Many of my readers have probably heard of the American Presidents Series formerly organized under general editor and influential presidential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. The series does not go into extreme depth, but it provides a place to begin for those interested in learning about any of the United States' chief executives from George Washington to George W. Bush. I have read about 6 or 7 of the books in the series in the past, including those of James Monroe, Rutherford Hayes, Calvin Coolidge, and Gerald Ford. Each has a different style to it and a somewhat unique focus depending on the author in charge of the specific president. The website for the series explains accurately that the books are "compact enough for the busy reader, lucid enough for the scholar."
The part of the series dedicated to Warren G. Harding was written by a quite notable figure: former White House Counsel for President Richard Nixon from 1970 to 1973, John W. Dean. As a member of the Nixon administration, Dean was involved in the cover-up of the Watergate scandal and plead guilty to obstruction of justice. He is still alive and has worked to rehabilitate his image while writing books on the Nixon years and his critiques of the modern conservative movement characterized by the Christian Right and the influence of the unitary executive theory in the Bush and Trump administrations. In 2004, Dean's book on Harding was published for the American Presidents Series.
Just as he has worked to rehabilitate his own image following the scandal-ridden Nixon years, Dean explained his interest in a rehabilitation of the Harding reputation. "Warren G. Harding is best known as America's worst president. A compelling case can be made, however, that to reach such a judgement one must ignore much of the relevant information about Harding and his presidency," he begins in his introduction. I heartily agree that Warren G. Harding does not belong at the bottom of the list of presidents, but I also worried going into this book that it would not be critical enough of the real failures of Harding and of his less stellar appointees to various cabinet level positions. Luckily, Dean devotes time in the final chapter of the book to a thorough explanation of the abuses of the law undertaken by the likes of men like Albert Fall and Harry Daugherty. He also includes useful critiques from Harding's contemporaries when discussing his major policies, allowing the reader to come to an informed conclusion after hearing the sides for and against such actions. Dean also keeps his personal history out of the pursuit of honesty in research from what I could observe while reading. As he explains, it was not the Watergate - Teapot Dome comparisons which piqued his interest in Harding; "it was while living in Harding's hometown of Marion, Ohio, that Harding first came to [his] attention." Dean shows care and passion for treating Harding's legacy with respect, and he bemoans at times both the overly praise-filled "biographies" of Harding produced in the early 1920s and the subsequent vicious attacks on his character based on rumors and hungry journalists. His book paints a middle view of a president perhaps not fully cut out for his job but certainly better at politics than is commonly assumed. Dean lays out - to my joy when returning for reference - Harding's accomplishments in office chronologically, and he includes a timeline of the man's major life events in the back of the book. Yet the book did not read as a dry list of information from my perspective. Yes, it treads on no new ground and has now-outdated references claiming Nan Britton's child was not fathered by Harding (we now have DNA evidence to confirm this lineage), but since many Harding books are old, hard to find, and often of questionable quality to historians, this introduction is probably one of the more valuable parts of the generally simplistic American Presidents Series.