POLITICS, PARTNERSHIPS, & POWER

Pridmore and Wolf offer a dual biography of Ralph and Marguerite Church, a political power couple whose careers spanned more than four decades.

In 1883, Ralph E. Church was born in Catlin, Illinois, starting life modestly as a “humble farmer’s son.” But he was not poor in ambition—his “eagerness to serve” in public life was evident to all who knew him. After graduating from law school at Northwestern University in 1909, he was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives in 1916, representing the Sixth District, which mostly covered the city of Evanston. He would serve eight terms in the Illinois legislature, and then, starting in 1934, another seven terms in the House of Representatives. It was a “successful, if unspectacular, political career,” a candid summation typical of the authors’ delightfully evenhanded style. When he died suddenly in 1950—he suffered a heart attack while testifying on Capitol Hill—his wife, Marguerite, who had for so many years served as his “indispensable political strategist,” won his vacated seat. A worldly and educated woman, and a fiercely independent thinker, she would serve for six terms and establish herself as a force to be reckoned with, earning a reputation as a fiery “disrupter.” While neither Ralph nor Marguerite are household names, they were both remarkably astute politicians and people of impressive character, as well as fascinating markers of a vanished time. Marguerite’s story is especially captivating—when she accepted the GOP nomination in the wake of her husband’s death, she said, “If a man had been nominated and made a mistake, you would have said ‘He is stupid.’ If I make a mistake you will say, ‘She is a woman.’ I shall try never to give you a reason to say that.” The authors’ command of the historical material is impressive, though sometimes they overwhelm the reader with a haze of minute details. Nonetheless, this is an immersive portrait of the political landscape over a considerable stretch of American history, brimming with “lessons of service, heart, and advocacy.”

An engaging and instructive history of 20th-century American politics.