"Mr. Republican" was of course Robert Alphonso Taft of Ohio, political conservative, party regular, United States Senator from 1939 until his death in 1953, and unsuccessful aspirant for the GOP presidential nomination in 1940, 1948, and 1952. This biography is the only book on Taft based on full access to the Senator's papers. Sympathetic, yet frequently critical, James T. Patterson offers a thoughtful and interpretive study of the personal and political life of a man who not only wielded great influence in his time but whose bold views on the issues have assumed increasing relevance in the 1960s'a and 1970s'. Taft was born in Cincinnati, on September 8, 1889, the son of William Howard Taft, President and Chief Justice of the United States, and the grandson of Alphonso Taft, a judge, Secretary of War, Attorney General, and Minister to Austria-Hungary and Russia. Always aware of his heritage, he compiled a brilliant record at his uncle's Taft School, at Yale, and at the Harvard Law School. He then practiced law in Cincinnati for four years, worked under Herbert Hoover for the United States Food Administration in Washington and the American Relief Administration in Paris, and served several terms in the Ohio house and senate between 1921 and 1933. In 1938 he won the first of three terms to the United States Senate. Taft affirmed individual freedom, equality of opportunity, and the rule of law. He fought hard against the spread of federal bureaucracy, high government spending, and Big Labor. But he was also flexible, and he pained Republican conservatives by battling for public housing and federal aid for education. His capacity for work and his quick and retentive mind established him as the congressional leader in many successful struggles against the proposals of Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S Truman. In 1953 he rose above disappointment to serve loyally as President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Senate leader. Although Taft was gentle and tender with family and close friends, he was often self-conscious and combative in the glare of public life, and many contemporaries found him cold and colorless. Because he refused to endorse government's wide-ranging foreign policies, he was also labeled - carelessly - as a mindless isolationist. For all these reasons he failed to achieve a presidential nomination. From the perspective of the 1970s', many of his views, especially on foreign policy, seem relevant and attractive.