The Warm Bucket Brigade

Book excerpt: What do you know about America’s vice presidents? An “altogether amusing” history filled with oft-forgotten names and fascinating anecdotes (AV Club). How many vice presidents went on to become president? How many vice presidents shot men while in office? Who was the better shot? Who was the first vice president to assume power when a president died? Why did he return official letters without reading them? What vice president was almost torn limb from limb in Venezuela? Which former VP was tried for treason for trying to start his own empire in the Southwest? How many vice presidents were assassinated? In the next presidential election, should you worry about the candidates for vice president? The vice presidency isn’t worth “a bucket of warm spit.” That’s the prudish version of what John Nance Garner had to say about the office—several years after serving as VP under FDR. Was he right? The vice presidency is one of America’s most historically complicated and underappreciated public offices. And Jeremy Lott’s sweeping, hilarious, and insightful history introduces the unusual, colorful, and sometimes shadowy cast of characters that have occupied it—their bitter rivalries and rank ambitions, glorious victories and tragic setbacks, revealed through hundreds of historical vignettes and drawn from extensive research and interviews. “Full of rich veep history.” —Baltimore Sun