decades that were perhaps the most crucial ones for the United States during the twentieth century. Two world wars and emergence as a global power. The Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression. The Progressive movement and the New Deal. Women's suffrage and Prohibition. The era began with one Roosevelt, Theodore, in the White House, and ended with another, Franklin, residing there.

In those years, as now, the candidates from whom Americans chose to be their president were selected at the nominating conventions of the Democratic and Republican parties. Then, unlike today, conventions mattered. Their outcomes altered history. Nothing was inevitable. Without the twists, turns, and dealmaking at conventions, there would have been no President Woodrow Wilson, no rejection of a third term for President Theodore Roosevelt, no President Warren Harding, no Vice President Calvin Coolidge, and no Vice President Harry Truman. How did the victors at conventions prevail, and why were the losers defeated? This book tells those intriguing stories.