MARTIN VAN BUREN

The life of one of America’s first professional politicians and its eighth president.

Bradley, co-editor of the Martin Van Buren papers based at Cumberland University and adjunct history instructor at State University of New York at Albany, has written the first comprehensive biography of Van Buren in decades. He brings to life a man who today may only be known as the inspiration for the Seinfeld storyline with the fictionalized street gang the “Van Buren Boys” but who did more than perhaps anyone to professionalize politics and establish the two-party system in the United States. Bradley reveals how the aloof public speaker who could barely be heard in a chamber came to dominate New York state politics and became a main architect of the Democratic Party, along the way being elected to the U.S. Senate, the vice presidency, and the presidency amid the hurricane of antebellum politics. Bradley’s vivid descriptions of Van Buren’s political contemporaries such as John Quincy Adams, James Monroe, and James Polk add to the book’s appeal. Bradley does well to avoid attaching recency bias to Van Buren’s political machinations and associations that contributed to the lead-up to the Civil War. He also resists the temptation to deify a subject with whom he is very familiar; his literary critiques of the leaden prose of Van Buren’s autobiography and the significance of Van Buren’s book about the history of U.S. political parties reflect the balanced approach of Bradley’s auspicious debut, an enjoyable, scholarly, and valuable biography of an overlooked politician.

A gem for students of U.S. history and politics.