This was Normalcy: An Account of Party Politics During Twelve Republican Years: 1920-1932

In 1920, as the spiral of inflation gathered itself to mount to dizzy heights, Warren Gamaliel Harding was elected President of the United States. During the next two and a half years the pattern for "normalcy," which the nation followed for nearly twelve years, was firmly molded. What was that pattern and how closely does it concern us today in 1948? This book will leave no doubt in any reader's mind that the forces in the political arena then have their counterparts now; that a similar pattern may again emerge unless an aroused public takes matters out of the hands of the politicians. This is the story of those years when poker was the National Pastime and "the greatest Secretary of the Treasury since Alexander Hamilton" spoke for his fellow bankers. It is also the story of the Coolidge myth, of Hell-and-Maria Dawes, of Caribbean imperialism, and of Hoover, who so unfortunately held the bag at the crash. And on the other side of the fence here is the story of Fighting Bob LaFollette, of Norris and TVA, and of Al Smith, the Happy Warrior who finally partook of the bitterness with which he was attacked. Karl Schriftgiesser's pictures of party conventions and Congressional debates are enlightening. From his own considerable firsthand knowledge and with an experienced political reporter's nose for the trail he takes you right into the smoke-filled rooms and inner sanctums of the men who really held the reins in the Harding-Coolidge-Hoover era.--Adapted from dust jacket.