In this magisterial biography, bestselling author Amity Shlaes traces Coolidge’s dramatic story, and the roots of his strength, from a childhood in a New England hamlet to his rise from town lawmaker to governor of Massachusetts and his dramatic handling of the Boston Police strike. Yet over the course of the 1920s, through breathtaking discipline and determination, this unexpected president set America on a new course and restored the nation’s confidence in itself. Many considered the vice president who suddenly succeeded Harding, the modest Silent Cal, a mere lame duck. When President Warren Harding passed away suddenly in 1923, America seemed to be heading deeper into uncertainty. Seemingly unbreachable political divisions, war and pandemic, unrest in cities, a budgetary crisis, economic disruption –all troubles we confront today-also challenged America a century ago. This new edition features a preface by Washington Post columnist George F. Timed to the centennial of the Calvin Coolidge presidency, an updated edition of Amity Shlaes’s brilliant and provocative New York Times bestselling biography examines an underrated chief executive who offered a model of presidential service strikingly different from that seen in America today. It deserves to be widely read.”- The Economist Shlaes’s biography provides a window onto an unfairly tarnished period. “America’s 30th president has been much misunderstood. Read Coolidge, and better understand the forces bearing on the President and Congress almost a century later.” - Paul Volcker “Amity Shlaes’s new biography carries a different and highly relevant message.

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