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Current Reviews for Academic Libraries

January 2005, Vol. 42, No. 5

Stephen K. Hauser, Marquette University

Others: Third-Party Politics from the Nation’s Founding to the Rise & Fall of the Greenback-Labor Party, Volume I.

Some of the very best histories are not written by scholars who labor in academia, but rather by committed history "buffs" who make painstaking research of their chosen topics a labor of love.  This volume falls cleanly into the latter category.  Richardson is a freelance writer who once sought the U.S. Senate on a third party ticket in Pennsylvania.  He brings to the epic subject of U.S. minor party history the insights of a student of history and the engaging excitement of one who is personally fascinated by the subject.  The book is all the better for it.  This volume can be read cover to cover or picked up and browsed at random, and readers will still come away with mountains of facts and anecdotes.  Among the parties examined are the Anti-Masons, Free Soilers, and Greenbackers, leading third party movements of the period covered (1796-1884), as well as lesser-known minor parties, such as the North American Party of 1856 and the Radical Democrats of 1864.  All are covered thoroughly in an entertaining fashion.  The footnotes and selected bibliography are helpful.  If a library wants only one book on third parties, this it is.

Summing Up:  Highly recommended.  All collections.

Epinions.com

August 7, 2008

Thomas L. Knapp:  Libertarian activist, writer and publisher of Rational Review and Kn@ppster. 

Others: Third-Party Politics from the Nation’s Founding to the Rise & Fall of the Greenback-Labor Party, Volume I.

Different strokes... for different folks.  And Others is all about those other folks.
Most political histories of the United States confine their focus to "major party" politics, with the occasional nod to major trends as manifested in "third" party movements. In so doing, they lose much of the detail, flavor and grandeur of the American political pageant.
Darcy G. Richardson goes down the path not taken: His focus is entirely on the "the also rans" -- the "third" political parties vying for power in a de facto two-party system -- and he covers their history with flair, charm and a shockingly refreshing attention to detail….Others reads, to me, very much like Shelby Foote's The Civil War: A Narrative.  Like Foote, Richardson has a knack for making the most seemingly trivial details interesting and relevant -- or, to put it a different way, turning dry history into engaging storytelling.

Ballot Access News

May 1, 2007, Vol. 23, No. 1

Richard Winger, Publisher

Others: Third Parties During the Populist Period, Volume II. 

This book is filled with stories of conflict so exciting that they make one's blood race. The book covers U.S. political and social history 1888-1908, and is the second in a series.  It is far more than an account of election campaigns and candidates.  It tells the story of some of the greatest struggles between capital and labor of that period, in detail that makes it difficult to put the book down.  However, it is entirely even-handed, and pays just as careful attention to the Prohibition Party, or the little-remembered Union Labor Party, as it does to the Peoples, Socialist and Socialist Labor Parties.

January 1, 2008, Vol. 23, No. 9                                                                                                                 

Others: Third Parties from Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party to the Decline of Socialism in America, Volume III. 

If there is any book I wish all members of the federal judiciary would read, it is Others III.  That is because it illuminates how the political system works in the absence of discriminatory, restrictive ballot access laws.  U.S. politics during the 1910’s was very similar to the politics we see today in Great Britain and Canada.  Although all three nations are two-party systems, Great Britain and Canada have powerful third parties, just as the U.S. did in the 1910’s.

Liberty Magazine

October 2004

Greg Kaza, former Michigan State Representative and Executive Director, Arkansas Policy Foundation

Others: Third-Party Politics from the Nation’s Founding to the Rise & Fall of the Greenback-Labor Party, Volume I.

Standard establishment clichés about minor parties are absent from this work.  Richardson shows third parties fielded stellar public officials, affected the outcome in six presidential elections, and elected more than 350 members to Congress in the mid-to-late nineteenth century while contributing to the abolition of slavery and to women's suffrage.  Third-party members, students of political science, media, and a curious public can all draw inspiration from this work, likely to emerge as a standard reference.