Customer Reviews:
Highly recommended biography of our thirteenth President.......2007-09-23
I am currently reading a biography of every President in order. For Millard Fillmore the selection of Rayback's (amazon.com has spelling incrrect) one volume biography of our thirteenth President was an easy choice given the lack of alternatives and the positive reviews this book has received from other readers.
I am happy to say that I concur regarding the quality of this book. Rayback has written a comprehensive and interesting biography of Millard Fillmore that is a highly enjoyable read. Rayback get's the detail level just right and succeed's at painting a thorough portrait of Millard Fillmore's life, political career, and the times and issues in which he lived. The writing style is very readable and rarely does the book get dull.
The only criticism I have regarding this book is that it does seem to be slightly biased in favor of Fillmore and makes some assumptions regarding Fillmore's inner feelings and thoughts on certain events for which I am quite sure the author would be hard pressed to find definitive documentation. The book also portrays Fillmore as always being selfless, good intentioned and often a victim of his own magnaminity while his enemies (namely Thurlow Weed and William Seward) were motivated only by the pursuit of political power. My suspicion is the story is not quite as one sided as this but Rayback, in my opinion, does not adequately explain fully the motivations behind Weed's enmity towards Fillmore. My guess is Weed's abolitionism and sectionalism was at odds with Fillmore's more pragmatic opposition to slavery and conviction of the primacy of preserving the Union. With the hindsight of history I believe good points can be argued about both positions however Rayback defaults to Fillmore's point of view.
These criticisms aside, this is still a great biography and highly recommended.
Thoughtful & Well articulated Read.......2007-01-03
An excellent biography of a little known President. I was pleasantly surprised to find a well written and articulated biography. I think Robert Raybach, did a thorough job in his research and it shows in the detail of his writing. Millard Fillmore, is a better President then some of those who proceeded him and who immediately followed after him. His integrity was beyond reproach and he was a self made man. He was a pragmatist where as his successor treated the white house as a waffle house instead of with the same courage as Millard Fillmore. I highly recommend this biography to anyone who wishes to become more familiar with the 13th President of the United States. This biography should be in every high school and college and university across the country.
Best author I've read so far.......2006-03-14
Like many other students of history, I'm reading a biography of each president. Fillmore's life and the events of his day are laid out more clearly than any other author I've read so far. I learned (should I say 'understood') more from this reading than all the others. Highly recommended.
Fillmore--A Story of Unionism & Party Formation.......2005-04-29
This book narrates the life of Millard Fillmore through the lens of Unionism and the formation of the many political parties in which he was involved (Antimasonic, Whig, American [aka Know-Nothing]) or to which he was opposed (Liberty, Free Soil, Republican). Fillmore's dedication to the Union, especially in passing and implementing the Compromise of 1850, is well told. This book also serves to explain the rise and fall of a number of lesser known American political parties.
The book is well-written--one of the better ones, perhaps the best, in this series of American political biographies. It was one of the last written. The author relies on letters to Fillmore as one of the main sources, since his own letters are mostly missing. Generally the author is fair and balanced, although he portrays the struggle between Fillmore and Thurlow Weed rather naively as the battle between Good and Evil. He also brushes over Fillmore's willingness to allow slavery to exist as the price for preserving the Union--an opinion that was common at the start of Fillmore's career but increasingly anathema by the end of it.
The review on the dust jacket, quoted on this item's Amazon page, written by Roy Nichols, is manifestly unfair to the book and to Fillmore. The author is not nearly so naive as Nichols makes him out to be, and Fillmore, while not a great president, was not nearly the mediocrity and indecisive man as Nichols portrays him. Read the book (it's worth it) but not the dust jacket!
Dull Millard..........2005-01-14
Not so much a reappraisal of Fillmore as the first comprehensive gathering of the facts. Raybach's book is a scholarly effort, and it would be hard to criticise the concise way in which he retells the story of this unknown president. But even his best efforts cannot help the book from being dragged down by the essential blandness of its subject. Fillmore was not as good as the greatest presidents nor as bad as the worst. If you are looking for an undiscovered gem in the presidential rough best try Polk.
Customer Reviews:
The best way to learn the American presidents that I have seen.......2006-06-23
This book is the best and most fun ways to learn about the American Presidents that I have ever seen. For each president from Washington through Clinton, there is a brief caption regarding his life and accomplishments. There is also a drawing taken from a photo or portrait, a cartoon style drawing and associated play on words to aid in remembering the name and whom they succeeded. For example, the cartoon for Dwight Eisenhower shows the Eiffel Tower with eyes on it being held by a tree with eyes. The caption is "The tree-man is crawling up the side of a huge tower that has eyes on it. It must be the eyes-on-tower!" The cartoon for Harry Truman, who preceded Eisenhower, shows the tree-man.
One of the best books for learning history and social studies, I strongly recommend this book. If my children were of a suitable age, I would buy it for them.
Awesome.......2005-10-06
After one night, I knew all 43 presidents of the United States in order without looking. This book is AWESOME!!! :D
Memories Last.......2005-06-29
I had to memorize the presidents in the fourth grade. I'm in college now and I can still remember everything from this book. Not only does it work, but it's fun to look at the pictures and learn the presidents. People of all ages can learn from this book.
Best way to memorize the presidents.......2004-09-11
For years, I have tried to get my reluctant memory to soak up the list of US presidents -- even using goofy mnemonic pictures from GENERAL memory books.
That picture stuff doesn't work, I thought.
I was wrong. After a few days of browsing through the funny memory cartoons and doing the quizzes, I know the presidents cold. And so will you.
I got my child to read this book with me as it's not supposed to be a "grownup" way to study the US presidents. Baloney! It's a great memory book for readers of all ages.
Unbelievable!!!!!!!.......2004-04-01
I am in a presidential class at a Univeristy and I had to learn all the presidents for class. I checked out the book and read it and within about 20 minutes i could write all 43 presidents from memory. This is unreal it really works!!!!
Book Description
Millard Fillmore has been mocked, maligned, or, most cruelly of all, ignored by generations of historians--but no more! This unbelievable new biography finally rescues the unlucky thirteenth U.S. president from the dustbin of history and shows why a man known as a blundering, arrogant, shallow, miserable failure was really our greatest leader.
In the first fully researched portrait of Fillmore ever written, the reader can finally come face-to-face with a misunderstood genius. By meticulously extrapolating outrageous conclusions from the most banal and inconclusive of facts, The Remarkable Millard Fillmore reveals the adventures of an unjustly forgotten president. He fought at the Battle of the Alamo! He shepherded slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad! He discovered gold in California! He wrestled with the emperor of Japan! It is a list of achievements that puts those of Washington and Lincoln completely in the shade.
Refusing to be held back by established history or recorded fact, here George Pendle paints an extraordinary portrait of an ordinary man and restores the sparkle to an unfairly tarnished reputation.
Customer Reviews:
Pendle for President!.......2007-08-07
Pull on your nightcap, drop an extra marshmallow in your cocoa and plump a fresh pillow for teddy - bedtime will never be the same again! If you crave a little excitement before your nine hours of the dreamless then I wholeheartedly recommend Pendle's hilarious romp through one of the more obscure backwaters of American history as the perfect nightcap. This is rib-tickling, tummy-tingling writing of the highest caliber - a rollicking boys-own rampage through the ludicrous life of the unlucky 13th president of the USA. You will be utterly, unutterably delighted by some of the scrapes and japes that beset Fillmore in a playful commentary that will have you wiping the tears from your eyes (tears of joy, such a refreshing change). Stop reading this review and buy it now (I said stop reading).
A sophomoric insult to real biographers and historians.......2007-07-31
This book is neither fish nor fowl: neither a real biography (it should be catalogued, shelved and marketed as "Humor" and not as Biography) nor particularly funny satire. It's really more of a sophomoric mocking of biographers and historians who conduct actual research and write compelling stories of people's lives. It's just not funny, but rather silly in a way-too-full-of-himself way. Do not waste your money.
Hard to tell where the "joke" is.......2007-07-08
As we learned with the author's poorly researched last book, he is not above making things up when it suits his theory or whim. Here, he makes the whole book up in a misguided effort to be amusing in an effete drawing room style. The truth is that the entire book would amount to a three minute Saturday Night Live sketch or maybe two pages in MAD magazine. I really don't know why you would bother with this book.
Fascinating and deeply chucklesome.......2007-06-15
George Pendle has managed literary alchemy turning a dull base president into gold. He writes so well that each sentence is a masterpiece of surrealist wordsmithery. One could be forgiven for being distracted or even dismissive of the footnotes, but they are as much part of the picture as the main text, and had me laughing out loud regularly. There are flavours of monty python ridiculousness, the flashman novels and the language skills of will self - i eagerly await this author's next offering.
Bog-lover, mystic, doofus, president.......2007-05-22
This is easily the funniest book ever written about any American president (I'm looking at you, Melville) -- and what a president. Fillmore's inspiring story provides great guidance to all Americans as we approach the 2008 presidential campaign, because surely we should be in search of a successor worthy of Pendle's Fillmore, a man blessed by fortune who nevertheless was without guile. In short, this is a great book about a great man and who the hell cares about what Thurlow Weed thought about tariffs on whale oil?
Average customer rating:
- Millard Fillmore and the Great Compromise of 1850
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Millard Fillmore: Our 13th President (Our Presidents)
Gerry Souter , and
Janet Souter
Manufacturer: Child's World
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding
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ASIN: 1567668380 |
Book Description
A thorough, illustrated biography discussing the president's childhood, his career, his family, and his term as President of the United States. Includes a time line and glossary.
Customer Reviews:
Millard Fillmore and the Great Compromise of 1850.......2002-04-30
You really have to appreciate the way weird things happen twice in the American Presidency. As we all know, if you father was president and you have the same first name but a different middle name, then like John Quincy Adams and George W. Bush you can become president despite getting less popular votes than your opponent. At the start of the 19th-century there was something similar, in that the two times the Whigs elected Presidents, both of whom had been famous generals, the Presidents died in office. Consequently, there were four Whig presidents, only two of whom were elected. The final Whig president was Millard Fillmore, the subject of this volume in the Our Presidents series.
In this juvenile biography by Gerry and Janet Souter, students will learn of Fillmore's difficult youth, where he was apprenticed several times. Falling in love with his slightly older teacher, Fillmore succeeded in becoming a lawyer, worthy of her hand in marriage. Involved in politics in Buffalo, Fillmore was elected to the U.S. Congress and somehow became the Whig's Vice Presidential nominee to run with Zachary Taylor. This sets up the main political drama of his life, when there was the possibility that Fillmore would have to cast the deciding vote as President of the Senate on the Great Compromise of 1850, offered up by Henry Clay. The belief was that Taylor would veto the bill if it passed, but then the President died. Consequently, it was Fillmore who signed the bill into law, basically alienating both the north and the south. Clearly, this incident was basically the only high drama of Fillmore's presidency.
This is an informative introductory biography of Fillmore, from which I learned that his wife contracted pneumonia at Franklin Pierce's inauguration and died shortly after. Detailed sidebars tell about the Antimasons, the Mexican War, and the Buffalo Historical Society. The margins of this book is filled with Interesting Facts from Fillmore's life and times (e.g., he never met Zachary Taylor until after they won the 1848 election). The book is illustrated with historic paintings, etchings, and early photographs. In terms of providing introductory information about the Presidents, this series does an excellent job.
Average customer rating:
- So much detail, so poorly written
- Reads more like a giant pamphlet than a biography
- Millard Fillmore - Robert J. Scarry
- An Excellent and Thorough Biography
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Millard Fillmore
Robert J. Scarry
Manufacturer: McFarland & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0786408693 |
Book Description
From the time he left office in 1853, thirteenth United States president Millard Fillmore has become increasingly shrouded in mystery and stereotyped by traditional anecdotes that have come to be accepted as fact. The real Millard Fillmore was not the weak and boring figurehead many Americans today believe he was. This account of Fillmore's life is drawn largely from the Fillmore family's personal papers, many of which have previously been suppressed, unavailable, or believed lost for decades. Covering Fillmore's life from his ancestry to his presidency, and finally to his death and descent into obscurity, this history presents Fillmore as his own letters do, and as his friends, family members, and contemporaries saw him, as a distinguished and honorable man who was also a strong and effective president. This comprehensive work includes a genealogy of the Fillmore family, a brief chronology of Fillmore's life and career, a bibliography, and an index. Photographs complement this carefully researched portrait of a wrongfully underrated American leader
Customer Reviews:
So much detail, so poorly written.......2003-11-09
I sympathize with chefdevergue who also reviewed this incredible biography. Is McFarland & Company a vanity press? Did the editors run out of time?
First, the good news:
I have read hundreds of biographies of which about two dozen are of American presidents. I remain surprised and disappointed at the futility of my search for cradle-to-grave biographies of the less famous presidents. For example, try to find such a biography of John Tyler. So I really appreciate the comprehensive, detailed treatment of Fillmore (although the author never explains how Fillmore supported himself from the time he left the presidency until he married a rich widow). I applaud the inclusion of a timeline, genealogy, illustrations, index, notes, and bibliography.
Now to the reasons why I shook my head till it started to rattle:
How can a book this long and expensive ($75.00) escape critical editing and some semblance of a peer review? Page after page, I shook my head in amazement as I wrestled with weak sentence construction, loose paragraph structure (as chefdevergue explained in an earlier review), frequent double prepositions, improper antecedents, and the ever present Department of Redundancy Department.
Of course the author is on a mission, not to rehabilitate Fillmore to the status of at least an "average" ranking among presidents, but just to rescue Fillmore from obscurity. I wonder how poor Millard would feel about becoming well known as a result of this biography.
If you want informed political analysis to set the context for Fillmore's adult life, look elsewhere but be prepared to look far and wide. This is not scholarly work, but rather a detailed story.
Considering the dearth of alternatives for adult readers, those who are interested in learning about the life of Fillmore should put on their neck braces so they don't shake their heads too much, get comfortable, and read this book.
Reads more like a giant pamphlet than a biography.......2003-10-02
While I agree with the author that Millard Fillmore has been unjustly maligned by historians as a weak boring president, I found this biography to more of a disservice to Fillmore than anything else.
Detail in a biography is nice, but this book reads more like a giant pamphlet, with endless recitation of one tidbit after another, than a coherent, analytical biography. The paragraphs often seem to have nothing to do with each other; the author states a single fact, cites his source, and then moves on. The facts being stated sometimes seem to be more than the reader really needs:
"Fillmore wrote home about accidents. In 1838, a head-on collision of locomotives occurred on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad which prevented a passenger train arriving with mail. In 1841, a flood on the Susquehanna River carried away a steamboat to Chesapeake Bay. A rescue boat was sent for relief." (p. 123)
What usefulness such information serves in understanding Fillmore (other than the fact that he wrote letters to his family) is beyond me. Unfortunately, the book is full of such paragraphs.
When he is not inundating the reader with minutiae, Scarry tends to sound like a character witness in Fillmore's trial. He clearly reacts personally to what he perceives as negative attacks on Fillmores character, and indignantly leaps to Fillmore's defense. Since I don't find Fillmore to be a particularly controversial historical figure, I find this passion to be somewhat misplaced. It tends to detract from a sense of objectivity on the author's part.
When all is said and done, I guess you can say that this is informative a biography on Fillmore as the reader can expect to find. Being informative does not necessarily equate with being a good biography. For example, one could read Robert Remini's biography of Daniel Webster to get a contrast on how one can write about this time period. Fillmore is important to a certain degree, but I really don't think his importance merits a biography as exhaustive as this.
This is not a terrible biography, and it does fill a void regarding Fillmore. However, the author would be well-advised to remove much of the minutiae, which would cut the book's length in half. The tedious nature of the book means many readers may lose interest halfway through.
Millard Fillmore - Robert J. Scarry.......2002-01-10
Robert Scarry was a retired history teacher and town and village historian for Moravia, New York. Scarry's own study of Fillmore spanded several decades. In this work, Mr. Scarry has probably created the definative work on our country's thirteenth president.
Robert Scarry has shown that much of what is commonly held to be true of Millard Fillmore is not. His earlier work (1965) on Fillmore was a small booklet that underwent several printings. Now, in his book, Millard Fillmore, Scarry has presented new material that stands even some of his earlier research on its head.
As a much-misunderstood figure in American history, Fillmore has both received blame for that which he should not be held to account for and not enough credit for the his overlooked or forgotten successes during his pre-civil war presidency.
Civil War period buffs and anyone intersted in the early days of our country and the presidentcy should get this book.
An Excellent and Thorough Biography.......2001-03-13
Historians have relegated Millard Fillmore to virtual obscurity. This biography, however, attempts to improve his image as a strong, effective, chief executive. The author traces Fillmore's lineage, childhood, law career, Congressional years, and presidency.
The author argues that Fillmore based his presidency on nationalism, Constitutional principles, and laissez-faire economy. Although opposed to slavery, Fillmore supported the Fugitive Slave Law as a compromise to avert Civil War. He supported the Compromise of 1850 that submitted California as a free state. To promote economic growth, he endorsed a moderate 20% tariff. He also appealed for the Transcontinental Railroad. According to the author, he strongly handled the Texas-New Mexico dispute. Fillmore advocated neutrality in foreign affairs with moderate diplomacy.
This book adroitly recognizes Millard Fillmore's accomplishments in an intelligent manner. The book has many interesting anecdotes and quotes that greatly embellish the narrative. For example, Fillmore's writings demonstrate an adherence to Constitutional principles, nationalism, and favorite foods, stand on slavery, and political ideology.
This book includes illustrations and thorough footnoting. The chronological format adds to my reading enjoyment. The appendix includes letters and notes at the end to supplement the text. An excellent bibliography gives the reader a list of books for further exploration. The book also includes a useful Millard Fillmore chronology about important dates and events. The lucid prose adds cogency in perhaps a too sympathetic biography.
Average customer rating:
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Biography Of Millard Fillmore
Ivory Chamberlain , and
Thomas M. Foote
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0548343322 |
Book Description
This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature.
Book Description
This fact-filled book will provide your students with biographical information about President Fillmore while they learn to draw the iconic symbols of his life and times.
Average customer rating:
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Millard Fillmore (Presidential Leaders)
Alison M. Behnke
Manufacturer: Lerner Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding
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ASIN: 0822514958 |
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