'This insightful book by a significan scholar will certainly provide scholars of the US presidency with a very valuable source. Peter Karsten, University of Pittsburghģ. Lurie demonstrates that Taft was, as he claimed to be, an important progressive conservative who achieved and protected more progressive measures than had Roosevelt, while simultaneously defending the Supreme Court 's role and authority. This well-written and engaging account of Taft 's relationship with Theodore Roosevelt and his career up to 1921 (the first volume, of a planed two-volume study of Taft) constitutes a significant revision of the literature. Urofsky, Virginia Commonwealth UniversityĢ. Jonathan Lurie 's lucid re-examination of Taft 's presidency will give everyone pause for thought, and historians will have to take another look at the Taft White House in terms of Taft 's own description of himself as a progressive conservative. For too many years, William Howard Taft 's one term as president has been dismissed, along with him, as a failure, overshadowed by the two men who came before and after him. Lurie served as a Fulbright Lecturer at Uppsala University Law School in Sweden in 2005, was the Visiting Professor of Law at West Point from 1994 to 1995 and has lectured on several occasions at the United States Supreme Court.ġ. The book on the Slaughterhouse cases received the Scribes award in 2003 as the best book written on law for that year. His fields of interest comprise legal history, military justice, constitutional law and history and the eras of the Civil War and Reconstruction. His books include The Chicago Board of Trade, Law and the Nation, Arming Military Justice, Pursuing Military Justice, The Slaughterhouse Cases (co-authored with Ronald Labbe), Military Justice in America and The Chase Court. Jonathan Lurie is a Professor of History Emeritus and Academic Integrity Officer at Rutgers University, where he has been a member of the history department since 1969. At the end of his biography, Lurie concludes that this label is accurate when applied to Taft.' He also places Taft in a progressive context, taking Taft's own self-description as a believer in progressive conservatism as the starting point. Lurie reexamines the Taft-Roosevelt friendship and concludes that it rested on flimsy ground. By 1912, however, the relationship between Taft and Roosevelt had ruptured. In this new biographical study of the only American ever to have been both President and Chief Justice of the United States, Jonathan Lurie reassesses William Howard Taft's multiple careers, which culminated in Taft's election to the presidency in 1908 as the chosen successor to Theodore Roosevelt. This book sheds light on William Howard Taft, re-examining the Taft Theodore Roosevelt relationship and placing Taft in a progressive context.'

William Howard Taft by Jonathan Lurie