In the first major biography of William Jennings Bryan in almost 40 years, author Michael Kazin recreates and resurrects (no pun intended) Bryan, "The Commoner" or the "Boy Orator from the Platte." Kazin reconnects the reader with the real Bryan who's historical reputation was almost destroyed by both his role in the Scopes Trial and later by his most bitter critics and even some historians. What has survived in the popular lore is that Bryan was a three-time presidential loser, a religious buffoon whose claim to fame rests upon his famous "Cross of Gold" speech in 1896.

Kazin portrays Bryan's actual accomplishments, both political, as a major figure in the national Democratic Party for over 29 years, and his role as the nation's premier orator in the days before microphones and sound amplification. At the same time the author does not shrink from Bryan's faults, both political and personal.

It was Bryan, the political reformer, who earned the earnest support of farmers and wage earners of middle America and became the foremost populist and progressive of his time. It was Bryan who moved the Democratic party away from its laissez-fare polices toward government intervention in society to benefit the lower classes, a belief that would bear its most fruit in the New Deal of the 1930's. Bryan preached that the nation should expand the power of the federal government to counter the power of the banks and the financial elite. Bryan in 1896, was the first major presidential candidate that actually campaigned across the nation, while McKinley campaigned from his front porch of his home in Ohio.

It was Bryan who proposed lower tariffs, the right of workers to organize and strike, banning private campaign spending, federal insurance of bank deposits, direct popular election of US Senators, Women Suffrage, a progressive national income tax, and Prohibition. The last four ideas were accomplished during Woodrow Wilson's presidency, where Bryan served for two years as Secretary of State. Bryan's other goals would become law during the New Deal a decade after Bryan's death in 1925.

Bryan was also a pacifist who opposed American conquest and occupation of the Philippines as immoral and saw war in general as immoral. During the years as Wilson's Secretary of State, Bryan crafted idealistic foreign policies before resigning in protest over Wilson's drift toward entering World War I.

Kazin reminds readers that Bryan ignored the political and economic rights of African-Americans and did not speak out against Jim Crow laws in the South. Bryan did not comprehend the inconsistency of his message of supporting the vote for women and the working class while doing nothing to support the basic human rights of millions of Black Americans. The period was a time when Blacks supported the GOP and the whites in the South controlled the national Democratic party.

In understanding Bryan as a quasi religious figure, he was, in comparison to today's leaders of the religious right, more concerned with using the Social Gospel to improve the economic lives of ordinary Americans rather than dictating their personal behaviors.

The Scopes Trial would have the lasting effect of shrouding Bryan's political contributions and would leave a lasting impression of a man who was little consequence in American history. Fortunately, Kazin corrects the record so that we can better understand not only William Jennings Bryan, but his impact on our government and society that still lasts today.

Finally, one quote from Bryan that echo's even today:

"There are two ides of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through to those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them."