Zachary Karabell

It's difficult to believe that anybody could make Chet Arthur interesting, but Karabell succeeds in spades. And moreover, he makes a fairly sturdy case that he was the right man at the right time for the job. His approach is that, unlikely as it may seem, just as only Nixon could go to China, only Arthur, the product of the spoils system, could lead the nation on its first baby steps toward getting rid of the spoils system, though admittedly he led from behind. I ended up liking the show more "Gentleman Boss" pretty well after this read and decided that we could use a few more reluctant presidents who served their time and were quite content to leave the office with a record of modest accomplishment. show less

Chester Arthur was at best a reluctant President. It wasn't that he didn't think he was up to the job - it's just that he didn't want it. Before his election as Vice President in 1880, he had never even run for office. Rather, he had served in a series of increasingly high-level appointed positions, leading to his service running the customhouse of the Port of New York, one of the most important offices in the US at the time. So how did it happen that he became the 21st President?

Above all, show more Arthur was a party man, through and through. And the party called. He spent his career as a supporting player for more able leaders of the political machine - primarily Roscoe Conkling, Senator and leader of the Stalwart Republican faction. When James Garfield won a surprise nomination at the Republican convention, Arthur was useful as an olive branch to Conkling to represent the interests of the Stalwarts in the distribution of spoils after victory. Then Garfield was shot, and three months later, Chester Arthur became President.

Arthur wasn't a bad President. The nation was going through a time of relative peace and prosperity, so there weren't any big issues he had to face. Except one - patronage in the Civil Service. Surprisingly, Arthur, who benefited his entire career from the spoils system became the champion for Civil Service reform. Following a clear mandate from the people (and playing for political advantage), a Republican-led lame duck Congress passed the Pendleton CIvil Service Act with Arthur's encouragement and assistance, leading to merit-based government hiring, and some say, to the bureaucratic tangle that is government today.

Zachary Karabell's Chester Alan Arthur is a very good addition to The American Presidents series edited by Arthur Schlesinger. Karabell is honest in his evaluation of Chester Arthur's presidency and his impact on history while also giving a good sense of who Arthur was as a man of the late 19th century. At the end of the day, Arthur became for me more than just a mostly forgotten name on a list of Presidents, and that's the mark of a good historian and biographer. show less

I found this to be the most well-written and interesting of the books in this series that I have read so far. The author puts his subject into historical perspective (partly out of necessity because little is actually known about his inner life and he did very little in the way of presidenting) and he writes with a great deal of wit. In his final summation, he says that Arthur's reputation neither increased nor diminished after he left office, rather he just disappeared. A good book to read show more in conjunction with watching The Gilded Age. It is noteworthy that Arthur, a political hack who had only ever been appointed to things, was the president who signed the first legislation creating the civil service. A Nixon to China moment in U.S. history. show less

Chester Alan Arthur by Zachary Karabell

★★★

President Chester Alan Arthur is one of those presidents that when mentioned in general public gets a “Who? He was a president?” Yeah, so they can’t all do great, memorable things. Poor guy. And when seeing how small this biography is, it doesn’t help his case – although it is mentioned in Editor’s Notes that this book is “compact for the busy reader, lucid enough for the student, and authoritative enough for the scholar.”

So who show more was this guy? Well, he took over for Garfield after his assassination. Arthur didn’t want to be president and no one expected much of him. He did some good stuff in his time, mostly went with the flow, and miraculously stayed out of trouble and allegation. He was an interesting president in his own right, just a sadly forgotten one. I enjoyed this book and I think it gave a good, broad overview of this president and his life. However, I still would have liked further details – it just seemed to lack so much. So much like the president, neither good nor bad, I give this book a similar judgment – putting it right down the middle in my rating. show less