Ordinary Man, An: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford

Named a Best Biography Book for 2023Wall Street Journal Top 10 Best Books of 2023Richard Norton Smith had brought a lifetime of wisdom, insight, and storytelling verve to the life of a consequential presidentGerald R. Ford. Fords is a very American life, and Smith has charted its vicissitudes and import with great grace and illuminating perspective. A marvelous achievement! Jon MeachamFrom the preeminent presidential scholar and acclaimed biographer of historical figures including George Washington, Herbert Hoover, and Nelson Rockefeller comes this eyeopening life of Gerald R. Ford, whose presidency arguably set the course for postliberal America and a postCold War world.For many Americans, President Gerald Ford was the genial accident of history who controversially pardoned his Watergatetarnished predecessor, presided over the fall of Saigon, and became a punching bag on Saturday Night Live. Yet as Richard Norton Smith reveals in a book full of surprises, Ford was an underrated leader whose tough decisions and personal decency look better with the passage of time.Drawing on hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents, Smith recreates Fords hardscrabble childhood in Michigan, his early antiestablishment politics and lifelong love affair with the former Betty Bloomer, whose impact on American culture he predicted would outrank his own. As president, Ford guided the nation through its worst Constitutional crisis since the Civil War and broke the back of the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depressionaccomplishing both with little fanfare or credit (at least until 2001 when the JFK Library gave him its prestigious Profile in Courage Award in belated recognition of the Nixon pardon).Less coda than curtain raiser, Fords administration bridged the Republican pragmatism of Eisenhower and Nixon and the more doctrinaire conservatism of Ronald Reagan. His introduction of economic deregulation would transform the American economy, while his embrace of the Helsinki Accords hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union.Illustrated with sixteen pages of blackandwhite photos, this definitive biography, a decade in the making, will change historys views of a man whose warning about presidential arrogance (God help the country) is more relevant than ever.