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WORK TITLE: Crash!
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://web.sbu.edu/history/ppayne/ * http://web.sbu.edu/history/ppayne/short_cv.htm * http://www.sbu.edu/academics/history/faculty-and-staff/payne-phillip * https://www.linkedin.com/in/phillip-payne-63128ab * http://www.sbu.edu/about-sbu/news-events/latest-news/news-release/2016/02/24/bonas-payne-talks-about-published-book-importance-of-thinking-about-history
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Marshall University, B.A., 1987; The Ohio State University, M.A., 1990, Ph.D., 1994.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Institute of Industrial Technology, Newark, OH, founding executive director, 1995-97; Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, OH, site manager of Warren G. Harding Home and Museum, 1997-98; St. Bonaventure University, St. Bonaventure, NY, professor, 1998–.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Mid-America: An Historical Review, Presidential History, Historian, Timeline, and Buckeye Hill Country: A Journal of Regional History. Contributor to books, including Builders of Ohio, edited by Warran Van tine and Michael Pierce, Ohio State University Press, 2003; Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies, edited by Jack Salzman, Cambridge University Press, 2004; Coded: Comics and Containment Cultulre in the 1950s, edited by Rafe York and Chris York, McFarland Press, 2012; and Comic Books and American Cultural History: An Anthology, edited by Matthew Pustz, Continuum, 2012.
SIDELIGHTS
Phillip G. Payne, a professor of history at St. Bonaventure University, teaches courses in public history and United States history. Before joining the St. Bonaventure faculty, he served as historic site manager of the Warren G. Harding Home and Museum, which is operated by the Ohio Historical Society. Payne’s published work, which includes journal articles on comic books and American culture, and has focused on themes in early twentieth-century U.S. history.
Dead Last
In his first book, Dead Last: The Public Memory of Warren G. Harding’s Scandalous Legacy, Payne examines the process by which President Warren G. Harding’s negative reputation was created. As the author notes, Harding is considered one of the worst presidents in U.S. history, and many scholars rank him as the worst of all. Elected president in 1921 after serving as a member of the Ohio Senate, lieutenant governor of Ohio, and U.S. senator from Ohio, Harding died in 1923 before completing his first term in office. During his brief administration he appointed wealthy cronies to top government positions, including cabinet posts, and became embroiled in several major scandals. Perhaps the most notorious of these was the Teapot Dome scandal, which was exposed after Harding’s death. In this incident, drilling rights to oil on federally-owned land were leased to private oil companies at very low rates, without the matter having first been put out for open bidding. A government investigation found that Harding’s Secretary of the Interior, Albert Bacon Fall, had accepted bribes from the oil companies; he was convicted and sentenced to prison. Harding’s reputation was also damaged by the alleged corruption of his attorney general, Harry M. Daugherty, and by rumors of Harding’s extramarital affairs.
Payne acknowledges that Harding was not a competent or effective chief executive, but argues that his reputation as “dead last” among U.S. presidents is unfair. The author cites numerous instances in which the media promoted unverified–and sometimes contradictory–claims about Harding. He was accused of being a Ku Klux Klan member, for example, but also of having African American ancestry. He was also accused of being a womanizer who had fathered a child out of wedlock; of being under the spell of his wife, a believer in occultism; and of being an alcoholic who had either taken his own life or been murdered. As Payne points out, though these stories have been discredited or shown to come from “implausible sources,” their portrait of Harding as an inept and morally bankrupt leader has stuck in the American consciousness. The author also observes that Harding’s stance on civil rights and civil liberties was far more progressive than that of his predecessor, Woodrow Wilson.
Reviewing Dead Last in Presidential Studies Quarterly, Stephen F. Knott said that the book “is what historical scholarship should be–it challenges the conventional wisdom and dissects the myths propagated by scholars with an agenda.” Choice contributor D.L. Wilson expressed similar admiration for the book, hailing it as “first-rank scholarship.”
Crash!
Crash! How the Economic Boom and Bust of the 1920s Worked is Payne’s attempt to explain the context behind the stock market collapse of 1929. He shows how the business culture of the early 1900s, unfettered by any government oversight or regulation, emphatically favored speculation and expansion, which grew to such a degree through the 1920s that the resulting bubble inevitably had to burst. Payne discusses the economic effects of the First World War; the influence of modern advertising and mass media; and the culture of hyperbolic optimism that fostered a belief in unlimited economic growth. When the market finally crashed, the resulting loss of public confidence became a key factor leading to the Great Depression.
Payne goes on to discuss the New Deal and its creation of legislation and policies that greatly expanded the federal government’s role in regulating the economy. Throughout the book, the author identifies parallels between the boom and bust era of the early twentieth century and the housing market bubble of the early 2000s, which crashed with devastating consequences in late 2007. Though Payne finds fault with the policies of Republican presidents including Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Ronald Reagan, he also criticizes Bill Clinton’s embrace of free trade and deregulation.
Reviewer Jason E. Taylor, writing for the Cambridge University Press Web Site, stated that Crash! “seems to imply that were it not for pools run by manipulators and a lack of oversight or regulatory enablers, that these eras would have been ordinary decades. But … even absent any malfeasance, these decades would likely have been prosperous and seen rising asset values.” Though Taylor acknowledged that the author admirably summarizes much material about New Deal policies, the reviewer found that Payne “seems to place far too much blame on pure fraud for driving the ‘new’ economies of the 1920s and the 1990s/2000s.” Choice reviewer S. Prisco III, however, deemed Crash! “one of the clearest explanations to date of the 1929 stock market collapse” and gave the book a strong recommendation.
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Payne, Phillip G., Dead Last: The Public Memory of Warren G. Harding’s Scandalous Legacy, Ohio University Press (Athens, OH), 2009.
PERIODICALS
Choice, October, 2009, D.L. Wilson, review of Dead Last, p. 375; April, 2016, S. Prisco III, review of Crash! How the Economic Boom and Bust of the 1920s Worked, p. 1208.
Presidential Studies Quarterly, December, 2010, Stephen F. Knott, review of Dead Last, p. 813.
Reference & Research Book News, August, 2009, review of Dead Last.
ONLINE
Anne’s Book Club, http://annehollidaysbookblog.blogspot.com/ (March 27, 2017), review of Crash!
Cambridge University Press Web Site, https://www.cambridge.org (March 4, 2017), Jason E. Taylor, review of Crash!
St. Bonaventure University Web Site, http://www.sbu.edu/ (March 27, 2017), Payne faculty profile.*
Payne, Phillip
TITLES/RESPONSIBILITIES
History Department Chair
Professor of history
ACADEMIC SCHOOL
School of Arts & Sciences
ACADEMIC DEPARTMENT
History
CONTACT INFORMATION
Office Phone: (716) 375-2460
E-mail: ppayne@sbu.edu
OFFICE LOCATION
Doyle Hall 132
COURSES TAUGHT
Public History Courses
HIST 206. Introduction to Public History
HIST 419. Digital History and Archival Practices
HIST 491. State and Local History (senior reading seminar)
HIST 495. Public History Internship
United States History Courses
HIST 201. United States History to 1865 (Survey I)
HIST 202. United States History since 1865 (Survey II)
HIST 429. Twentieth Century America in Film and History
HIST 475. World War II
HIST 491. United States Political History (senior reading seminar)
ACADEMIC DEGREES
Ph.D., Department of History, The Ohio State University, 1994.
M.A., Department of History, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, 1990
B.A., Marshall University, Huntington, W.Va., 1987
PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND
Historic Site Manager
President Warren G. Harding's Home and Museum, Marion, Ohio, May 1997-August 1998. Site operated by the Ohio Historical Society. Duties included:
administer the daily operation of the museum
preservation and care of Home and collection
developed interpretive and educational programs for the site
promoted the site to the public and participated in heritage tourism
Founding Executive Director
Institute of Industrial Technology, Newark, Ohio, June 1995-April 1997. The Institute (renamed The Works in 2001) is a not-for-profit educational facility and history museum created by the LeFevre Foundation in cooperation with Central Ohio Technical College. Duties:
oversaw the creation of the museum and educational center
served as historian and curator
supervised and participated in the restoration of the building and the design of the exhibits
supervised employees, volunteers, and interns
developed community support
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Positions
Academic Director, Western Hemisphere Study of United States Institutes for Student Leaders, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, St. Bonaventure University, Summer 2009, 2010, 2013.
Books
Crash! How the Economic Boom and Bust of the 1920s Worked. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015.
Dead Last: The Public Memory of Warren G. Harding’s Scandalous Legacy. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2009.
Articles and Chapters
With Paul J. Spaeth, “Agent of Change: The Evolution and Enculturation of Nick Fury,” In Matthew Pustz, ed., Comic Books and American Cultural History: An Anthology (Continuum: 2012), 184-201.
With Paul J. Spaeth, “Jack Kirby’s Challengers of the Unknown: Establishing Order in an Age of Anxiety,” in Rafe York and Chris York, ed., Coded: Comics and Containment Culture in the 1950s. (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland Press, 1912) pp. 68 - 77.
Other Publications
“Instant History and the Legacy of Scandal: The Tangled Memory of Warren G. Harding, Richard Nixon, and William Jefferson Clinton” in Jack Salzman, ed., Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies (Cambridge University Press), Volume 28, 2004, pp. 597-625.
“John C. Campbell and the Blending of Industrial Development and Moral Uplift in Early Ohio,” Warren Van Tine and Michael Pierce, eds., Builders of Ohio. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2003. Pp. 84–94.
“The Shadow of William Estabrook Chancellor: Warren G. Harding, Marion, Ohio, and the Issue of Race” Mid-America: An Historical Review. Volume 83, Number 1, Winter, 2001, pp. 39-62.
“Mixed Memories: The Warren G. Harding Memorial Association and The President’s Home Town Legacy.” The Historian Volume 62, Number 2, Winter 2001, pp. 257-74.
“The Accomplishments of Warren G. Harding” Presidential History (Vol. 1, No. 4) April 1999, pp. 4-15.
“Building the Warren G. Harding Memorial,” Timeline (Vol. 15, No. 5) September/October, 1998, pp. 18-29.
“Big Time Football in Ironton, Ohio: Small-Town Boosterism and the Early Days of Professional Football, 1919-1931,” Buckeye Hill Country: A Journal of Regional History. II (Spring, 1997): 7-23.
Scholarly Presentations
With Paul J. Spaeth, “Jack Kirby’s & Joe Simon’s (Captain) Americans,” Northeast Popular Culture Association,” Rochester, NY: October 26, 2012
With Paul J. Spaeth, “Agent of Change: The Evolution and Enculturation of Nick Fury,” Popular Culture Association Meeting, Boston, MA: April 14, 2012.
With Paul J. Spaeth, “Modern Myths and the Commercialization of the Apocalypse: Jack Kirby’s New Gods” presented at the Northeaster Modern Language Association Conference. Rochester, New York: March 17, 2012.
“Teapots, Milkshakes, and Metaphors: An Historical Analysis of the Upton Sinclair’s Oil! and Paul Anderson’s There Will Be Blood.” Southwest Texas PCA/ACA Conference. Albuquerque, New Mexico. February 25-28, 2009.
Invited Lectures and Working Groups
Working Group: Teaching Digital History and New Media, National Council on Public History, Ottawa, ON 2013.
“The 1912 Election and the Money Trust” as an invited Panelist for “The Great Debate Revisited: Remembering the 1912 Presidential Election and Its Relevance in 2012,” Daemen College Duns Scotus Lecture Series, October 23, 2012.
Phillip Payne
Professor at St. Bonaventure University
St. Bonaventure University The Ohio State University
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Teaching United States and Public History
Department Chair
Grant Writing
Supervising Internships
Specialties: I have worked with a granting and community organizations, including the Teaching American History program and the Study of the United States for Student Leaders program (SUSI). I have worked with the TAH program Teachers Discovering History as Historians program through the Jamestown Public Schools. For the SUSI program I served as academic director, working with the Institute for Training and Development to develop summer program for Latin American college students.
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Experience
St. Bonaventure University
Professor
Company NameSt. Bonaventure University
Dates EmployedAug 1998 – Present Employment Duration18 yrs 8 mos
Teach United States and Public History
Served as department chair for the six years
Served on a variety of committees
Written successful grants
Developed curriculum
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Saint Bonaventure University
Professor
Company NameSaint Bonaventure University
Dates Employed1998 – Present Employment Duration19 yrs
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Ohio Historical Society
Site Manager
Company NameOhio Historical Society
Dates EmployedMay 1997 – Aug 1998 Employment Duration1 yr 4 mos
See description See more about Site Manager, Ohio Historical Society
Institute of Industrial Technology
Director
Company NameInstitute of Industrial Technology
Dates EmployedJun 1995 – Aug 1997 Employment Duration2 yrs 3 mos
See description See more about Director, Institute of Industrial Technology
Education
The Ohio State University
The Ohio State University
Degree Name Ph.D. Field Of Study U. S. History
Dates attended or expected graduation 1988 – 1994
Graduate work in United States History
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Marshall University
Marshall University
Degree Name BA Field Of Study History
Dates attended or expected graduation 1987
Volunteering Experience & Causes
Aurora Arsenal
Volunteer Soccer Coach
Company NameAurora Arsenal
Featured Skills & Endorsements
History See 20 endorsements for History 20
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Accomplishments
Phillip has 7 courses7
Courses
Course nameUS History to 1865 History 201
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Projects
Project nameStudy of the United States for Student Leaders
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Publications
publication titleDead Last: The Public Memory of Warren G. Harding's Scandalous Legacy
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Organization
organization nameOrganization of American Historians
#Bonas Payne talks about new book, importance of thinking about history
Feb 24, 2016 |
By Julia Mericle, ’17
A new book by St. Bonaventure University history professor Phillip Payne, Ph.D., frames the story of the 1929 stock market crash within the booming New Era economy of the 1920s and the bust of the Great Depression.
Cover of Phillip Payne's new book 'Crash!'“Crash! How the Economic Boom and Bust of the 1920s Worked” was released by Johns Hopkins University Press in December.
The book by Payne, chair of the Department of History, discusses the topic of speculation in economics, specifically explaining the 1929 stock market crash.
Payne said the idea for the book originated when he was talking to an editor at an American History Association meeting about the launch of a new series called “How Things Worked.” The meeting was shortly after the stock market crash in 2008, and Payne said his students were shocked so he talked about it in his classes.
The book is intended for an undergraduate audience and aims to make complicated stories understandable, according to Payne.
“A lot of effort went into making this book accessible, a book you can pick up and read without a deep knowledge of economics or politics,” Payne said.
Kevin Sidoran, a senior biochemistry major, is in Payne’s “United States History since 1865” class this semester.
“Dr. Payne is a storyteller,” Sidoran said. “He is able to segue almost any discussion or side comment, however irrelevant, to what we are covering in lecture, and he always pulls in little tidbits of background info to make the larger ideas more tangible and coherent.”
Payne said he noticed many students are not interested in the topic of speculation in stock market crashes, but that it has real impact on their lives.
In the 19th century, bankers were just about the only ones following the stock market, according to Payne, but now the stock market is increasingly part of the economy.
Payne said he tells young people they need to think about history, especially in the turbulence of the modern economy, where people move from job to job.
A major takeaway from the book, according to Payne, is that to get to that level of speculation, to get to where the economy gets blown up, people have to forget it happened before and convince themselves the current time is different.
“In 1929, they convinced themselves the stock market was a money making machine and it was never going to crash,” Payne said. “In 2008 they convinced themselves of this again.”
Payne said we are still dealing with many of the issues discussed in his book in the current presidential election, such as fallout from the 2008 crash and transitions taking place in the economy with technology and globalization.
In addition to Payne’s interest in economic history, his areas of research include Warren G. Harding and exploring how popular culture is shaped by politics and vice versa. He is the author of “Dead Last: The Public Memory of Warren G. Harding’s Scandalous Legacy,” released by Ohio University Press in 2009.
Saturday, February 27, 2016
#Bonas Payne Talks About New Book, 'Crash!,' Importance of Thinking About History
A new book by St. Bonaventure University history professor Phillip Payne, Ph.D., frames the story of the 1929 stock market crash within the booming New Era economy of the 1920s and the bust of the Great Depression.
“Crash! How the Economic Boom and Bust of the 1920s Worked” was released by Johns Hopkins University Press in December.
The book by Payne, chair of the Department of History, discusses the topic of speculation in economics, specifically explaining the 1929 stock market crash.
Payne said the idea for the book originated when he was talking to an editor at an American History Association meeting about the launch of a new series called “How Things Worked.” The meeting was shortly after the stock market crash in 2008, and Payne said his students were shocked so he talked about it in his classes.
The book is intended for an undergraduate audience and aims to make complicated stories understandable, according to Payne.
“A lot of effort went into making this book accessible, a book you can pick up and read without a deep knowledge of economics or politics,” Payne said.
Kevin Sidoran, a senior biochemistry major, is in Payne’s “United States History since 1865” class this semester.
“Dr. Payne is a storyteller,” Sidoran said. “He is able to segue almost any discussion or side comment, however irrelevant, to what we are covering in lecture, and he always pulls in little tidbits of background info to make the larger ideas more tangible and coherent.”
Payne said he noticed many students are not interested in the topic of speculation in stock market crashes, but that it has real impact on their lives.
In the 19th century, bankers were just about the only ones following the stock market, according to Payne, but now the stock market is increasingly part of the economy.
Payne said he tells young people they need to think about history, especially in the turbulence of the modern economy, where people move from job to job.
A major takeaway from the book, according to Payne, is that to get to that level of speculation, to get to where the economy gets blown up, people have to forget it happened before and convince themselves the current time is different.
“In 1929, they convinced themselves the stock market was a money making machine and it was never going to crash,” Payne said. “In 2008 they convinced themselves of this again.”
Payne said we are still dealing with many of the issues discussed in his book in the current presidential election, such as fallout from the 2008 crash and transitions taking place in the economy with technology and globalization.
In addition to Payne’s interest in economic history, his areas of research include Warren G. Harding and exploring how popular culture is shaped by politics and vice versa. He is the author of “Dead Last: The Public Memory of Warren G. Harding’s Scandalous Legacy,” released by Ohio University Press in 2009.
Payne, Phillip G.: Crash!: how the economic boom & bust of the 1920s worked
S. Prisco, III
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 53.8 (Apr. 2016): p1208.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
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Payne, Phillip G. Crash!: how the economic boom & bust of the 1920s worked. Johns Hopkins, 2015. 142p bibl index afp ISBN 9781421418551 cloth, $45.00; ISBN 9781421418568 pbk, $19.95; ISBN 9781421418575 ebook, contact publisher for price
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Crash! is one of the clearest explanations to date of the 1929 stock market collapse, which resulted when a bullish business culture brought about speculative expansion that grew far beyond economic reality until the bubble burst. Payne (history, St. Bonaventure Univ.) deftly weaves elements of politics and culture into his readable explanation of complex factors. He is careful to evaluate the impact of the Great War on the postwar economy. He discusses the role of modern advertising and how exaggerated optimism contributed to the eventual economic bust. And he points out that loss of collective confidence, not just the market crash, led to the Great Depression. Payne provides a clear account of New Deal philosophy and the expanded role of government in regulating the free-market economy. The Pecora Commission and the Glass-Steagall Act are certainly relevant in terms of the 2008 banking crisis, as is the failure of both Republican and Democratic lawmakers to anticipate subsequent economic problems. Comparing favorably with works by John Kenneth Galbraith, Frederick Lewis Allen, and Maury Klein, Crash! is an invaluable resource for students of history as well as economics. Summing Up: **** Essential. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; general readers.--S. Prisco III, Stevens Institute of Technology
Prisco, S., III
Dead Last: The Public Memory of Warren G. Harding's Scandalous Legacy
Stephen F. Knott
Presidential Studies Quarterly. 40.4 (Dec. 2010): p813.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 Center for the Study of the Presidency
http://www.theprisidency.org/psq/index.htm
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Dead Last: The Public Memory of Warren G. Harding's Scandalous Legacy. By Phillip G. Payne. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2009. 267 pp.
Warren Gamaliel Harding is the Rodney Dangerfield of American politics. Despite winning one of the most lopsided elections in American history, Harding never won the respect of his countrymen, either in life or in death. Harding was our presidential "slob," as the notorious snob Alice Roosevelt Longworth dubbed him, and the epitome of executive failure. Yet as Phillip G. Payne persuasively argues in his exhaustively researched and scrupulously fair book, Harding was something of a victim of "reputational entrepreneurs" (p. 9) intent on repeating unsubstantiated rumors and outright falsehoods to enrich themselves or promote a partisan agenda. A mediocre president, Harding nonetheless did far less damage to the office than a number of individuals who routinely score higher in those annoying polls of presidential "greatness." Harding habitually finishes "dead last" in these polls, and in that sense, he continues to be somewhat of a victim of the politics of personal destruction.
Payne does not claim any greatness for Harding, but in a restrained manner, he outlines how the man from Marion, Ohio, came to be seen as the gold standard of presidential failure. It did not help that Harding's two immediate successors, who owed their national prominence in part to him, distanced themselves from their patron. Payne offers a fascinating account of President Herbert Hoover's classless dedication of the Harding Memorial in Marion, noting that Hoover "stood on the steps of the Harding Memorial and condemned Harding" (p. 68).
Harding's administration was rocked by the Teapot Dome scandal and the stench of corruption surrounding Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty, and this, coupled with allegations of extramarital affairs, permanently tarnished his reputation. Payne offers a compelling case that far too many journalists and academics have accepted as fact stories based on flimsy or nonexistent evidence. Payne observes that Nan Britton, one of Harding's chief accusers who cashed in on her "relationship" with the president, has had her story demolished by historians such as Robert Ferrell, but her account is still widely circulated by scholars who should know better. Many other Harding critics belong in the group that Payne refers to as "implausible sources" (p. 212), including Gaston Means and numerous historians who were obsessed with the notion that Harding was a serial philanderer of African American descent.
Harding bashing became something of a sport in the mid-twentieth century as the twenty-ninth president was accused of fathering an illegitimate child (p. 65); being an empty-headed "Babbitt" (p.71); being the first African American president (p. 96); being a member of the Ku Klux Klan (p. 117); being a drunkard who committed suicide (or was murdered) (p. 147); and operating under the spell of a domineering, occult-worshipping wife (p. 203). Payne notes, as have many others, that Harding's rock-bottom stature is also based, in part, on poor timing, for he had the audacity to follow Woodrow Wilson into the White House. Unlike Wilson, Harding had a problem with the "vision thing" and was utterly lacking in the kind of cosmopolitanism celebrated by progressive intellectuals. And yet, this bete noire of progressive historians was far more advanced on civil rights and civil liberties than his racist predecessor, who is repeatedly ranked as a "great" or "near great" president. Harding traveled to Birmingham, Alabama, in 1921 to deliver a forward-looking address on race relations (p. 120), and he pardoned Eugene V. Debs (p. 91), whom his predecessor despised and refused to pardon. Nonetheless, Harding was an average president who was betrayed by his friends and whose thousand days in office lacked any major achievements.
Payne's terrific book is what historical scholarship should be--it challenges the conventional wisdom and dissects the myths propagated by scholars with an agenda. It is unlikely, however, to lay to rest some of the legends surrounding the Harding presidency; far too much is at stake for that to occur.
--Stephen F. Knott
U.S. Naval War College
Knott, Stephen F.
Payne, Phillip G.: Dead last: the public memory of Warren G. Harding's scandalous legacy
D.L. Wilson
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 47.2 (Oct. 2009): p375.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2009 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
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Payne, Phillip G. Dead last: the public memory of Warren G. Harding's scandalous legacy. Ohio University, 2009. 267p bibl index afp ISBN 9780821418185, $49.95; ISBN 9780821418192 pbk, $24.95
The role that history, scandal, and memory has played in establishing President Warren G. Harding's dismal reputation is beautifully laid out by historian Payne. Virtually everyone agrees that if Harding was not the nation's worst president, he was among the worst. This book is a refreshing look at the Harding legacy based on a deep understanding of the age in which this tragedy took place. The scope of the author's research is impressive, and lays the foundation for his conclusions about the man and the myth. Probably because Harding's reputation is so bad, he continues to capture the interest of the nation's writers. The author's discussion of these writers, whether of factor fiction, provides a fascinating portrait of why Harding's reputation has evolved over time. Payne demonstrates how Harding is often linked to modern presidencies, such as William J. Clinton or George W. Bush, in unflattering comparisons. His discussion of "Wiki-History" in the last chapter alone is worth the book's price. Payne's reappraisal of the Harding myth is first-rank scholarship and makes an impressive contribution to the debates about the life and misfortunes of Warren Harding. Summing Up: Essential. **** All levels/libraries.--D. L. Wilson, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Dead last; the public memory of Warren G. Harding's scandalous legacy
Reference & Research Book News. 24.3 (Aug. 2009):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2009 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
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9780821418185
Dead last; the public memory of Warren G. Harding's scandalous legacy.
Payne, Phillip G.
Ohio University Press
2009
267 pages
$49.95
Hardcover
E786
Payne (history, Bonaventure U.) offers an innovative examination of former President Warren G. Harding, the 29th president, by utilizing the public memory of him and his scandal-plagued presidency. Payne sifts through the events that made Harding's name to synonymous with cronyism, incompetence, and corruption. He explores Harding's significance as a midwestern small-town booster, his alleged black ancestry, the contributions of biographers who helped mold his early image, and the conflicts between public memory and academic history of his presidency. The book is clearly written and examines the Harding years from what appears to be an original perspective. The book also includes extensive notes and a bibliography that lists relevant manuscript collections.
([c]2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
CRASH!: How the Economic Boom and Bust of the 1920s Worked. By Phillip G. Payne. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015. Pp. vii, 142. $19.95, paper.doi: 10.1017/S0022050716000905This short book is part of the “How Things Worked” series published by Johns Hopkins University Press. The timing of the book is prescient as Phillip Payne consis-tently weaves in parallels between the boom and bust of the 1920s and 1930s and WKHKRXVLQJERRPDQG¿QDQFLDOFULVLVWKDWRFFXUUHGLQWKH¿UVWGHFDGHRIWKHWZHQW\¿UVWFHQWXU\3D\QHUHOLHVKHDYLO\RQ&KDUOHV0DFND\¶VFODVVLFDQDO\VLVRIDVVHWbubbles, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds to explain the behavior of the stock market in the late 1920s as well as the housing bubble of 2004–2007. The main thesis of CRASH! is that poor governance by Republican presidential admi-rations (Harding, Coolidge, Reagan, and both Bushes) who became too cozy with Wall Street allowed speculation to fester into asset bubbles, which then popped and brought economic hardship to the nation. Republicans do not get all the blame. Democratic President Bill Clinton is also labeled a political enabler for having “imbibed some of the tenets of neoliberal capitalism” including free trade, globalization, and deregulation (p. 120). The book highlights the particularly important role played in bubble formation of speculating with borrowed money. It is important to note that undergraduate students in history are the primary audi-ence for this book—the book could even be assigned reading for good high school history students. The book is non-technical and it does not dive deeply into scholarly debates about the various issues that surround the boom and bust of the 1920s and 1930s. To Payne’s credit, he does generally inform the reader that such debates do exist, but to even say that he scratches the surface on the nature of these debates would be an over-exaggeration. The strongest aspect of CRASH!, and one where even scholars who already know this HUD¶VKLVWRU\FRXOGEHQH¿WLV3D\QH¶VSHUVRQDOL]DWLRQRIWKHYDULRXVSOD\HUVLQWKHERRPDQGEXVWF\FOHRIWKHVDQGV7KHVHLQFOXGH¿JXUHVVXFKDV5LFKDUG:KLWQH\-3Morgan, Charles Ponzi, Joseph Kennedy, Irving Fisher, and Herbert Hoover, among others. Individuals are placed into categories such as Schemers, Upstarts, Manipulators, https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050716000905Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 72.181.132.29, on 04 Mar 2017 at 21:41:24, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
Book Reviews1257Regulators, Boosters, and Enablers. The long biographical sketch of Franklin Roosevelt, including the discussion of how his bout with polio transformed him, both physically and emotionally, is particularly noteworthy. The author correctly notes that one of the PRVWVXFFHVVIXOWRROV5RRVHYHOWHPSOR\HGLQ¿JKWLQJWKHGHSUHVVLRQZDVSV\FKRORJ\²lifting the nation’s spirits through calming words of strength that were heard on radios across the land. The book also does a nice job of concisely summarizing many New Deal policies such as the National Industrial Recovery Act in a way that will be highly accessible to students. One shortcoming of the book is the lack of detail or nuance. A particular example LVWKHRPLVVLRQRIDVLPSOH¿JXUHVKRZLQJWKHPRYHPHQWRIWKH'RZ-RQHV,QGXVWULDOAverage (DJIA) or the S&P 500 between say 1925 and 1933. Payne mentions that the DJIA peaked at 381.2 in September and then takes us through various declines on Black Thursday, Black Tuesday, and so on. Then the author simply notes that “At its end, stocks lost 90 percent of their value.” But it will not be at all clear to the reader that this did not occur until mid-1932. In February 1931, the market was around its February 1928 level (190), which is considered to be the time stock market bubble began. Things really got ugly after that in large part because of a series of banking panics. The author does mention that economists debate the role that the stock market crash played in EULQJLQJDERXWWKH*UHDW'HSUHVVLRQDQGWKHERRNEULHÀ\GLVFXVVHVWKHEDQNLQJSDQLFVbut it seems clear that the story the book wants to tell is that the stock market crash (which led, the author notes several times, to brokers committing suicide) led to the Great Depression. CRASH! also seems to place far too much blame on pure fraud for driving the “new” economies of the 1920s and the 1990s/2000s. The book seems to imply that were it not for pools run by manipulators and a lack of oversight by regulatory enablers, that these eras would have been ordinary decades. But in both cases tremendous tailwinds aided the booms—some of these were technological and others were geopolitical. Even absent any malfeasance, these decades would likely have been prosperous and seen rising asset values. Historically, manias generally begin only after a fundamentally sound upswing in asset markets. This is the type of lesson that I would have hoped young readers would take away from this book. I fear instead that they will most remember zingers like “Franklin Roosevelt assured Americans that they had nothing to fear. In the wake of the 9/11 tragedy, George W. Bush told Americans to go shopping” (p. 125). JASON E. TAYLOR, Central Michigan University