Warren G. Harding

Warren G. Harding was the twenty-ninth president of the United States, serving from 1921 until his death in 1923. He promised a ‘return to normalcy’ after the First World War and presided over pro-business policies, arms-limitation diplomacy and restrictions on immigration.

Harding’s reputation was badly damaged by scandals involving members of his administration, especially Teapot Dome, although he was not personally shown to have profited. His sudden death left unresolved questions about both his policies and private life. Harding comes from the connection between this individual life and the larger political, social or cultural changes of the period, rather than from the headline episode alone.

In Kimberley Woodhouse’s In the Shadow of Denali, Harding’s 1923 journey to Alaska, when he is expected to mark the completion of the Alaska Railroad and draw national attention to the developing tourist route. In Timothy Ashby’s Devil’s Den, As Armitage follows the case from the battlefield into Washington politics, he encounters obstruction inside the corrupt Harding administration, the ambitions of J.