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| A Time of Scandal : Charles R. Forbes, Warren G. Harding, and the Making of the Veterans Bureau
ISBN: 9781421421315
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / Johns Hopkins University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: History;
A look at what really happened in the U.S. Veterans' Bureau Scandal in the 1920s. In the early 1920s, as the nation recovered from World War I, President Warren G. Harding founded the U.S. Veterans Bureau, now known as the Department of Veterans Affairs, to treat disabled veterans. He appointed his friend, decorated veteran Colonel Charles R. Forbes, as founding director. Forbes lasted only eighteen months in the position before stepping down under a cloud of suspicion. In 1926--after being convicted of conspiracy to defraud the federal government by rigging government contracts--he was sent to Leavenworth Penitentiary. Although he was known in his day as a drunken womanizer, and as a corrupt toady of a weak president, the question persists: was Forbes a criminal or a scapegoat?Historian Rosemary Stevens tells Forbes's story anew, drawing on previously untapped records to reveal his role in America's commitment to veterans. She explores how Forbes's rise and fall in Washington illuminates Harding's efforts to bring business efficiency to government. She also examines the scandal in the context of class, professionalism, ethics, and etiquette in a rapidly changing world. Most significantly, Stevens proposes a revisionist view of both Forbes and Harding: They did not defraud the government of billions and do not deserve the reputation they have carried for a hundred years.Packed with conniving friends, FBI agents, and rival politicians as well as gamblers, revelers, and wronged wives, A Time of Scandal will appeal to anyone interested in political gossip, presidential politics, the "Ohio Gang," and the 1920s.
Rosemary Stevens is professor emeritus of the history and sociology and science at the University of Pennsylvania and the De Witt Wallace Distinguished Scholar in Social Medicine and Public Policy at Weill Cornell Medical College. She is the author of In Sickness and in Wealth: American Hospitals in the Twentieth Century and The Public-Private Health Care State: Essays on the History of American Health Care Policy. |
