Rating: 
Summary: A friendly book
Review: A better and raw truth to learn about Oneself
Rating:
Summary: Honoring and Honorable Man
Review: A first rate biography of the only man to win two non-consecutive terms as U. S. president and one who captured the popular vote three consecutive times. Brodsky has struck a good stylistic balance between the readable and the informative, between bringing to an engaging personality to life and rendering an accurate historical narrative. It is the finest Cleveland biography since Allan Nevins' definitive work of nearly seventy years ago. I anxiously await his forthcoming work on Cleveland's wife, Frances, one of the more remarkable first ladies who figures predominantly in the current work.
Rating:
Summary: An Outstanding Look at an Obscure President
Review: Alyn Brodsky did an outstanding job in this biography of a relatively little known, but interesting president. He did a great job in not only describing the events of Cleveland's life in great detail, but also gave us a fascinating look at the man's character and personality.One thing that is particularly enjoyable about the book is that it doesn't seem to drag on any useless details. The pace is nearly as rapid as the speed at which Cleveland rose through the ranks of the political hierarchy to become President of the United States. Brodsky shows in detail all of Cleveland's enemies and difficulties ranging from James G. Blaine to the Panic of 1893-1897 that would mark his second term. Throughout the book Brodsky continually shows the steadfast nature of Cleveland through all of these troubles. Brodsky shows how Cleveland would defy even his own party to do what he believed was the right thing to do no matter what the cost. A constant theme throughout the book is the Cleveland did not seem to care much about his own popularity in his decisions. He believed above all else that his loyalty was the the U.S. and not to any political party as Brodsky pointed out so clearly. Particularly well done, aleast in my opinion, were the detailed series of passages describing Cleveland's handeling of the Depression of 1893-1897. In particular the passages about the Treasury crisis and the process by which the Wilson-Gorman Tariff came into being were extremely fascinating in their detail. Overall, I would reccomend this book to anyone who is interested in presidential history and in particular more obscure presidents such as Grover Cleveland.
Rating: 
Summary: A fine read about a great man
Review: Alyn Brodsky's treatment of Grover Cleveland is a pleasant one. We see a man propelled from a job as a Sheriff to the Presidency in a mere 8 years all because he was honest and other people and recognized his qualities. We see a Cleveland so frugal and honest that he actually hangs two criminals himself as sheriff because #1. paying a hangman would involve spending the public's money and #2 As sheriff it is his responsibility and he will not duck a responsibility just because it is unplesant. He doesn't fail to hide the warts or the poor decisions, however he doesn't bother to hide his current political bias either. More than once poke a jab at modern conservatives. This is quite amazing as Mr. Cleveland is as much the ANTI-Clinton as any elected offical can be. Other than that problem this book is a great introduction to one of the more forgotten men in our history who shouldn't be. Cleveland easily makes my top 10 (maybe even top 5) list of presidents. Maybe after reading this book he'll appear on a few more peoples lists as well.
Rating:
Summary: A fine read about a great man
Review: Alyn Brodsky's treatment of Grover Cleveland is a pleasant one. We see a man propelled from a job as a Sheriff to the Presidency in a mere 8 years all because he was honest and other people and recognized his qualities. We see a Cleveland so frugal and honest that he actually hangs two criminals himself as sheriff because #1. paying a hangman would involve spending the public's money and #2 As sheriff it is his responsibility and he will not duck a responsibility just because it is unplesant. He doesn't fail to hide the warts or the poor decisions, however he doesn't bother to hide his current political bias either. More than once poke a jab at modern conservatives. This is quite amazing as Mr. Cleveland is as much the ANTI-Clinton as any elected offical can be. Other than that problem this book is a great introduction to one of the more forgotten men in our history who shouldn't be. Cleveland easily makes my top 10 (maybe even top 5) list of presidents. Maybe after reading this book he'll appear on a few more peoples lists as well.
Rating:
Summary: A friendly book
Review: Despite the vast number of professors of American History in our colleges and universities, it's hard to find biographies of many of our presidents. Therefore, we must be grateful for Brodsky's "Grover Cleveland." It is a readable, but not scholarly treatment of Cleveland and his presidencies. Brodsky, almost always sympathetic to Cleveland, effects a good balance between the personal and political, and is especially good in dealing with Cleveland's retirement years. His treatment of the presidencies concentrates on several principal issues like the tariff and silver controversies, and the Pullman strike. I would have wished for greater detail of the presidential years, the election campaigns, and fuller sketches of Cleveland's allies and competitors. I don't want to be too harsh about the book's comprehensiveness because I don't think Brodsky had any pretensions about writing a full academic biography. Accepting the book as a popular biography, I wish Brodsky were a more elegant writer. The book would have benefitted from tighter editing, if only to curb some of Brodsky's graceless metaphors. Nonetheless, it can be recommended in view of the dearth of available biographies of President Cleveland.
Rating: 
Summary: Welcome, but only adequate
Review: Despite the vast number of professors of American History in our colleges and universities, it's hard to find biographies of many of our presidents. Therefore, we must be grateful for Brodsky's "Grover Cleveland." It is a readable, but not scholarly treatment of Cleveland and his presidencies. Brodsky, almost always sympathetic to Cleveland, effects a good balance between the personal and political, and is especially good in dealing with Cleveland's retirement years. His treatment of the presidencies concentrates on several principal issues like the tariff and silver controversies, and the Pullman strike. I would have wished for greater detail of the presidential years, the election campaigns, and fuller sketches of Cleveland's allies and competitors. I don't want to be too harsh about the book's comprehensiveness because I don't think Brodsky had any pretensions about writing a full academic biography. Accepting the book as a popular biography, I wish Brodsky were a more elegant writer. The book would have benefitted from tighter editing, if only to curb some of Brodsky's graceless metaphors. Nonetheless, it can be recommended in view of the dearth of available biographies of President Cleveland.
Rating:
Summary: A Tour de Force for A Great American President
Review: Having just endured vacuousness on a grand scale in the last presidential campaign, and eight years of verbal subterfuge and prevarication under Bill Clinton, Americans are in need of an inspiration from their political past. They have it in the person of our principled and plain-spoken 22nd and 24th president, Grover Cleveland-brought to life in the past year by not one but two laudatory new biographies. An Honest President: The Life and Presidencies of Grover Cleveland by H. Paul Jeffers is an entertaining but barebones account of America's most underrated chief executive. It appeared in early 2000 but was eclipsed a few months later by Alyn Brodsky's superbly written and more thoroughly researched Grover Cleveland: A Study in Character. In admiration for their subject's honesty and candor, both authors prominently cite this characteristic Cleveland remark: "What is the use of being elected or reelected unless you stand for something?" The Jeffers and Brodsky books, appearing as they do in a climate of well-deserved cynicism about the political process and the caliber of today's politicians, will surely rekindle an interest in Cleveland. They may go far in elevating his reputation among historians and citizens alike. In comparison to Grover, most recent aspirants for and occupants of America's highest public office look like rogues and pipsqueaks. The average American today doesn't know much about Grover Cleveland. Among historians, he is rated among the better half and some have even labeled him a "near-great" president. But he didn't fight a war and he didn't shmooze and slither his way through smoky backrooms to political power; nor did he exercise power as if he loved it for its own sake. He did the public's business honestly and frugally and otherwise left us alone. Historians who are deluded into thinking that "greatness" means expanding the frontiers of the coercive state, spawning a school of new meddlesome alphabet agencies, and throwing America's weight around the world don't have much time for titans of limited government like Grover. In so many ways, Cleveland was a political freak even for his day. As Brodsky so capably explains with numerous, vivid examples, he time and again refused to do the politically expedient. The first Democrat in the White House since James Buchanan, he appointed the best people he could find-often earning the wrath of friends and party bigwigs because they didn't get the nod. As Brodsky puts it, "Here, indeed, was that rarest of political animals: one who believed his ultimate allegiance was to the nation, not to the party." Cleveland never lusted for public office but was one of the few presidents who was carried forth on the shoulders of those who admired him for his character. The New York Times, which today endorses charlatans, panderers and statists routinely, endorsed Cleveland for president in 1884 by declaring three reasons for voting for him: "1. He is an honest man. 2. He is an honest man. 3. He is an honest man." Just three years before, he was a little-known lawyer in Buffalo with a previous stint as a county sheriff under his belt. Between 1881 and his elevation to the presidency, he would be elected mayor of Buffalo and Governor of New York State-vetoing spendthrift bills, political pork and corruption along the way. Cleveland was a big man-tipping the scales at 300 pounds at one point, making him second only to William Howard Taft in presidential girth-but he stood firmly for small government. He vetoed more bills than all the previous 21 presidents combined. He did his homework when he tossed out hundreds of fraudulent pension claims tied, however tenuously, to the Civil War. He fought to lower tariffs even though his closest advisers warned him the issue was a political hot potato. He nixed many attempts to raid the federal treasury for the benefit of special interests, including "charitable" causes like helping drought-stricken farmers in Texas. He even opposed using public money for monuments to honor veterans and other heroes, arguing that such things belong in the realm of private initiative. In foreign policy, he didn't see it as the duty of the American government to plant its flag smack in the middle of the affairs of other nations. If it wasn't clearly spelled out in the Constitution, Cleveland said forget it. Cleveland had no formal training in economics, and neither does biographer Brodsky, but both men in their own ways exhibit the traits of darn good economists-Cleveland for the way he handled complex issues like the monetary crises of the time, and Brodsky for his understanding that Grover did indeed do the right thing. In defense of sound money and the gold standard, the president navigated dangerous waters with manly firmness and uncanny perspicacity; in interpreting those actions, the biographer rises to the president's defense with analyses both careful and correct. Brodsky even defends Cleveland's arrangement with financier J. P. Morgan to shore up the government's gold reserve-a noble and necessary deed usually scorned by historians of greater notoriety but of lesser economic intellect. What I have always admired most about Grover Cleveland, and what comes through loudly and clearly in Brodsky's fine work, is that Grover's "character rather than his mind" informed his presidencies. He wasn't a Princeton brain like Wilson or a Rhodes Scholar like Clinton, but he drew strength from a bottomless reservoir of principled character with which neither Wilson nor Clinton will ever be associated. He favored freedom and limited government because he saw honesty as their antecedents. After reading Alyn Brodsky's biography, one wonders if a Grover Cleveland could ever be elected again or, perhaps more importantly, if Americans will ever again muster the moral courage to shove the pipsqueaks aside and vote for such a man.
Rating: 
Summary: Author Used Grover's Name to Push His Views
Review: I looked forward to this book from the time I saw Mr. Brodsky on C-Span. In fact, I started reading a bio on every president starting with Washington in order, looking forward to my fellow New Jersey boy. WHAT a disappointment. I can't believe Cleveland's actions on African- and Chinese-Americans are hidden away in appendices, for example, like some dirty secret. Not only did I find the author contradicted what he had said in interviews, but he was constantly slipping in references to our recent presidents and current politics. This is using Mr. Cleveland's name for his own selfish ends, and puts me in mind of the snake oil salesmen who used Francis's image to sell their wares. I have read many bios as I said, and this was the worst. The idea you'd refuse to include any analysis of the relationship with his much younger wife as "psychobabble," is idiotic. Not all psychology is "psychobabble," and certainly people want to know and a biographer has an obligation to present such stories "warts and all." Leaving the reader to figure it out on his/her own, and dismissing the mere asking of the question as wrong, does a disservice to the president and his wife. I could go on and cite many more examples, but you get the point.
Rating:
Summary: An Absorbing, If Stolid, Elegy
Review: Let's not make more of this than it is: as sturdy and stolid as its subject, it's a lengthy paean to a clearly above-average President and a round condemnation of the Gilded Age in which he so earnestly labored. If you take this 'biography' on its terms, you may be charmed by Alyn Brodsky's plain spoken affinity for the man, his very young wife, and those generally fine men around him. But this is no true biography, it is a popular history and a mid-length life and times. To the author's credit, he makes no pretense otherwise. Here even Cleveland's surreptitious jaw cancer surgery, a well-kept secret for a quarter century, is not a malicious deception, but virtually the cross the great and good man deems right to bear in silence. The President's firm stands, fist slammed down on his desk, on the thorny issues of the day - high tariffs, gold standard, Hawaiian misadventure, veteran pensions, monopolistic practices, treatment of minorities - are all placed in a context of good civic ethics. This would be too much puffery were it not for Brodsky's sound defense, well researched, of Cleveland's thoughtful positions and sincerity as contrasted with his rivals'. Of course, in relation to such virtual or literal crooks and fools as Arthur, Blaine ('Continental Liar from the State of Maine'), Harrison ('is he as small as all that?'), Hanna ("king maker"), McKinley ("a bronze statue looking for his pedestal"), Tammany Hall, the robber barons, and Bryan, Cleveland is every inch (and pound) the hero. In sum, a worthy read, always absorbing, at times elevating.
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