This is a book that changed history.
In 1919, Calvin Coolidge was the newly elected governor of Massachusetts, little known outside his state.
The next year Coolidge was elected vice president of the United States - and just three years after that, he became president.
What changed? Two things happened in rapid succession. In September 1919, as postwar tumult plagued the nation, Boston police officers broke their contract and walked off the job. Riots ensued. Governor Coolidge fired the striking officers and declared, "There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time." Coolidge's categoric statement reverberated across a nation growing weary of violence and disorder.
Only a month later, this remarkable book was published. A collection of the governor's finest speeches and statements, Have Faith in Massachusetts made a splash across the country. One delegate to the 1920 Republican National Convention was so impressed with the book that he nominated Coolidge for vice president. That nomination created what one newspaper called "the first real, wholly unpremeditated stampede that ever took place at a national convention."
This book, which covers Coolidge's years as a Massachusetts lawmaker, showcases a leader of firm principle and sound thinking. One review noted at the time:
"We do not know any recent volume which in so brief a compass has stated as clearly and with such freedom from party bias and class interest the fundamental principles of justice and humanity... The American spirit which animates them and the felicity of phrase in which they are expressed recall at times the analogous utterances of Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln."
In the introduction to the original edition, the editors said they hoped "many readers will welcome the book in this time of special need of inspiring and steadying influences." More than a century later, Americans sense an even greater need for such influences. And readers will find them in this handsome new edition of Have Faith in Massachusetts, which comes complete with photos, enlightening annotations, and a new foreword by James H. Douglas who served from 2003 to 2011 as the 80th governor of Vermont.
French flaps.