Henry F. Graff (1921–2020)

Being an overview of the life and incumbency of our 22d and 24th president. Reflecting its subject, this book is a solid work of narrative, with little if any consideration of big ideas or deeper meanings. Cleveland has (unfortunately, in my view) fallen considerably in historical regard from his "near great" position in the earliest presidential greatness surveys during the World War II era. Graff does very little to budge Cleveland from your survey class which probably filed him away as an show more honest, competent plodder. The author generally writes clearly, save for occasional indulgences in a rather involuted syntax which can require some rereading to make the sentences make sense, if they ever do. The author's great strength is his colorful rendition of the era's politics The book is a quick, pleasant read which reviews competently but does little to expand one's understanding of its subject. show less

This very short work is a part of the American Presidents series of biographies of our nation’s chief executives.

I wouldn’t recommend the American Presidents series for Presidents such as Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, either Roosevelt or most of the Presidents in the 20th century. However, for many of the 19th century Presidents, 200 pages of material will contain about all the material you need to know about Presidents such as Cleveland, Harrison, Tyler, Buchanan, show more Arthur, Garfield, Van Buren, Fillmore, Hayes, etc.

And while many of the above referenced biographies extend to 200 pages, this biography of Grover Cleveland checks in at only 135 pages. This is far too cursory a treatment for a President that served two, full, non-consecutive terms. This extreme brevity and simplicity render this the most unsatisfactory of all the American Presidents biographies I have read.

Cleveland enjoyed a meteoric rise in Democrat Party politics, serving as Mayor of Buffalo, then Governor of New York in the two short years before his party’s nomination for President. He became the first Democrat to be elected post-Civil War and despite losing the electoral college in his bid for re-election, ended up winning the popular vote in three consecutive presidential elections, becoming the only man to serve non-consecutive presidential terms.

While Cleveland is a perfectly suitable President for a relatively short biography, this 135 page treatment is a poor effort. show less

Fifth edition of a standard guidebook for researchers who use documentary evidence. Lots of sane advice. As of this edition, the author still didn't know what to make of personal computers, and the stuffy discussion of "word processing" is amusing in hindsight, at least to me. Reminds me of the days when the main dichotomy was between "IBM-compatible" and "Macintosh" computers. But the book as a whole is one that I often revisit.

This book is more of an overview of Grover Cleveland's life than a biography. It does not go into a lot of detail about much, but does try to give perspective about things that happened in his life relative to the time he lived in.

It does gloss over Cleveland's troubling and creepy relationships with women, which is problematic.

There is also a lot of presidential trivia in this book about several presidents and the resolute desk.