Daniel Webster Biography: The Life, Achievements, and Legacy of the American Statesman | Historical Nonfiction, US Politics, 19th Century American History | Perfect for History Buffs, Political Science Students, and Book Clubs

This book is absolutely fantastic. It’s very long, but I always looked forward to the next chapter. Robert Remini is a great writer. The text was dense, but always clear and insightful. Remini spent a career studying and writing books about the era of Andrew Jackson. He wrote a huge book on Henry Clay, just before writing this book. He probably knew the era better than anyone else.Although Webster was considered a great orator during his times, his words are stilted and somewhat difficult to read, though Remini does a great job of integrating quotes from Webster into the text. After all, in his time, Webster was famous for his speeches, so a book on him has to have lots of quotes. Just go slow.Webster had a huge career, over a very long time, so there is a huge amount of information to assemble in writing this book. Dartmouth College had just put together a huge Webster Papers Project, which Remini uses extensively. Webster’s letters are used extensively as well as other peoples’ diaries.I appreciated having the footnotes for the text at the bottom of the page for easy viewing instead of buried at the back of the book. I would have appreciated a chapter on the legacy of Webster, though, to some extent you get this sprinkled throughout the book.I’m still having a hard time appreciating that Wester argued over 200 cases before the Supreme Court, which conveniently was located in the basement of the Congress at the time. Remini did a great job, as a running side theme, laying out Webster’s difficulty dealing with constant indebtedness and getting rich people to pay him to make up for the loss of income that his life in politics cost him. The issues of the day were very clearly laid out, and we get a good feel for Webster’s day to day life as well as his family life which sustained him throughout his demanding career.I can’t recommend this book enough. There isn’t much out there on Webster. I’ve already read a few books on Henry Clay but I’m reading Remini’s book on Clay next just to get his expert perspective. The era is fascinating and very relevant to today, though Founding Fathers era and the Civil War era get more attention.