This was an excellent history book, packed with information and perspective about this brief, but important part of American History. He treated Franklin Pierce with objectivity and revealed a man who was not ready, and arguably not capable, of being president of the United States of America. I have great pity for Pierce's personal life, suffering the death of all three children. His wife was plagued with illness and the same tragedies. He had a serious illness too, the treatment for which was about eighty years before his time.
Slavery is just wrong. It has always been wrong. Pierce should have known better and he let his politics prevent him from even examining "right vs. wrong" when it came to policy and governance. We should know better when it comes to our racism.
I live in "Pierce County" Washington, named for him. I wish we could change the name of our County.
Some of the prose was cause for some reading stumble but it was only a small fraction of the time where I had to re-read a sentence. He tried so hard to make each sentence fresh and packed with information and this can cause a stumble for this reader. Plus, this type of concise history is always packed with lots of names and dates and that slows me down too. ( )

Reads like a bunch of term paper note cards strung together with little order or thought to organization. Boring, hard to follow, and worst of all, almost no information on Pierce. Most of the narrative concerns the political parties and personalities which existed at the time Pierce was President, with Pierce mentioned only peripherally. ( )

Franklin Pierce is consistently rated well below average as a President. For good reason. As Larry Gara ably demonstrates, Pierce was clearly unable to meet the challenges of a very challenging time, in spite of holding a majority in Congress. This was a period when sectional divisions reached a fever pitch, leading up to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the near civil war between pro-slavery settlers i the Kansas Territory from the South through Missouri and the free-staters supported by the North. The situation screamed for a leader, but Pierce was clearly in the Southern camp, making the situation worse instead of better. Even in the arena of foreign affairs, the Pierce administration couldn't accomplish much. The crowning achievement was the Gadsden Purchase that completed the borders of the continental US - but even this treaty with Mexico was lacking in several important aspects mainly due to the sectional divisions in the Senate forcing the watering down of the treaty.

Probably the most telling indicator of Pierce's ability is Gara's book itself. Most of the discussion is not about what Pierce did. Instead, it's about what his cabinet did, what Congress did, what diplomats and agents did. In spite of the issues with Pierce himself, though, Gara's discussion of the broader political landscape is good, and makes a decent survey of the situation leading up to the US Civil War. ( )