William Howard Taft — Essential Writings and Addresses

This volume is a collection of ideas stated over a lifetime of service as administrator, diplomat, president, and Chief Justice. It singles out, from the total of Taft's writings and addresses, the essence of his convictions regarding government, diplomacy, and the law. Readers will find the ideas and beliefs of Taft as he dealt with a plethora of issues, principles, and judgments; a treasure of public wisdom satisfying in itself and yet stimulating to the point of prompting further investigation of Taft's public mind and personal convictions. In this undertaking there are three separate categories: political analyses, diplomatic explorations, and judicial deliberations woven into a pattern of a philosophy of government.

David H. Burton has written American history by means of studying great leaders of the Republic, including Theodore Roosevelt: Confident Imperialist and William Howard Taft: Confident Peacemaker (FDUP). Animating history by measuring the pulse, he has written lives of men as diverse as the American poet E.A. Robinson and the British diplomat Cecil Spring Rice. Other books include Clara Barton: In the Service of Humanity and Oliver Wendell Holmes: What Manner of Liberal? Collective biographies, The Learned Presidency and An Anglo-American Plutarch, maintain his use of biography as history. Dual biographies Taft, Holmes, and the 1920s Court; Taft, Wilson, and World Order; and Taft, Roosevelt, and Limits of Friendship make up a Taft trilogy. American History—British Historians was nominated for a Pulitzer in 1976. He is also the General Editor of the eight-volume The Collected Works of William Howard Taft.