Book Review: Striking Change
Mike Marotta
Roosevelt and Augustus Saint-Gaudens by Michael F. Moran. (Whitman
Publishing, 2008. 438 pages, $24.95) (This review was excerpted from
an original appearance in The Mich-Matist of the MSNS.)
The “$20 Saint” is often chosen as America’s best coin. The workshop
of Augustus Saint-Gaudens in Cornish, New Hampshire, is a popular
pilgrimage for numismatists. The grounds are a National Historical
Site, maintained by the National Park Service. (Learn more at
http://www.nps.gov/saga/index.htm.) Nice as all that may be, we here
are not surprised to learn that the devil is in the details.
Fortunately, Whitman Publishing has issued a book full of details.
Striking Change includes over 200 illustrations and rests on a
bibliography of over 160 entries. Some of the research items will be
very familiar – Taxay, Vermeule, Breen – while other citations are
necessarily outside the normal range. The Education of Henry Adams
might be known to some history buffs, but who has read Henry Adams in
Love? These are joined by the Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, the
Sherman Family archives and are capped by truly esoteric sources such
as the Francis Miller Rogers Papers of the Smithsonian and the John
Boyd Thatcher Scrapbooks from the New York State Library. Here is
everything significant that we know about Saint-Gaudens and his
relationship with Theodore Roosevelt.
The writing is lively, engaging and direct. The ANA recognized
Michael Moran’s April 2006 article, “Earthquake!” about the survival
of the San Francisco Mint in 1906 with a Heath Literary Award.
Every American coin collector knows the Double Eagle. A collector who
pursues the less famous coins and medals of Augustus Saint-Gaudens
will have an admirable assemblage later. And there is more to the
family than “Gus.”
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Mike M.
Michael E. Marotta
George D
Mike thank you for the coin related postings.....
George D.