This is the tawdry, tragic, often hilarious tale told by Veeps: Profiles in Insignificance, by Bill Kelter and Wayne Shellabarger.  From Aaron Burr’s arguable treason to Charles Dawes’s notorious napping to Spiro T. Agnew’s cash kickbacks in the White House basement, the legacies of the men the authors describe as “a heartbeat or lower intestinal obstruction away from the Presidency” are revealed here in all their dubious splendor.

One of the more shocking facts revealed in Veeps is the number of years our glorious nation has managed to survive with a literal empty chair where most often there simply sat an empty suit.  Since the death of James Madison’s Vice President, George Clinton, in 1812, the United States has somehow muddled along for a total of 37 years and 290 days without a Veep in office.  Keller and Shellabarger’s chronicle convinces readers that this was not necessarily a major bummer for American democracy.

Veeps is handsomely illustrated with a series of slightly caricatured portraits that, like the cover image of William Almon Wheeler, reveal the frustrated ambitions and utter hopelessness of so many of the men tabbed for second place:

“Theodore Roosevelt planned to enroll in law school to fill the time he would surely have on his hands.  Wheeler, of course, donned his displeasure like a death mask.  John Nance Garner would have traded the job for a tepid receptacle of an expelled bodily fluid had he not thought the lopsided bargain would have been unfair to his fellow barterer.”

While Garner famously described the gig as “not worth a bucket of warm piss,” Kelter and Shellabarger’s entertaining account of this rogues’ gallery of American history ought to convince voters to pay a bit more attention to the second name on the Presidential ticket.  After all, a rather impressive number of these “incompetents, empty suits, abysmal spellers, degenerate golfers, and corrupt Marylanders” have ended up assuming the highest office in the land thanks to assassins’ bullets, the odd case of food poisoning, or on exceedingly rare occasions the will of an actual majority of American voters.

One of the very best books I found on Dr. King came from the excellent “Penguin Lives” series of short biographies.  Acclaimed civil rights journalist and biographer Marshall Frady presents a brief but eloquent study of Dr. King that touches on critical details of his life while also considering the broad scope of his movement and influence.   

Frady’s biography describes Dr. King’s emergence from a withdrawn, insecure childhood into the complicated, massively inspiring figure at the center of the civil rights movement.  The biography touches on the frustrations and difficulties of Dr. King’s mission as well as its triumphs and the contradictory political and personal struggles he endured in the name of justice.

The “Penguin Lives” series is an excellent resource for short, well-written biographies of compelling historical figures.  An all-star list of biographers has been enlisted and thoughtfully paired with fascinating subjects, as in novelist Larry McMurtry’s biography of Crazy Horse and brilliant war historian John Keegan’s study of Winston Churchill. 

One of my favorites is southern novelist Bobbie Ann Mason’s lyrical, moving biography of Elvis Presley, in which the author describes his influence and tragic life from the empathetic viewpoint of a fellow southerner.  Mason instinctively understands her subject’s motivations and demons, and she portrays both the pride and the sadness of a fan who carefully considered the arc of his amazing life.

Most of the “Penguin Lives” books are around 200 pages and combine compelling and readable writing with thoughtful considerations of historical figures.  The fresh reevaluations brought by the authors, many of whom usually write in genres other than biography, make for a fascinating series and a great starting point for deeper research.