Book Review: President McKinley by Robert W. Merry

President McKinley: Architect of the American Century by Robert W. Merry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Though nowadays overshadowed by his young, energetic successor that built upon his foreign policy successes in history, if not for his transformative Presidency the 20th Century could have gone differently for the United States. President McKinley: Architect of the American Century by Robert W. Merry explores the four and a half years of William McKinley in office and whether he led events or where led by them.

Merry begins his biography by leading up to its end, the assassination of McKinley in Buffalo at the Pan-American Exposition after the recently reelected President made a speech that seemed to show him turning towards freer trade and away from the protective tariffs that had defined his political career. After this dramatic beginning, Merry goes back to the first McKinleys to arrive in the Ohio territory where the future 25th President would live his life when not in the Union Army or in politics. Quickly going through McKinley’s early years, Merry spent a little more time following McKinley’s military career and how he rose quickly from a private to a Lieutenant within a year before finishing the war as a Major. After quickly covering McKinley’s time in law school, Merry covered his early years in Canton as a rising lawyer and meeting his future wife, Ida. As McKinley’s political career began and slowly took off, Merry slowed the pace of the narrative to give more facts including the how McKinley became a specialist on the tariff and dynamics of the Ohio Republican party that would impact his career. Once McKinley is in the White House, Merry slows down the narrative and focuses on the eventual four and a half years the redefined the United States at the end of the 19th Century leading to the 20th on the world stage from the lead up to and through the Spanish-American War to the Insurgency in the Philippines afterwards and the Boxer Rebellion in which the United States became a Great Power. Though McKinley’s time in office is now viewed as more foreign policy Presidency, McKinley himself had wanted to focus domestically more and Merry covered the many issues at home from the tariff to the gold standard to anti-imperialist sentiment that McKinley dealt with.

Merry began and ended his Presidential biography with how McKinley having been reelected based on his accomplishments of his first term was evolving his long-held political positions to meet new requirements to set up and complete his view of McKinley making decisions then incrementally push the political attitudes of others towards supporting his new position. Throughout Merry’s look at McKinley’s time in office, he showed evidence of McKinley’s incremental decision making and its high success rate but also the times when events moved too fast and how McKinley dealt with those events. Though focused on McKinley’s time in office more than the rest of his life, Merry’s biographical background of McKinley before his Presidency was fine but at times went back and forth in time during his political career that made things hard to follow and anticipate.

President McKinley is a well-written, informative political biography by Robert W. Merry of the 25th President’s time in office and how he made the decisions he made. While not a thorough biography of McKinley, it succeeds at it’s aim at covering the four and a half years that dramatically changed the United States standing in the world.

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