2550 Nelson W. Aldrich: A Leader in American Politics, by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson (read 7 Nov 1993) This is a 1930 biography. Aldrich was born in Foster, R. I., on Nov 6, 1841, elected to the U.S. Senate in October 1881 and served there almost thirty years, till March 3, 1911, and died in New York City Apr 16, 1915. The author assumes the reader knows much of the events described; a modern biographer would have made this a better book. But it caught me up and I read it with a lot of interest. It puts Aldrich in a fairly good light though of course picturing him as the conservative he was. He was a 'merchant' before he went into politics and he got fairly rich in "traction" and other investments later. His daughter married John D. Rockefeller, Jr. ( )