Books in Brief: The Rise of Warren Gamaliel Harding

The Rise of Warren Gamaliel Harding —1865-1920, by Randolph C. Downes (Ohio State University Press, 734 pp., $17.50).

This is an outrageous book. For two decades, Professor Randolph Downes of the University of Toledo has been laboring on a definitive account of Harding’s political career. The present volume, stopping at the doors of the White House, will be followed by The Fall of Warren Gamaliel Harding, carrying his career to his death. For future historians and specialists of the period, Professor Downes’ monumental sifting and sorting of facts will prove indispensable. After it, there can scarcely be anything new to add to the story of Harding the politician. Why then is the book outrageous? Because the scholarly Professor Downes was forced by the pusillanimity of the Ohio State University Press to submit his manuscript to the capricious censorship of the present members of the Harding family, not only delaying publication unconscionably but forcing the elimination of several cogent features. With the greatest respect for Professor Downes, I suggest that the matter should be taken up by the American Historical Society.

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Francis Russell

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The Rise of Warren Gamaliel Harding —1865-1920, by Randolph C. Downes (Ohio State University Press, 734 pp., $17.50).

This is an outrageous book. For two decades, Professor Randolph Downes of the University of Toledo has been laboring on a definitive account of Harding’s political career. The present volume, stopping at the doors of the White House, will be followed by The Fall of Warren Gamaliel Harding, carrying his career to his death. For future historians and specialists of the period, Professor Downes’ monumental sifting and sorting of facts will prove indispensable. After it, there can scarcely be anything new to add to the story of Harding the politician. Why then is the book outrageous? Because the scholarly Professor Downes was forced by the pusillanimity of the Ohio State University Press to submit his manuscript to the capricious censorship of the present members of the Harding family, not only delaying publication unconscionably but forcing the elimination of several cogent features. With the greatest respect for Professor Downes, I suggest that the matter should be taken up by the American Historical Society.