Homer E. Capehart: A Senator's Life, 1897-1979

For many of his generation, Senator Homer E. Capehart was the archetypical midwestern Republican. Conservative and anticommunist, he made a successful career out of opposition to big government and support for an anti-interventionist foreign policy. A hulking, cigar-smoking man with a round face and receding hairline, by the end of his career he appeared a symbol of the politics of a bygone era. Yet he was an energetic campaigner for the values of his Hoosier constituents, who rewarded him by returning him to office more times than any previous Indiana senator. As William B. Pickett shows in Homer E. Capehart: A Senator's Life, 1897-1979, the first biography of Capehart, the Hoosier senator proved to be an extraordinarily able politician.