Amity Shlaes’ timing couldn’t be better. With the Party of Lincoln facing its biggest crisis since the Nixon resignation, the senior fellow at the George W. Bush Presidential Center has come out with an exhaustive, 576-page biography of a Republican who helped his party win three presidential landslides during the Roaring Twenties: Calvin Coolidge.
In “Coolidge,” Shlaes not only performs the heavy lifting to bring this remarkably effective president out of obscurity. The economist-turned-historian also makes a compelling case that the “Silent Cal” of the 1920s — a modest man who never felt at home in Washington — offers hope for both party and country in the 2010s. She’s right about that, but not for her stated reasons.
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