The 1990s saw an explosion in books from historians attempting to rehabilitate the legacies of various maligned Presidents, such as David McCullogh’s Pulitzer prize-winning biographies of Harry Truman and John Adams. But only so many Presidents are worthy of rehabilitation; it quickly reached the point that George Pendle could write a satire of the genre (The Remarkable Millard Fillmore: The Unbelievable Life of a Forgotten President) without it being immediately obvious from the title and subject that it was intended as such.
The 2000s saw a similar explosion of books attempting to rehabilitate presidential campaigns, rather than presidents. David Pietrusza’s award-winning 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents is perhaps the best example of these books, which seek to pluck Presidential election years from obscurity and explain why they deserve closer historical attention.
Garland S. Tucker’s The High Tide of American Conservatism: Davis, Coolidge, and the 1924 Elections seeks to occupy a middle ground between these various types.
