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.

Alter argues that FDR’s combination of inspirational leadership, open-minded risk-taking, and activist government policies ultimately saved both American democracy and capitalism itself.  The book is a useful counterpoint to recent criticisms of Roosevelt’s New Deal policies, and it’s also a gripping read that documents one of the most precarious moments in American history. 

Alter paints a vivid portrait of the country in winter 1933 as Roosevelt took office.  At the absolute low point of the Great Depression, when Fascism was wildly popular in Italy and Hitler had just gained power in Germany, Alter reveals the temptations Roosevelt faced from advisors who advocated similarly dictatorial steps to solve America’s economic disaster.  The book tells the riveting story of Roosevelt’s rejection of this path and the seat-of-his-pants qualities of the interventionist New Deal programs that Alter argues ultimately saved capitalism.

The book includes seldom-told tales like the pre-inauguration assassination attempt that nearly took Roosevelt’s life.  Alter also describes the most acrimonious transition in American history, during which President Hoover and Roosevelt barely communicated and FDR’s son claimed his father nearly punched Hoover in the face.

One of the most interesting stories is Alter’s description of the first “Fireside Chat,” on March 12, 1933.  Roosevelt’s revolutionary use of the relatively new medium of radio brought the voice of the American President into citizens’ homes for the first time.  His warm, conversational style was literally unheard of from previous politicians who had to shout to be heard in un-amplified speeches to large crowds, and Alter compares the effect to the similarly reassuring tones of Bing Crosby’s crooning voice over the radio.

The real revolution was, in fact, Roosevelt’s first two words of the Fireside Chat:  “My friends.”  The Defining Moment goes a long way toward explaining FDR’s achievements and filling in interesting psychological details of his complicated personality, but those two words, and the resultant redefinition of American government’s role in the lives of its citizens, reveal perhaps the most significant moment of all.  

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. 

Ms. Hausburg is a Cataloger for the Metropolitan Library System, and her first book tells some amazing stories about heroic Oklahomans.  One chapter highlights Father Stanley Rother, a Catholic missionary from Okarche who was martyred in a bloody Central American civil war in the 1980s and who may one day soon become Oklahoma’s first canonized saint.  Another fascinating story involves World War II nurse Rosemary Hogan, who survived a brutal Japanese P.O.W. camp in the Philippines and was awarded a Bronze Star and Purple Heart among other medals.

The book’s title comes from the story of Rufino Rodrigues, a young miner who saved over 150 lives in a devastating 1912 fire in a Lehigh, Oklahoma, coal mine.  Rodrigues commented that his amazing heroism “wasn’t much,” even decades later when survivors and their families would praise his efforts to pull fellow miners from the underground inferno. 

Ms. Hausburg’s book is targeted to younger readers, from 4th to 9th grade, but her engaging style makes it a great read for anyone interested in Oklahoma history.  Each chapter is augmented with website addresses, suggestions for further reading, and information about how to visit the historic places mentioned in the book. 

The Forty-Sixth Star Press website includes portraits of the book’s subjects, excerpts from the text, and tons of extra web-links to more information about each of the Oklahoma heroes.

I interviewed Ms. Hausburg about her terrific book for newsok.tv, and the video of this interview can be seen here:  http://www.newsok.tv/?titleID=4688337001  

Having said that, Mark Stein’s How the States Got Their Shapes was one of the most fun books I’ve read all year.

Stein devotes five or six pages to each of the fifty states in alphabetical order, telling the surprisingly fascinating story of how each of their boundaries was negotiated, surveyed, and finally accepted.  Each chapter is supplemented by clearly drawn maps that illustrate exactly what controversies and challenges faced the bureaucrats who attempted to build rational boundaries between contentious, occasionally warring territories.

Each chapter starts with a series of questions the author will tackle, such as this example for Alaska:  “How come Alaska slips out beneath its straight-line eastern border with Canada?  In fact, why isn’t Alaska just a continuation of Canada?  Were the Canadians suckered?  Or did we threaten them?  And why is Alaska’s straight line border where it is?” 

The book really functions as an alternative way to look at American history, and the author finds several recurring themes in the shaping of the fifty states.  Most prominent is a Jeffersonian insistence on the equality of states’ sizes whenever possible, which resulted in chunks being taken out of corners of states and crooked lines being drawn where a straight line would seem far more obvious.  Interesting exceptions to the attempts to equalize the states are found in California and Texas, and Stein explains the different ways each convinced the U.S. government to accept its unusually massive boundaries.

Another recurring theme is the influence of slavery on the shapes of many states.  Oklahoma’s own panhandle is a fascinating example of this, as Texas was Constitutionally prevented from retaining any land north of its current panhandle border without violating the mandated dividing line between slave and free states.  Stein notes, “Congress was trying to turn its eyes away from the fundamental inequality of slavery (by giving the choice to the states) and fix its gaze on an idealized (indeed, mathematical) vision of equality among the newly forming western states.  All this is preserved in the borders of Oklahoma’s panhandle, in one-half of one degree of latitude.”

Beyond the pressing issues of slavery and power politics, other surprising factors influenced the lines that now seem so established on our landscape as to be almost literally carved in stone or earth.  Religious communities influenced the borders of Delaware and New Hampshire, issues of language dictated the boundaries of Louisiana and New Mexico, and the patchwork border of Kentucky and Tennessee was pieced together with the significant assistance of local moonshining operations.

Stein invests these map-making stories with unexpected drama and intrigue, revealing many obscure tales that account for state boundaries’ massive but often overlooked influence on American life to this day.  His conclusion to the story of New Mexico’s borders is an excellent example of the book’s themes:  They may “look pretty square, but in fact they preserve stories of fears and compassion, of shrewd political savvy, and of objective planning for the future.  In a sense, New Mexico’s borders contain a kind of mural of what goes on in the halls of Congress.”