Coolidge: An American Enigma cover art

Coolidge: An American Enigma

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for £5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Coolidge: An American Enigma

By: Robert Sobel
Narrated by: Charles Bice
Try Standard free

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £18.99

Buy Now for £18.99

About this listen

In the first full-scale biography of Calvin Coolidge in a generation, Robert Sobel shatters the caricature of our 30th president as a silent, do-nothing leader.

Sobel instead exposes the real Coolidge, whose legacy as the most Jeffersonian of all 20th-century presidents still reverberates today. Sobel delves into the record to show how Coolidge cut taxes four times, had a budget surplus every year in office, and cut the national debt by a third in a period of unprecedented economic growth.

Though his list of accomplishments is impressive, Calvin Coolidge was perhaps best known and most respected by his contemporaries for his character. Americans in the 1920s embraced Coolidge for his upstanding demeanor, which came as a breath of fresh air after the scandal-ridden administration of Warren G. Harding. The sleaze that characterizes much of American political life today was absent in the Coolidge administration.

©2000 Robert Sobel (P)2011 Robert Sobel Americas Historical Politicians Politics & Activism Presidents & Heads of State United States Franklin D Roosevelt Taxation Capitalism American History Socialism Latin American

Critic reviews

"Sobel succeeds at getting the reader to take a serious look at this oft-neglected and sometimes disparaged president, and his tightly argued, well-researched book will be of importance to historians and presidential scholars for years to come." ( Library Journal)
"Sobel, who has previously written on the politics of economics, strives to provide a more balanced portrait of a surprisingly complicated and interesting man." ( Booklist)
All stars
Most relevant
An excellent and satisfying biography of one of the great, if underrated, US Presidents and the era in which he lived.

An excellent and satisfying biography

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.