Volume 21, Number 13 · August 8, 1974
Buchanan Redux
By Irvin Ehrenpreis
Buchanan Dying: A Play
by John Updike
Knopf, 262 pp., $6.95
Even an expert playwright would be daunted by the task of wringing a coherent drama from the story of James Buchanan. After dogging the tracks of the presidency for twenty-five years, Buchanan at last secured the prey when both he and it had lost their glamour. He entered the White House in his sixty-fifth year with an acute case of dysentery, and he met the most savage constitutional crisis the nation has ever endured.
Review, 2301 words
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