While incarcerated in the Atlanta federal penitentiary in 1924 for larceny, conspiracy and some 100 violations of the Prohibition Act, Gaston B. Means, a former Harding Administration official and private investigator, met May Dixon Thacker, the sister of novelist Thomas Dixon, whose The Clansman (1905) had been transformed by D. W. Griffith into The Birth of a Nation for the big screen in 1915. Mrs. Thacker, the author of True Confessions, promised to help Means tell his story. After his release, Means spent day after day dictating to her. The resulting publication, The Strange Death of President Harding, raises some interesting points surrounding the circumstances of the President’s death during a nationwide speaking tour, and went on to become one of the bestselling books of 1930.
Rumors circulated of the president's death by poison, either by his own hand or by that of his wife; allegations of an illegitimate daughter were made; and questions were raised concerning the extent of Harding's knowledge of the Teapot Dome scandal and of irregularities in the Veterans' Bureau, as well as his tolerance of a corrupt attorney general who was an Ohio political fixer. Journalists and historians of the time added to his tarnished reputation by using sources that were easily available but inaccurate. In The Strange Deaths of President Harding, Ferrell lays out the facts behind these allegations for the reader to ponder.
Tells the story of Florence Harding's rise from young unwed mother to First Lady and reveals her influence behind Harding's ascent to America's most scandal-ridden presidency and her role in his death. The drama of her life is set against the stage of the White House in the Jazz Age, and involves exciting elements such as mistresses, blackmail, poisoning, and opium addicts. Includes bandw photos. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
2009 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title If George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are the saints in America’s civil religion, then the twenty-ninth president, Warren G. Harding, is our sinner. Prior to the Nixon administration, the Harding scandals were the most infamous of the twentieth century. Harding is consistently judged a failure, ranking dead last among his peers. By examining the public memory of Harding, Phillip G. Payne offers the first significant reinterpretation of his presidency in a generation. Rather than repeating the old stories, Payne examines the contexts and continued meaning of the Harding scandals for various constituencies. Payne explores such topics as Harding’s importance as a midwestern small-town booster, his rumored black ancestry, the role of various biographers in shaping his early image, the tension between public memory and academic history, and, finally, his status as an icon of presidential failure in contemporary political debates. Harding was a popular president and was widely mourned when he died in office in 1923; but with his death began the construction of his public memory and his fall from political grace. In Dead Last, Payne explores how Harding’s name became synonymous with corruption, cronyism, and incompetence and how it is used to this day as an example of what a president should not be.
"If love is the only right warrant for bringing children into the world then many children born in wedlock are illegitimate and many born out of wedlock are legitimate." So contends Nan Britton in this account of Elizabeth Ann, her daughter by Warren G. Harding.
Available for the first time in paperback, The Strange Deaths of President Harding challenges readers to reexamine Warren G. Harding's rightful place in American history. For nearly half a century, the twenty-ninth president of the United States has consistently finished last in polls ranking the presidents. After Harding's untimely death in 1923, a variety of attacks and unsubstantiated claims left the public with a tainted impression of him. In this meticulously researched scrutiny of the mystery surrounding Harding's death, Robert H. Ferrell, distinguished presidential historian, examines the claims against this unpopular president and uses new material to counter those accusations. At the time of Harding's death there was talk of his similarity, personally if not politically, to Abraham Lincoln. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes described Harding as one of nature's noblemen, truehearted and generous. But soon after Harding's death, his reputation began to spiral downward. Rumors circulated of the president's death by poison, either by his own hand or by that of his wife; allegations of an illegitimate daughter were made; and question were raised concerning the extent of Harding's knowledge of the Teapot Dome scandal and of irregularities in the Veterans' Bureau, as well as his tolerance of a corrupt attorney general who was an Ohio political fixer. Journalists and historians of the time added to his tarnished reputation by using sources that were easily available but not factually accurate. In The Strange Deaths of President Harding, Ferrell lays out the facts behind these allegations for the reader to ponder. Making the most of the recently opened papers of assistant White House physician Dr. Joel T. Boone, Ferrell shows that for years Harding suffered from high blood pressure, was under a great deal of stress, and overexerted himself; it was a heart attack that caused his death, not poison. There was no proof of an illegitimate child. And Harding did not know much about the scandals intensifying in the White House at the time of his death. In fact, these events were not as scandalous as they have since been made to seem. In this meticulously researched and eminently readable scrutiny of the mystery surrounding Harding's death, as well as the deathblows dealt his reputation by journalists, Ferrell asks for a reexamination of Harding's place in American history.
This biography introduces readers to Warren G. Harding including his early political career and key events from Harding's administration including the Teapot Dome scandal. Information about his childhood, family and personal life is included. A timeline, fast facts, and sidebars provide additional information. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Checkerboard Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.
Mix hundreds of millions of dollars in petroleum reserves; rapacious oil barons and crooked politicians; under-the-table payoffs; murder, suicide, and blackmail; White House cronyism; and the excesses of the Jazz Age. The result: the granddaddy of all American political scandals, Teapot Dome. In The Teapot Dome Scandal, acclaimed author Laton McCartney tells the amazing, complex, and at times ribald story of how Big Oil handpicked Warren G. Harding, an obscure Ohio senator, to serve as our twenty-third president. Harding and his so-called “oil cabinet” made it possible for the oilmen to secure vast oil reserves that had been set aside for use by the U.S. Navy. In exchange, the oilmen paid off senior government officials, bribed newspaper publishers, and covered the GOP campaign debt. When news of the scandal finally emerged, the consequences were disastrous for the nation and for the principles in the plot to bilk the taxpayers: Harding’s administration was hamstrung; Americans’ confidence in their government plummeted; Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall was indicted, convicted, and incarcerated; and others implicated in the affair suffered similarly dire fates. Stonewalling by members of Harding’s circle kept a lid on the story–witnesses developed “faulty” memories or fled the country, and important documents went missing–but contemporary records newly made available to McCartney reveal a shocking, revelatory picture of just how far-reaching the affair was, how high the stakes, and how powerful the conspirators. In giving us a gimlet-eyed but endlessly entertaining portrait of the men and women who made a tempest of Teapot Dome, Laton McCartney again displays his gift for faithfully rendering history with the narrative touch of an accomplished novelist.
This book tells a true story, and like all true stories, it has many different beginnings. It begins with Warren G. Harding's death in August 1923, and it begins with Timothy Wright's trip to New England in January 1933 to find out more about Harding's death, and it begins with Zachary Peters's discovery of Wright's unpublished record of what he found. Who Killed Warren G. Harding? opens with Harding's years as a small-town, small-time journalist and Wright's years as a major reporter and columnist and companion of presidents, including Harding, and Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. Peters's curiosity about Harding led him to Wright, which led him back to Harding. What he found out could have changed everything. As readers browse through the fascinating pages of this book, they will discover a gripping narrative of what Timothy Wright learned on that day in New England and the days that followed. He never published what he found, a decision that will explain itself in the course of the story. When he died, Wright left his papers a vast and valuable collection of material to the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress and the Hoover Institute on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford. Zachary Peters decided to publish his work so that the world may know of Wright's remarkable story.
In The Strange Death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which was first published in this revised edition in 1959, American medical researcher Emanuel M. Josephson addresses his controversial conspiracy theory surrounding the basis of the power of the Roosevelt-Delano Dynasty.
