we see different spellings of Zelenskyy/Zelenskiy, for example. This happens even more with Arabic names. Qaddafi/Khadafy had many more spellings. It's too bad that the English-speaking world did not standardize on "Lenine". Maybe then we would pronounce more correctly names like Lenin, Stalin and Putin.

Finally, the book's structure was very irritating because it uses the parallel tracks gimmick. First there is a chapter of the spy story, then the Harding story, then the spy story, then back to Harding, and so on, for a long time. I hate books that do this because just as you are getting into one story, you get violently ripped out of it and put into a different one. It's like relaxing into a dream and continually being re-awakened. So I fixed this by just reading Harding's story and skipping all the spy story chapters until they merged just after page 300. After that I went back and read all the spy story chapters, which worked perfect well.

[Brian Manville · Rating 2 out of 5]

Warren G. Harding doesn't get much attention from 20th century history fans, being outshone by greater lights such as Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt as well as Woodrow Wilson. The lack of attention also comes from the fact that he died in the middle of his term, hence leaving an incomplete legacy. One aspect of his life that didn't get much attention until some 40 years after his death, was his relationship with Carrie Phillips, a fellow resident of Marion, Ohio.

The book details the breadth and depth of the affair, reprinting sections of Harding's many letters to Phillips. Harding, in a loveless marriage, sought comfort in Phillips. The relationship began platonically, only becoming sexual after about 3 years. His letters reflect the depth of his passion for the married Phillips, often covering dozens of pages per letter.

The problem with the book is that it heavily implies that Phillips was a German spy, having spent a considerable portion of her life in Germany and espousing pro-German sentiment on the eve of and during American's involvement in the first world war. For some reason, a side story involving Baroness Iona Zollner, who was arrested in a Chattanooga hotel room with an army officer hiding under her bed. Zollner was tried for spying. The account of her trial was posted in a Cleveland area newspaper story "The Love Tricks of the Woman Spy". What this has to do with Ms. Phillips other than the fact that they were both suspected of being German spies is never stated. It appears to be nothing more than an attempt to put some meat on a very thin bone.

Of the things that drag down the Harding story and his administration, his affair with Carrie Phillips is down on the list. What the reader can take from the book is the birth of the American Protective League (APL) and the self-appointment of citizens who would function as judge and jury of anyone suspected of being "anti-American". These self-appointed arbiters were given police powers and could arrest people for their speech. This, in my opinion, is the big takeaway from the book; the fact that citizens could spy on their fellow citizens should concern everyone. In these days of cancel culture, deplatforming, and denial of access to social media, this disturbing trend is on the march in American society once again.

BOTTOM LINE: A story of one man's love letters to his mistress.

[Hilarry · Rating 2 out of 5]

I usually write my review of a book very shortly after reading it. This book however I had to take a few days to think about what I wanted to say about my experience reading this book. I did not pick this book, I told a friend I wanted to read a smut book, so she brought me this, she said she had not read it but heard president Harding's affair letters were scandalous. I being a history lover agreed to enjoy the dirty presidential letters. What I got was not that.

Pros for the book: Great history information, well researched. Reading about the espionage was really fascinating once I put together who these spies were. The chapter names were very catchy but then had little to do with what the chapter was about.

Cons about the book: Half of the time I did not know whom the author was referring to or how they were connected because it lacked character dynamics and a profile on them. Harding isn't even president til the last chapter, and the Great War doesn't start until the last 15 chapters. The Harding letters had a lot of author input on what they guessed he meant when he wrote things. And at time I did not feel their words that they fit into his letters to help the reader understand them, made sense. The book jumped around incredibly from different events with no warning.


On a personal note about my new feelings towards Harding:
Harding was not romantic, his letters would've sent me packing. It made me lose a lot of respect for the president who supposedly helped a lot with the Great War but died two years in office. He spent way too much time typing unromantic love letters trying to soothe a jealous woman while wishing his wife would die. And all Carrie ever wanted was in his pockets not his pants.
How this man, with an obvious affair that everyone knew about, with a woman who also turned out to have ties with German spies and was very pro Germany during this difficult time, got elected as president I will never understand.

Harding the president who had an affair with his best friend's wife, who was interrogated as a German spy.

[Writemoves · Rating 2 out of 5]

The affair between Warren Harding and Carrie Phillips was actually very boring. Evidently there were lots of love letters and correspondence between the two. And I do mean boring love letters and boring correspondence. I pretty much skimmed over those that were published in the book. The book contains some interesting history about Republican politics in the years of Taft and Theodore Roosevelt. Harding found himself caught in the middle of that political squabble. There is also some interesting history and commentary regarding the United States entering World War I. Just like World War II, there was great antipathy on the part of the American public to be involved in the war. In addition, there was a great deal of sympathy for Germany.

Based on the book, Harding appears to be a capable senator, hard-working and capable of compromise. He was a very good speaker and in demand for his abilities. However the shameless way that he pursued Mrs. Phillips does not present him in a good light. Given that his wife was constantly in bad health, one could understand his need for female companionship. But Mrs. Phillips was a needy and manipulative woman. The book covers allegations that she was a spy for Germany in World War I. Based on the book, it appears the only certain thing that could be alleged was that she was very sympathetic for the German cause.

I slogged through the book more for the historical morsels around the time of World War I than for the less than sordid details of Harding’s affair(s). I might be interested in reading a book written about the Harding presidential administration.

[Jan Niehaus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't want to read a bio. I was interested in the letters so I skipped over a lot of the history and the looming war. Was the sex that great that Harding let Carrie treat him so poorly and he kept coming back for more? Yes, we only get his side of the letters, but she sounded like a tease and a spoiled brat and he sounded spineless! You can't tell me their spouses didn't know what was going on. How do you receive so many letters from him (say at her house when she's home) and that isn't noticed? What's with them calling the letters public and private? How does this married woman have so much independence? Later she asks for more money from him to buy a car! Like her husband didn't know all along where she was getting her allowance! Then she threatens him with the letters and he continues to write her telling her to destroy them. I guess old habits were hard to break. Espionage in the title was a disappointing stretch trying to connect Carrie to being a spy. That just made for a lot of unnecessary extra junk added to the book. Overall, I love nonfiction and I became interested in learning more about Warren Harding from my previous home state of Ohio.

[Roger · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected the illicit love affair with Carrie Phillips would have continued into Harding’s presidency; but it was largely over by then. Unfortunately, Harding died in office early in his first term and didn’t have a lot to show for his brief presidency. Although detailed, the book was little more than a dime store romance- kind of disappointing.

[Rebecca Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of information I did not know. Harding seems more intelligent and well-tead than I has suspected. I am surprised the author wrote in 2009 until waiting until Harding's papers were to be released in 2014. Maybe he was trying to get the jump on someone. He got it wrong about Nan Britton, since DNA in 2015 proved her daughter was Harding's child.

[Scott Lord · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much different than other books I’ve read about Pres Harding

Excellently researched and balance re Pres Harding. I had thought of him as a very shallow Senator and President but it turns out there was much more to him. 2nd book I’ve read by the author, both excellent

[Sandra D · Rating 5 out of 5]

very interesting indeed

It’s a period in history, that I am very interested in, World War 1. The way this book has been written, I found it to be a page Turner.

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 2 out of 5]

What to make of this? The facts: Warren G. Harding (routinely rated by historians as one of the worst U. S. Presidents) had an affair with Carrie Phillips, the wife of his friend and Marion, Ohio neighbor Jim Phillips. The affair was well documented in several hundred letters Harding wrote to his amour; ignoring his frequent pleas to destroy the letters, Mrs. Phillips kept the letters, which were discovered in 1964, reviewed by a writer working on a Harding biography, but then tied up and sequestered in litigation with Harding's family.

Now to "The Harding Affair." Robenalt got access to the letters through secret microfilm copies made when the letters were discovered, and spent years organizing, dating, transcribing, and understanding the contents of the letters. Based on his study he has written this account of the affair--but it appears he had a problem. The letters, while providing interesting day to day documentation to the affair, don't add anything new to this now well-known background of the Harding biography or the history of the Harding administration. So what's the hook to sell a new book based on the letters? How about a circumstantial tie to World War I espionage based on Mrs. Phillips pre-war years in Germany, some tenuous and distant family ties to Germany through a historical sidelight named Baronness Iona Zollner? Robenalt, a Cleveland-based attorney from Harding's part of Ohio, cuts back and forth between the letters and the reporting on the Zollner case. But Robenault never makes a case for the validity of the connection between the interweaved stories beyond the circumstantial, and his writing on the political background displays a severe bias against Teddy Roosevelt in favor of his favorite son.

And about two-thirds of the way through the book, the interweaving stops and the Zollner case just disappears. Clearly, Robenalt the attorney realized he couldn't make his case, so he abandoned it, leaving Robenalt the writer without a story. When I realized that nothing was going to come of the circumstantial implications Robenalt teased me with at the begining, I went from bemused interest to disbelieving anger. The title and premise are misleading and unfulfilled.

In the end, nothing happens and Robenalt delivers nothing new. If you have always wanted to know more about the Harding/Phillips affair, until the papers are published in their entirity you can skim through the chapters dedicated to them in Robenalt's book, skipping the chapters dedicated to the Zollner case. If you are looking for something new or important about Harding, his administration, and World War I, skip this book and look elsewhere.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

To begin with, my"currently reading" notation might show that I started and finished this book on the same day. That is because I neglected to enter the book in that category until today , when I was nearly finished. I mention that because someone might have , with good reason, some skepticism about my actually reading the book. Never fear, I did.
That said, I thought that the book, THE HARDING AFFAIR, LOVE AND ESPIONAGE DURING THE GREAT WAR. is well worth your time if you like to read about famous men, history or politics. Warren G. Harding has a low appreciation among historians as a president, primarily due to the Teapot Dome scandal that happened during his administration. But this book covers his earlier life as citizen, Ohio politician and finally U.S. senator . His public life is covered and it paints Harding as a conscientious politician, far from the party hack he is often portrayed. In this book's point of fact, he is a man of republican ( in both the small and big R meaning) principles, hard work, and common sense. Except when it came to women, or one woman in particular. Then, all that went out the window, the bedroom window, as Harding became besotted with Mrs. Carrie Phillips. Carrying on a long- term, feverishly coupling romance with the wife of a friend while his wife struggled with illness was bad enough, but as world events pushed the USA closer to and then into war with Germanynin 1917-'18, it got worse. Worse because Mrs. Phillips was a flagrant and vocal GermAnsympathizer. There is some question raise dinghy book if she was more than just a sympathizer, but was also, perhaps, involved with espionage activities for the Kaiser's Germany.

We know all this because Harding was an inveterate letter writer and because Carrie Phillips kept the letters. THe story of how those letters came to be published- they have only recently become available to the non- historian public is interesting in itself. The author melds these fervent love letters amid the hostorical facts of Harding's careeras a Senator, which was rather distinguished, show the very different private side of the honored public servant. It is enlightening and fascinating.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is ironic that I am reading this 2009 book in 2014, just as the love letters of Harding to Carrie Phillips have been made available to the public, of course, on the internet. These letters, which were kept by Carrie Phillips, were found in 1960 and secretly microfilmed by Kenneth Duckett, a professional archivist, who worked for the Ohio Historical Society. He microfilmed them in 1964, before the Harding heirs had the original letters sealed in the Library of Congress for 50 years. But Duckett used one of his sets to decipher, organize and date the letters. This set is what James Robenalt referenced in writing "The Harding Affair".

Overall it is a well-written, well-researched and enjoyable account.

"The Harding Affair" gives us an excellent history of the start of WWI and the reluctance of the USA to enter the conflict. At the center of all of this is the rise of Warren Harding to the presidency, amid an intimate and torrid love affair which spanned from 1905 to 1919. I found this very interesting since I have read many other books about Harding's life and I think this is the best, since it is based on these letters and not just hearsay.

[R. Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Harding Affair relies heavily on the letters Warren Harding sent to his mistress over their fifteen year affair. It's a very good system for a biography, especially since those fifteen years are arguably the most important of his life and career (aside from his actual presidency). The letters are interesting at first, especially the more sordid ones, but they quickly grow tedious. I also found the "parallel story" of the Baroness Zollner - and, honestly, most of the espionage angle - to be an overly ambitious attempt on Robenalt's part to make this a more interesting story than it actually was. Still, these letters gave an excellent impression of who Warren Hardin really was, and that certainly makes this a worthwhile biography.

[Diana Rubino · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was very readable and entertaining as well as informative. I learned a lot about WWI and the presidential election during this time--it wasn't all about Harding & his mistress. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about how WWI started and progressed, as a backdrop to what was going on in Harding's life at the time.
I'm writing this on the 100th anniversary of the start of the Great War, and my friend Angela, 85, wrote some of her amazing memories about life 'over here'. Please read it on http://www.dianarubinoauthor.blogspot...

[David Allen Hines · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was an interesting story and added a more human element to the much maligned Warren Harding, but the author's contention that Harding's long time affair with a woman who supported Germany during WWI had much of an impact on his career, was a stretch. I was interested in the suggestion Carrie Phillps extorted money from him while he was President but not much was more than alluded to in the book.

[Susan Molloy · Rating 2 out of 5]

After watching and hearing him interviewed on June 14, 2025, he proved publicly he is a dope.

This book he wrote was fair, partisan, and speculative.

🔵 2009 presentation on CNN by author James David Robenalt on Internet Archive.

[Barbi Crabill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and revealing perspective of Warren G. Harding as a man with deep feelings of love for a woman who was not his wife and for his country. History books will have to be rewritten. A good read.

[Jeffrey Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

All this about Warren's affair with Carrie wasn't taught when I was in school. I never realized the old man had all this passion in him. Seems to be a balanced account, well researched taking advantage of access to new documentation. Well worth reading.

[Carrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book and tried really hard to read it, but it was dry and jumped all over the place. :(

[Donald Dudley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn't care for it.

[Mariam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was informative and a balanced look at Harding's legacy, though far more personal than political. I had a hard time linking the various characters (like the baroness) until late in the book. The writing was...fine.