Description
All this is told through a lively running narrative and an incomparable collection of illustrations-contemporary portraits, prints and engravings, early daguerreotypes and the first inaugural photographs, candidates’ private papers and public addresses, down to the intimate lens-eye views of the candid camera. Many of these illustrations have been years in the collecting and have never been reproduced before. Others have become a permanent part of American folklore. Still others provide rare glimpses of candidates in action, election-night scenes, inaugural balls-at times revealing private foibles behind public postures. Groups of illustrations record the often enormous strain of eloquent photographs of Lincoln reflect the growing toll of civil war; the agony of world war lines the face of the ailing FDR. Mirrored here, too, are the beginnings of our political customs. “Old Fuss and Feathers” Win-field Scott, for example, broke with tradition and barnstormed from Cleveland to New York soliciting votes-only to be defeated by Franklin Pierce, who stayed home. Martin Van Buren’s political nickname, “Old Kinderhook,” gave American slang the indispensable “OK,” while the campaign slogan of Harrison and Tyler gave us “Keep the ball rolling.” Not neglected are illustrations of those ambivalent aspects of American politics that baffle our the open debate and the hidden scandal, the successful politicking and the failed commitment, the publicized image and the private reality. The result of Mr. Lorant’s enormous research, documented by complete election statistics, is an unparalleled visual record of democracy at work in forty-five presidential elections -a volume of delight to the casual browser, indispensable as a reference, and a must for everyone’s permanent library.
