I've been reading bios of all the Presidents and particularly enjoyed this one.
The insight into how he interacted with other people and what he was reading at the time added depth and color to the portrait
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This book fills in a large blank space on what for many is an overlooked period of American history from after the Civil War to the turn-of-the 20th century. While the writing is not as engaging as modern historians like David McCullough it does report critical facts and provides a reminder of a very difficult period in our country‘s history. Rutherford B Hayes is one of the most overlooked presidents of our country and yet he served during an incredibly tumultuous and fraught time. As a Union Colonel during the Civil War he was injured numerous times. His presidential election was highly controversial and perhaps the most contested in American presidential election in our history. The investigations went on for two years after he took office by Democrats to try to discredit him. Meanwhile Hayes continued to believe he could push forward with reconstruction when in fact much of the south was an open resistance to these plans and the public had grown weary of keeping the army in the southern states to enforce federal law. Southern states openly had federal officers arrested and held without bail. He vetoed bills by the democrat controlled Congress that sought to remove federal protections on federal elections. Hayes also sought to reform the civil service taking it away from an open system of spoils and patronage to creating a civil service based on merit. He also took a very unpopular stances pardoning what was then called members of the free love league former abolitionists pacifist and women’s rights advocates. He took a great interest in trying to reform the prison system as well as advocate for what we would call today physical disabilities.

I found this to be an extremely timely book. If we think we are going through a singularly tumultuous time this book at least provide some perspective on past periods of unrest in our country. It can be slow going in spots but the sections on Hayes as president are particularly rewarding and would recommend the book for this part alone.

We sometimes lose perspective and think we’re encountering our current problems for the first time one in fact we’ve seen many of them before. There are many parallels to what is happened during Hayes’s four years as president, it is definitely worth the read ( )

This is the first presidential biography I have read. I read it specifically for a POTUS book club I joined. Hayes left a lot of written material about his life experiences and thoughts which the author used liberally in this biography. At times the writing style was tedious but I do feel like I have a good idea of who Hayes was a person and what fueled his decisions as President. ( )

Despite enjoying the rare distinction of having served as president of the United States, Rutherford Hayes is usually dismissed as one of the indistinguishably undistinguished Gilded Age occupants of that office. Ari Hoogenboom's biography of the 19th president challenges such treatment. In it, the author offers an account of Hayes's life and political career that shows him to be a humane person whose efforts to do more for African Americans and the other causes of his era were frustrated by political circumstances. Yet Hoogenboom is only partly successful in his effort to rehabilitate Hayes's reputation, for while he shows his subject to have been a surprisingly modern figure in terms of his views on the issues of his day, Hayes's ineffectiveness as president ultimately limits a complete revision. As a result, Hayes comes across as something of a disappointment, a man who was unable to alter the course of events. In this respect, Hoogenboom's book is useful not only as a study of Hayes but as an account of the limits of the presidency in Gilded Age America, albeit one that some readers might find longer than was necessary. ( )

U.S. President 1877-1881, turned over the South to the White supremacists.