3/8: 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents by David Pietrusza (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 2024
⏱️ 14 minutes
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Summary
3/8: 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents by David Pietrusza (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/1920-Year-Presidents-David-Pietrusza/dp/0786721022
The presidential election of 1920 was one of the most dramatic ever. For the only time in the nation's history, six once-and-future presidents hoped to end up in the White House: Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, and Theodore Roosevelt. It was an election that saw unprecedented levels of publicity -- the Republicans outspent the Democrats by 4 to 1 -- and it was the first to garner extensive newspaper and newsreel coverage. It was also the first election in which women could vote. Meanwhile, the 1920 census showed that America had become an urban nation -- automobiles, mass production, chain stores, and easy credit were transforming the economy and America was limbering up for the most spectacular decade of its history, the roaring '20s. Award-winning historian David Pietrusza's riveting new work presents a dazzling panorama of presidential personalities, ambitions, plots, and counterplots -- a picture of modern America at the crossroads.
1920 Prohibition dance
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is |
| 0:05.0 | CBS, I and the world. I'm John Bachelor with the author and historian David Patricia. The book is 1920, the year of the six presidents. |
| 0:14.0 | We've seen three of them so far. |
| 0:16.0 | Teddy Roosevelt, who's gone in January of 1919, |
| 0:19.0 | Woodrow Wilson, who's frail and will be |
| 0:22.0 | for the rest of his life he dies in 1924. |
| 0:25.4 | And Warren G. Harding, who will not live out his first term. |
| 0:31.0 | We turn now to the vice presidents of the moment and one who is either a president or a |
| 0:37.0 | vice president for both parties. We begin with FDR, a much different personality than we know him from his time in the White House. |
| 0:46.7 | He was a Harvard graduate after three years. |
| 0:49.8 | His family was, well as David presents them snootier than the rich families of New York State. |
| 0:57.0 | Very snooty, very well connected. |
| 1:00.0 | FTR was lucky enough to have a dominating mother who took care of him and his reputation |
| 1:05.6 | the rest of his life. |
| 1:07.4 | He met Eleanor Roosevelt in 1905, 1992 early early in his life, |
| 1:14.0 | and proposed to her and they married. |
| 1:17.0 | And so he is, and they have five children who survive. |
| 1:20.0 | But when the period of time we're looking at, FDR is ambitious for more than he's won so far, which is a state senate seat from Duchess County, and then as his older uncle cousin |
| 1:35.9 | Teddy Roosevelt he asks for the Wilson administration to make him assistant secretary of Navy |
| 1:41.6 | and because Josephus Daniels, the Secretary of the Navy from |
| 1:44.8 | North Carolina who likes white suits, is much away. Franklin Roosevelt called |
| 1:51.2 | Frank. He's not called F. D.R. at this time, although we're going to |
... |
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