Joe T. Robinson: Always a Loyal Democrat

Rating:
Summary: Not the best
Review: Joseph T. Robinson had an interesting career, being elected to Congress in 1902, elected Governor of Arkansas in 1912, in 1913 elected by the Legislature to succeed Jeff Davis (who is the subject of a really outstanding biography: The Wild Ass of the Ozarks: Jeff Davis and the Wocial Basis of Southern Politics, by Raymond Arsenault), and served in the Senate till his sudden death on July 14, 1937, having been the vice-presidential candidate on Al Smith's ticket in 1928. While the early chapters of this book, telling of Robinson's early years and his rise in Arkansas politics are interesting, the account of his Senate years is pedestrian and uninterestingly written. The author has a superficial grasp of the times in which Robinson lived, and while the book is well-footnoted and has a good bibliography, the book is actually a published thesis and was a disappointment to me. I have read a lot of senatorial biographies and must rate this one of the poorer ones.