John Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933) was the thirtieth president of the United States. He has become symbolic of the smug and self-satisfied conservatism that helped bring on the Great Depression.

Calvin Coolidge (he dropped the John after college) was born July 4, 1872, at Plymouth, a tiny, isolated village in southern Vermont; he was descended from colonial New England stock. His father was a thrifty, hard-working, self-reliant storekeeper and farmer, active in local politics. Calvin was a shy and frail boy, sober, frugal, industrious, and taciturn. But he acquired from his mother, whom he remembered as having "a touch of mysticism and poetry," a yearning for something better than Plymouth.

Coolidge entered Amherst College in 1891 and graduated cum laude. While there he became an effective debater, and his professors imbued him with the ideal of public service. Unable to afford law school, he read law and clerked in a law office...