Elting Elmore Morison (1909–1995)

There are few people in American history who were at the center of American power for as long and during such a pivotal era in its history as Henry Lewis Stimson. The son of a surgeon and the grandson of a attorney, Stimson enjoyed the benefits of an elite education at Phillips Academy and Yale University. Though drawn to a career at the pulpit, he chose instead the law, and after he graduated from Harvard Law School he worked as a Wall Street law. Stimson's appointment in 1906 as a United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York inaugurated a public career that led to periods as Secretary of War, governor-general of the Philippines, and Secretary of State. Yet all of this proved prelude to Stimson's return as Secretary of War in 1940, in which office he played a vital role in America's victory in the Second World War.

Such a lengthy and distinguished career requires a biographer capable of navigating the decades of American history which Stimson influenced. Here Elting Morison successfully takes up the challenge. As an experienced biographer and the editor of Theodore Roosevelt's published letters, Morison employs the documentary sources well to provide both an account of Stimson's public activities and a glimpse into his contented private life. Yet the author often gets in the way of his account with a writing style that is far too mannered. At times his narrative comes across more like something out of a Booth Tarkington novel than a biography of a statesman who served in a half-dozen presidential administrations, which can prove distracting. Anyone seeking an account of Stimson's life will find themselves reading around many of its florid passages, which too often get in the way of a fascinating account of a man who helped to shape the world we know today.… (more)