Rutherford B. Hayes: The American Presidents Series: The 19th President, 1877-1881

Description: This new biography of Rutherford B. Hayes shows him as a leader of the Reconstruction era, whose contested election eerily parallels the election debacle of 2000.

Brief description: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., (1917-2007) was the preeminent political historian of our time. For more than half a century, he was a cornerstone figure in the intellectual life of the nation and a fixture on the political scene. He won two Pulitzer prizes for The Age of Jackson (1946) and A Thousand Days (1966), and in 1988 received the National Humanities Medal. He published the first volume of his autobiography, A Life in the Twentieth Century, in 2000.

Review Quotes:

"A competent summary of existing knowledge and the best short biography of Hayes to date."
--Foreign Affairs

"A useful look at an honest, if obscure, political leader who, the author argues, rightfully won his office."
--Kirkus Reviews

"This series entry on the nineteenth president rescues from relative obscurity a man who, in the eyes of the author, a specialist in the Civil War and Reconstruction, should be remembered."
--Booklist