Porter McKeever

In the history of the Democratic Party, Adlai Stevenson represents the bridge between the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman on the one hand, and those of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson on the other. The grandson of Cleveland's second vice president (for whom he was named), he emerged as a reform governor of Illinois in the late 1940s. Though twice defeated by Dwight Eisenhower for the residency, he nonetheless enjoyed a passionate following among many liberals in the 1950s. Chosen by John Kennedy to serve as America's ambassador to the United Nations, he served in the post during the tensest period of the Cold War before dying of a heart attack in London in 1965.

Stevenson had no shortage of admirers during his lifetime, and many of them wrote biographies about him after his death. Porter McKeever was among their number; as a longtime friend of Stevenson's his book is informed by his own personal insights on his subject. This is both the book's strength and its weakness, being less of a scholarly study and more of a glowing -- if not entirely uncritical -- tribute his subject. With it readers can understand how Stevenson was able to command such devotion from so many people, even though the justification for it is largely absent from Stevenson's career. Though a more dispassionate analysis of Stevenson's career remains to be written, until it is readers should turn to this partisan study to learn about his life and achievements.… (más)