From Publishers Weekly
Some histories interpret new evidence and add to our store of knowledge. Some, relying on others' research, simply tell a known story. Chace's work is the best of the latter kind: a lively, balanced and accurate retelling of an important moment in American history. Even though the 1912 election wasn't the election that changed the country (there have been several), it was a critical one. It gave us Woodrow Wilson, though only by a plurality of the popular vote (albeit a huge electoral majority) and so gave us U.S. intervention in WWI and Wilsonian internationalism. Because of former president Theodore Roosevelt's rousing candidacy as nominee of the short-lived Bull Moose, or Progressive, Party, the campaign deepened the public's acceptance of the idea of a more modern and activist presidency. Because Eugene Debs, the great Socialist, gained more votes for that party (6% of the total) than ever before or since, the election marked American socialism's political peak. What of the ousted incumbent, William Howard Taft? Chace (Acheson, etc.) succeeds in making him a believable, sympathetic character, if a lackluster chief executive. What made the 1912 campaign unusual was that candidates of four, not just two, parties vied for the presidency. The race was also marked by a basic decency, honesty and quality of debate not often seen again. Chace brings sharply alive the distinctive characters in his fast-paced story. There won't soon be a better-told tale of one of the last century's major elections. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–According to Chace, the election of 1912 was "a defining moment in American history." When Theodore Roosevelt's choice for successor, William Howard Taft, failed to support his reforms, Roosevelt left the GOP convention to run against Taft on the Bull Moose Progressive ticket. This bitter split in the Republican party was ultimately responsible for Woodrow Wilson's unexpected victory. A fourth candidate, Eugene V. Debs, an experienced and influential orator who was later imprisoned for espionage, ran as a Socialist representing labor. Chace makes this election come alive through careful research and clear writing. Describing the primaries, the personalities, the conventions, the campaigns, the issues, the race, and the aftermath, the book often reads like a suspense novel. Readers will be able to make valid comparisons between the 2004 presidential race and the 1912 election. Illustrations include good-quality, black-and-white photos of the candidates, their wives, and their families; several political cartoons; and a campaign poster of Debs. This is a valuable resource for those interested in the American electoral process and for American history and government students.–Pat Bender, The Shipley School, Bryn Mawr, PA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Kevin Phillips once wrote that Americans achieve through presidential elections what in other countries it takes a revolution to accomplish. The noted intellectual provocateur was exaggerating, of course. But, on occasion, our quadrennial circuses do produce or certify durable shifts in power. Andrew Jackson's triumph in 1828 ushered in an age of mass parties based on the needs and prejudices of ordinary white voters. Lincoln's victory in 1860 led directly to the Civil War (so much for elections substituting for armed conflict). Lashed to the Depression, Herbert Hoover lost the election of 1932 more than Franklin Roosevelt won it. But FDR, backed by a new multi-ethnic coalition, went on to build the modern welfare-warfare state that governs us still. James Chace would include the contest of 1912 in that select group. The election, he writes, "introduced a conflict between progressive idealism . . . and conservative values" that raged through the rest of the 20th century and continues today. Obviously, President George W. Bush now waves the banner of the right; only a publisher's deadline kept the author from naming John Kerry the latest defender of the liberal alternative. To flesh out his claim, Chace offers a brisk, consistently entertaining narrative that is alive both to politics and personality. The four serious candidates in 1912 were all men of intellectual substance, able to debate the major question of the day: how to sustain economic growth without widening the gulf between the corporate rich and everyone else. Republican President William Howard Taft and Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs occupied the right and left poles. The incumbent feared that a true crackdown on the mighty trusts that ruled the marketplace would endanger prosperity; the radical wanted to abolish private capital altogether. Running on the Progressive ticket, Theodore Roosevelt favored strict regulation of big business; Democrat Woodrow Wilson argued that the state should break up monopolies, not just force them to behave responsibly. Taft was never comfortable on the stump and spent more time that fall playing golf than giving speeches. But the other three contenders were gifted orators who drew huge, adoring crowds. Chace describes Debs reaching out his long, bony arms to working-class audiences, urging them to "tear up privilege by the roots, and consecrate the earth and all its fullness to the joy and service of all humanity." He recounts how Roosevelt delivered a spirited hour-long address minutes after a would-be assassin shot him in the chest. He captures Wilson's success at shedding his Ivy League hauteur to emerge as a strong advocate of the rights of labor and small business. The most affecting passages in the book describe the troubled relationship between Taft and TR. The rotund incumbent owed his office to Roosevelt, and the two had been close friends. Their break -- caused by a blend of clashes over principle and fits of pique -- split the Republicans, then the majority party, in two. It made Wilson's victory in 1912 all but inevitable. But the rift always tormented the kinder, gentler Taft. By a lucky accident, the two men met six years later in a Chicago hotel. Though they conversed warmly and at length, the two never spoke again. Chace, a gifted biographer, appreciates the multiple threads that weave pathos with power. Alas, a good story does not make up for the lack of sound historical judgment. Every contest that dethrones an incumbent president "changes the country." But Chace doesn't make clear why he thinks 1912 was a major pivot on which American politics turned. He describes TR as both a conservative and a radical and so can't speculate on how a new Roosevelt administration might have differed from Wilson's. In fact, despite his campaign rhetoric, the Democrat knew he could not destroy the power of big business and thus was satisfied, during his tenure, when Congress enacted a progressive income tax, the Federal Reserve Act and somewhat tougher ground rules for corporate behavior. Chace does mention that Debs's six percent of the vote in 1912 marked the zenith of Socialist strength in America. But, given the chronic weakness of the Marxist left in this country, that hardly qualifies the election as a major departure. There was one contest that decisively punctuated the long stretch between the presidencies of Lincoln and FDR -- one that, in Chace's florid phrase, "tackled the central question of America's exceptional destiny." In 1896, William McKinley bested William Jennings Bryan in a campaign that many Americans likened to a civil war, fought with clashing visions of the future instead of guns. McKinley's victory over Bryan's coalition of left-wing Democrats and Populists ended the most serious challenge that Eastern industrialists, based in the growing cities, would ever face. Any realistic chance for a "producer's republic," ruled by wage-earners and small farmers, died that year. As stirring as it was, the 1912 campaign neither signified nor resulted in such a momentous change. Unlike during the hot race between Bryan and McKinley, the identity of the victor was never in serious doubt. And Americans seemed to sense that, despite all the eloquence, the stakes were rather limited. In 1912, for the first time since the beginning of the modern party system, fewer than 60 percent of eligible voters turned up at the polls. The rate has not climbed much higher since then. It's not the kind of "destiny" to which a democracy should aspire. Reviewed by Michael KazinCopyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.


From Booklist
The extraordinary presidential election of 1912 featured four serious candidates: the incumbent William Howard Taft, a Republican; former president Theodore Roosevelt, who bolted the Republican Party and ran as the Bull Moose candidate; Woodrow Wilson, Democrat governor of New Jersey; and the Socialist candidate, Eugene Debs. Professor Chace asserts that the election was a defining moment in American political history. The Republican rejection of Roosevelt and his progressive policies placed power in the hands of conservatives and their big-business backers; Chace draws a direct line from them to the triumph of Reagan-style conservatism. Wilson's triumph committed the Democratic Party to an activist central government, nudged in that direction by the surprisingly strong showing of Debs. Chace's links between that election and present political stands are debatable, but his portrayals of the four players are fascinating. This is a valuable look at how and why our current political culture has evolved. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
Ronald Steel author of In Love with Night 1912 relates with brio, high drama, and authority the struggle of four powerful men fighting not only for the presidency but for the soul of American politics. James Chace brings vividly to life the election that shaped the nation's future, and in doing so illuminates the momentous choices Americans faced then and face again today.

Ron Chernow author of Titan and Alexander Hamilton James Chace has served up a rich, irresistible slice of Americana in recounting the storied 1912 presidential campaign. He gives us red-blooded American politics as it was once practiced, complete with bunting and brass bands, whistle-stop tours and frenzied, whooping crowds, shady bosses and spirited reformers deadlocked in sweltering conventions. So many major themes of the coming century were first enunciated here. Best of all, Chace supplies sharply etched portraits of the four leather-lunged, barnstorming giants -- Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, and Eugene Debs -- who waged this most memorable contest. 1912 seems like the perfect home companion for this or any other presidential election year.

David Fromkin author of In the Time of the Americans and Europe's Last Summer Roosevelt, Wilson, Taft, Debs -- four of America's political giants in the decades when the twentieth century was young -- each commanded the enthusiastic faith of millions. The country's two-party system, unable to contain the clashing ambitions of all four, broke down in the presidential election of 1912. This is the riveting story that James Chace tells in his important new book, 1912, which is peopled with outsized, colorful characters and punctuated by wonderful anecdotes. It has much to tell us that is of value today, and it abounds in 'what ifs': moments when, but for some minor accident, American, and even world, history might have turned around and gone the other way.


Review
Richard Norton Smith author of Patriarch James Chace is a great storyteller, capturing in prose as vivid as the year itself all the poignancy and egotism, crusading zeal and authentic passion of an electrifying contest for America's soul.


Book Description
Four extraordinary men sought the presidency in 1912. Theodore Roosevelt was the charismatic and still wildly popular former president who sought to redirect the Republican Party toward a more nationalistic, less materialistic brand of conservatism and the cause of social justice. His handpicked successor and close friend, William Howard Taft, was a reluctant politician whose sole ambition was to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Amiable and easygoing, Taft was the very opposite of the restless Roosevelt. After Taft failed to carry forward his predecessor's reformist policies, an embittered Roosevelt decided to challenge Taft for the party's nomination. Thwarted by a convention controlled by Taft, Roosevelt abandoned the GOP and ran in the general election as the candidate of a third party of his own creation, the Bull Moose Progressives. Woodrow Wilson, the former president of Princeton University, astonished everyone by seizing the Democratic nomination from the party bosses who had made him New Jersey's governor. A noted political theorist, he was a relative newcomer to the practice of governing, torn between his fear of radical reform and his belief in limited government. The fourth candidate, labor leader Eugene V. Debs, had run for president on the Socialist ticket twice before. A fervent warrior in the cause of economic justice for the laboring class, he was a force to be reckoned with in the great debate over how to mitigate the excesses of industrial capitalism that was at the heart of the 1912 election. Chace recounts all the excitement and pathos of a singular moment in American history: the crucial primaries, the Republicans' bitter nominating convention that forever split the party, Wilson's stunning victory on the forty-sixth ballot at the Democratic convention, Roosevelt's spectacular coast-to-coast whistle-stop electioneering, Taft's stubborn refusal to fight back against his former mentor, Debs's electrifying campaign appearances, and Wilson's "accidental election" by less than a majority of the popular vote. Had Roosevelt received the Republican nomination, he almost surely would have been elected president once again and the Republicans would likely have become a party of reform. Instead, the GOP passed into the hands of a conservative ascendancy that reached its fullness with Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and the party remains to this day riven by the struggle between reform and reaction, isolationism and internationalism. The 1912 presidential contest was the first since the days of Jefferson and Hamilton in which the great question of America's exceptional destiny was debated. 1912 changed America.


About the Author
James Chace is the Paul W. Williams Professor of Government and Public Law at Bard College. The former managing editor of Foreign Affairs and editor of World Policy Journal, he is the author of eight previous books, including Acheson: The Secretary of State Who Created the American World, which was named Best Book of 1998 by the American Academy of Diplomacy. He lives in New York.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Four extraordinary men sought the presidency in 1912. Theodore Roosevelt was the charismatic and still wildly popular former president who sought to redirect the Republican Party toward a more nationalistic, less materialistic brand of conservatism and the cause of social justice. His handpicked successor and close friend, William Howard Taft, was a reluctant politician whose sole ambition was to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Amiable and easygoing, Taft was the very opposite of the restless Roosevelt. After Taft failed to carry forward his predecessor's reformist policies, an embittered Roosevelt decided to challenge Taft for the party's nomination. Thwarted by a convention controlled by Taft, Roosevelt abandoned the GOP and ran in the general election as the candidate of a third party of his own creation, the Bull Moose Progressives.

Woodrow Wilson, the former president of Princeton University, astonished everyone by seizing the Democratic nomination from the party bosses who had made him New Jersey's governor. A noted political theorist, he was a relative newcomer to the practice of governing, torn between his fear of radical reform and his belief in limited government. The fourth candidate, labor leader Eugene V. Debs, had run for president on the Socialist ticket twice before. A fervent warrior in the cause of economic justice for the laboring class, he was a force to be reckoned with in the great debate over how to mitigate the excesses of industrial capitalism that was at the heart of the 1912 election.

Chace recounts all the excitement and pathos of a singular moment in American history: the crucial primaries, the Republicans' bitter nominating convention that forever split the party, Wilson's stunning victory on the forty-sixth ballot at the Democratic convention, Roosevelt's spectacular coast-to-coast whistle-stop electioneering, Taft's stubborn refusal to fight back against his former mentor, Debs's electrifying campaign appearances, and Wilson's "accidental election" by less than a majority of the popular vote. Had Roosevelt received the Republican nomination, he almost surely would have been elected president once again and the Republicans would likely have become a party of reform. Instead, the GOP passed into the hands of a conservative ascendancy that reached its fullness with Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and the party remains to this day riven by the struggle between reform and reaction, isolationism and internationalism. The 1912 presidential contest was the first since the days of Jefferson and Hamilton in which the great question of America's exceptional destiny was debated. 1912 changed America.

FROM THE CRITICS

Richard Brookhiser - The New York Times

The presidential election of 1912 was a pro wrestling match among three champions, President William Howard Taft (Republican), former President Theodore Roosevelt (Republican turned Progressive) and future President Woodrow Wilson (Democrat). Throw in Eugene V. Debs, who ran better than any other Socialist in American history, and you have an unbeatable campaign story, which James Chace's lively and engrossing book 1912 fully captures. But Chace, a diplomatic historian, argues that the 1912 election was more than head butts and body slams: it ''introduced a conflict between progressive idealism . . . and conservative values'' that would dominate the politics of the 20th century, even as it recalled ''the great days of Jefferson and Hamilton'' and their fundamental debates over the nature of the Republic.

Michael Kazin - The Washington Post

… Chace offers a brisk, consistently entertaining narrative that is alive both to politics and personality … The most affecting passages in the book describe the troubled relationship between Taft and TR.

Publishers Weekly

Some histories interpret new evidence and add to our store of knowledge. Some, relying on others' research, simply tell a known story. Chace's work is the best of the latter kind: a lively, balanced and accurate retelling of an important moment in American history. Even though the 1912 election wasn't the election that changed the country (there have been several), it was a critical one. It gave us Woodrow Wilson, though only by a plurality of the popular vote (albeit a huge electoral majority) and so gave us U.S. intervention in WWI and Wilsonian internationalism. Because of former president Theodore Roosevelt's rousing candidacy as nominee of the short-lived Bull Moose, or Progressive, Party, the campaign deepened the public's acceptance of the idea of a more modern and activist presidency. Because Eugene Debs, the great Socialist, gained more votes for that party (6% of the total) than ever before or since, the election marked American socialism's political peak. What of the ousted incumbent, William Howard Taft? Chace (Acheson, etc.) succeeds in making him a believable, sympathetic character, if a lackluster chief executive. What made the 1912 campaign unusual was that candidates of four, not just two, parties vied for the presidency. The race was also marked by a basic decency, honesty and quality of debate not often seen again. Chace brings sharply alive the distinctive characters in his fast-paced story. There won't soon be a better-told tale of one of the last century's major elections. Agent, Suzanne Gluck, William Morris. (Apr.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

As the United States heads into a bitter presidential election, Chace provides an elegant and useful overview of one of the most crucial such contests in our history: the 1912 race in which Theodore Roosevelt ran as a Progressive, William Howard Taft as a Republican, Eugene V. Debs as a Socialist, and Woodrow Wilson as a Democrat. Wilson won and went on to become the first Democrat since Andrew Jackson to serve two consecutive terms in the White House. For Chace, this was a tragedy. On both foreign and domestic policy, Roosevelt would have made a stronger, more effective leader and, in Chace's view, many of the achievements of the New Deal would have been realized a generation earlier. One is struck, however, by the enduring conservatism of the American electorate. Taking the Taft vote and combining it with the conservative white Southerners who supported Wilson, it is not clear that even the 1912 election, often taken as a high-water mark in Progressive politics, showed a solid electoral majority for radical change.

Library Journal

Bard professor Chace reconstructs yet another controversial race for the presidency. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. Read all 7 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

In 1912, four formidable personalities of mythic proportions clashed in their quest for the presidency. This was a unique event in American history, and James Chace does full justice to a dramatic story.  — Arthur Schlesinger

Roosevelt, Wilson, Taft, Debs — four of America's political giants in the decades when the twentieth century was young — each commanded the enthusiastic faith of millions. The country's two-party system, unable to contain the clashing ambitions of all four, broke down in the presidential election of 1912. This is the riveting story that James Chace tells in his important new book, 1912, which is peopled with outsized, colorful characters and punctuated by wonderful anecdotes. It has much to tell us that is of value today, and it abounds in 'what ifs': moments when, but for some minor accident, American, and even world, history might have turned around and gone the other way.  — David Fromkin

James Chace has served up a rich, irresistible slice of Americana in recounting the storied 1912 presidential campaign. He gives us red-blooded American politics as it was once practiced, complete with bunting and brass bands, whistle-stop tours and frenzied, whooping crowds, shady bosses and spirited reformers deadlocked in sweltering conventions. So many major themes of the coming century were first enunciated here. Best of all, Chace supplies sharply etched portraits of the four leather-lunged, barnstorming giants — Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, and Eugene Debs — who waged this most memorable contest. 1912 seems like the perfect home companion for this or any other presidential election year.  — Ron Chernow

1912 relates with brio, high drama, and authority the struggle of four powerful men fighting not only for the presidency but for the soul of American politics. James Chace brings vividly to life the election that shaped the nation's future, and in doing so illuminates the momentous choices Americans faced then and face again today.  — Ronald Steel