Gerald R. Ford (1913–2006), the thirty-eighth president of the United States, grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and by all accounts modeled exemplary behavior. In this biography Hendrik Bo
Gerald R. Ford (1913–2006), the thirty-eighth president of the United States, grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and by all accounts modeled exemplary behavior. In this biography Hendrik Booraem carefully examines that image and the reputation that Ford earned during his early years, telling about Ford’s life up until his graduation from the University of Michigan in 1935.
Booraem uses in-depth research of numerous written sources — plus interviews with some twenty people who personally knew Ford — to show how Jerry Ford excelled at academics and athletics, forging his way through challenges, family difficulties, economic setbacks, and more on his way to a remarkable political career. Booraem’s historical portrait offers fascinating insight into the early years of this president who sought to heal the nation at a very low point in its history.
Richard Norton Smith
— author of On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller
"No one knows more about Gerald Ford's early years, or about the people, places, and experiences that shaped his character, than Rik Booraem. Here his formidable research skills combine with the narrative gifts of a born storyteller to bring us back to a Midwestern boyhood and a collegiate coming-of-age far more compelling than we would have guessed. This is 'you are there' history, vividly and credibly immersing us in another time and culture, the incubator of Ford's values and the testing ground of his youthful ambitions. Highly recommended!"
The Midwest Book Review
"Exceptionally well research, written, organized, and presented, The Education of Gerald Ford is an impressively informed and informative study of the life and accomplishments of a man who was called upon to heal a nation. . . . Very highly recommended for personal reading lists, as well as community and academic library American Biography collections."
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Hendrik Booraem V is a social and political historian who has made studying the early lives of American presidents a lifelong specialty. Among the other presidents he has written about are Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, James A. Garfield, and Calvin Coolidge; he is also the author of Young Jerry Ford: Athlete and Citizen.
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