Political Hell-Raiser

“Marc Johnson’s biography of Burton K. Wheeler rescues an important early-twentieth-century U.S. senator from obscurity. Recapturing the colorful qualities of this most independent of politicians, he expands our understanding of Wheeler’s significance and our country’s past even as he provides guidelines for thinking about our current political issues.”—Robert Dallek, author of Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life and An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963

“This long-awaited and first extensive biography of one of America’s most effective and productive U.S. senators, the honorable maverick Burton K. Wheeler, arrives right on time. We Americans need a good and true story like this—about a determined lawyer who defended the rights of day laborers in a hard-rock mining camp out west and went on to represent his constituents as their U.S. senator to his final breath. Marc Johnson has provided that biography.”—Pat Williams, U.S. Representative from Montana, 1979–1997

“In this richly sourced, excitingly written biography, Marc Johnson describes the career of four-term senator Burton K. Wheeler: progressive, thorn in FDR’s side, staunch America First isolationist, constant partisan, and ‘the most powerful politician Montana ever produced.’”—Walter Nugent, author of Progessivism: A Very Short Introduction and Color Coded: Party Politics in the American West, 1950–2016

“Marc Johnson has delivered the long-awaited life story of the national statesman who represented Montana in the U.S. Senate with “more than one man’s share of fights” during the twentieth century’s transformative second quarter. At last, Burton K. Wheeler has the biography his public service deserves.”—Richard A. Baker, U.S. Senate Historian Emeritus and coauthor of The American Senate: An Insider’s History
 

“Johnson leaves room for argument about Wheeler’s legacy, but he performs a welcome service by bringing forth this hell-raiser’s story from out of the shadows of public forgetfulness. It is the story of a ruggedly independent-minded patriot whose prophetic warnings about the danger posed to the American people by their militarized empire have come to pass in our time.”—The American Conservative
 

“This work sets a high bar for the foreseeable future for its meticulous research and incisive writing. Anyone attempting to understand modern Montana, or for that matter modern America, would do well to begin with Johnson’s Political Hell-Raiser.”—Montana: The Magazine of Western History

“Wheeler has found a worthy biographer in Johnson. Well-written, eminently fairminded, and scrupulously researched.”— Presidential Studies Quarterly