Getting to know the U.S. presidents

"When Grover Cleveland took office in 1885, one world was ending and a new one was emerging. The signs were everywhere: transcontinental railroads were still being built, the telephone was still a novelty, and the lightbulb had just been invented. In the political arena, Cleveland bridged the time between the old and the new - from when Congress dominated national affairs to the modern era when they would become more sharply focused around the president."--BOOK JACKET.

Biography of the man who became the tenth President of the United States when William Harrison died in office.

Politics was in Benjamin Harrison's blood. His great-grandfather signed the Declaration of Independence and his grandfather, William Henry Harrison, was the ninth president of the United States. Harrison, a leading Indiana lawyer, became a Republican Party champion, even taking a leave from the Civil War to campaign for Lincoln. After a scandal-free term in the Senate -- no small feat in the Gilded Age -- the Republicans chose Harrison as their presidential candidate in 1888. Despite losing the popular vote, he trounced the incumbent, Grover Cleveland, in the electoral college. In contrast to standard histories, which dismiss Harrison's presidency as corrupt and inactive, Charles W. Calhoun sweeps away the stereotypes of the age to reveal the accomplishments of our twenty-third president. With Congress under Republican control, he exemplified the activist president, working feverishly to put the Party's planks into law and approving the first billion-dollar peacetime budget. But the Democrats won Congress in 1890, stalling his legislative agenda, and with the First Lady ill, his race for reelection proceeded quietly (she died just before the election). In the end, Harrison could not beat Cleveland in their unprecedented rematch.

A brief biography of the thirty-first president of the United States, describing his career as mining engineer, businessman, and president during the Great Depression.

Highlights the life and political career of the thirty-ninth president of the United States.

A brief account of the life and accomplishments of our 29th president.