IN THE DAYS OF McKINLEY
by Margaret Leech
ISBN 978-0-945707-24-0 $37.50
686 pages including acknowledgments, notes & references and index
"Allan Nevins says: "McKinley has waited for an
able biography, but he has in the end been remarkably fortunate. A more
thorough, discerning and delightfully written book on him and his era could
hardly be imagined. Miss Leech presents a great body of new facts, and
what is more important, an acute, independent and courageous set of judgments
on McKinley, Hanna, the currency and tariff struggles, the Spanish War, and
overseas expansion. It is a full-bodied, exciting story. Out of
it emerges a convincing presentation of McKinley as a finer spirit and firmer
President than most men have supposed, and a fresh impression of an era of
transition and adventure for the nation."
In this immensely readable book Margaret Leech has written
absorbingly of a little-known personage of our past. McKinley emerges
as a man of charm and certain wry wit - - courteously reticent, and little
understood even by his closest friends.
With her skill as a writer and her sharp sense of drama, Miss
Leech places McKinley against the background of his period and among his contemporaries.
In the Days of McKinley, as Mr. Nevins has said, "will satisfy the historical
student as the best treatment yet given a neglected leader and stirring epoch;
it will appeal to the general reader as a work of fine literary art."
