U.S. Politics & Government - 20th Century, U.S. Politics & Government - 1945 - 1989, 20th Century American History - Politics & Government - 1900-1945, General & Miscellaneous U.S. Political Biography, U.S. Politics & Government - 1945-1953

American Dreamer

Name: American Dreamer
Author: John C Culver
ISBN: 9780393046458

by John C Culver

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Overview

Henry Agard Wallace is a paradoxical figure. The son of prominent Midwestern Republicans, he would grow up to become the emblematic leftist politician of his time. Well known as a shy man, uncomfortable in the world of politics, Wallace only narrowly missed becoming president of the United States. Beloved by millions as the Prophet of the Common Man, and reviled by millions more as a dangerous, misguided radical, Wallace lived in fractious times, and his historical legacy has become a topic of harshly polarized interpretations.

With American Dreamer, John C. Culver and John Hyde at last do justice to this infinitely complicated and controversial America. We are given Wallace the agriculturist of international renown, Wallace the prolific author, Wallace the groundbreaking economist, and finally Wallace the businessman whose company (eventually worth billions) paved the way for a worldwide agricultural revolution. But Culver and Hyde do more than investigate the complex personality of their subject. They bring to life with novelistic intensity the pivotal era in which Wallace lived

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

An outstanding economist and geneticist, Henry Wallace (1888-1965) was also the personification of New Deal liberalism. In this splendid biography, former senator Culver and journalist Hyde brilliantly illuminate Wallace's complex life and struggles. As FDR's agriculture secretary and later vice president, Wallace always stood to the president's left politically (Hamilton Fish called him "Stalin's ambassador to the court of Roosevelt"). Recognizing that national unity would be threatened in the event of Wallace becoming president, the ailing FDR shrewdly saw to it that his old friend was dropped from the ticket in 1944 in favor of Harry Truman. By this time Wallace, the pragmatic engineer of the New Deal, had, in Culver and Hyde's portrayal, degenerated into an extreme leftist ideologue who--as Churchill emphatically reminded Roosevelt--demonstrated no fundamental understanding of the threat posed by Soviet communism. Running for president as an independent in 1948, Wallace wore his na vet on his sleeve, insisting U.S. diplomacy should be governed not by the tenets of Machiavelli, but by those of Christ. Culver and Hyde reveal both Wallaces--the confident architect of successful domestic reform and the idealist who, in Hubert H. Humphrey's words, was "devoted and dedicated to peace." Photos not seen by PW. (Apr.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Library Journal

Although not as widely studied now as some of his political contemporaries, Henry Wallace was an important leader in American politics in the 1930s and 1940s: he served as vice president during Franklin Roosevelt's third term in the White House and held the cabinet positions of Secretary of Agriculture and Secretary of Commerce during parts of the Roosevelt and Harry Truman administrations. He also ran unsuccessfully for the presidency as the candidate of the Progressive Party in 1948. He probably had more influence on the development and administration of New Deal agricultural policy than did anyone else. This biography of Wallace by former U.S. senator Culver and journalist Hyde is well researched and generally well written. But it would have been strengthened if the authors had muted their obvious admiration for their subject and provided a more dispassionate analysis of Wallace's accomplishments and failures. For history collections of academic and larger public libraries.--Thomas H. Ferrell, Univ. of Louisiana, Lafayette Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

J. Robe

A first-rate biography...
—The Washington Monthly

Lichtenstein

Wallace has at long last found a defense team worthy of his remarkable scientific and political career. In this expansive and engaging biography, John Hyde, a journalist long associated with The Des Moines Register, and John C. Culver, a former Democratic senator from Iowa, give us a life with plenty of blunders and eccentricities. However, the portrait that emerges in American Dreamer is one of an increasingly combative liberal whose 15 years in the public spotlight put him not at the margins but close to the animating center of American politics during the heyday of the New Deal.
—The New York Times Book Review