A new biography of Millard Fillmore popped out last spring, and the publisher didn’t send me a copy to review!
Not that my review could boost sales much — nor harm them — but don’t publishers use Google to figure out how they might get some publicity for their books? Most internet searches for “Millard Fillmore” end up here.
No, I’m not really offended. But I did find it interesting that none of my “Millard Fillmore” keyword compilers picked up on the book.
Details: Millard Fillmore, Paul Finkelman, Times Books, $23.
Cover of Millard Fillmore, by Paul Finkelman
In a review for the Wall Street Journal, Fergus M. Bordewich wrote:
In this short, fierce book—part of the “American Presidents” series—Mr. Finkelman has delivered an unvarnished but compelling portrait of one of our least remembered but far from insignificant presidents. Against his grain, he gives Fillmore credit for promoting a number of “visionary” ideas that would come to fruition only after he left the presidency in 1853: the transcontinental railroad, the assertion of American power in Hawaii, the building of a Central American canal. “But on the central issues of the age,” Mr. Finkelman writes at the end of “Millard Fillmore,” “his vision was myopic and his legacy is worse.”
Has anyone read the book? Is it any good?
More:
- Listing at The American Presidents series site
- Read an excerpt of the book at MacMillan’s site
- Review of the book at The Politics Reader
- Charleston, South Carolina, Post and Courier, review of the book by Nathan P. Johnson, curator of the Fort Sumter National Monument
- Paul Finkelman’s site (bookmark it for the 150th anniversary of the Civil War)
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Of course, C-SPAN is banned in Dallas ISD. I’ll have to get to it later.
Do you think DISD is afraid students might see Congress in action? Or, Congress inaction?
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And I’d love to hear what YOU think about it.
Thanks for the alert. I’ll take a look.
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This weekend, CSPAN’s Book TV ran a presentation by the author. The program is archived here: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/301493-1 I’m looking forward to reading what you think about it.
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