An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford

Wall Street Journal Top 10 Best Books of 2023

“Richard Norton Smith had brought a lifetime of wisdom, insight, and storytelling verve to the life of a consequential president—Gerald R. Ford. Ford’s is a very American life, and Smith has charted its vicissitudes and import with great grace and illuminating perspective. A marvelous achievement!” ― Jon Meacham

From the preeminent presidential scholar and acclaimed biographer of historical figures including George Washington, Herbert Hoover, and Nelson Rockefeller comes this eye-opening presidential biography of Gerald R. Ford, whose presidency arguably set the course for post-liberal America and a post-Cold War world.

For many Americans, President Gerald Ford was the genial accident of history who controversially pardoned his Watergate-tarnished predecessor, presided over the fall of Saigon, and became a punching bag on Saturday Night Live. Yet as Richard Norton Smith reveals in a book full of surprises, Ford was an underrated leader whose tough decisions and personal decency look better with the passage of time.

Drawing on hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents, Smith recreates Ford’s hardscrabble childhood in Michigan, his early anti-establishment politics and lifelong love affair with the former Betty Bloomer, whose impact on American culture he predicted would outrank his own. As president, Ford guided the nation through its worst Constitutional crisis since the Civil War and broke the back of the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression—accomplishing both with little fanfare or credit (at least until 2001 when the JFK Library gave him its prestigious Profile in Courage Award in belated recognition of the Nixon pardon).

Less coda than curtain raiser, Ford's administration bridged the Republican pragmatism of Eisenhower and Nixon and the more doctrinaire conservatism of Ronald Reagan. His introduction of economic deregulation would transform the American economy, while his embrace of the Helsinki Accords hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union, a turning point in the Cold War.

Illustrated with sixteen pages of black-and-white photos, this definitive biography, a work of modern American history a decade in the making, will change history’s views of a man whose warning about presidential arrogance (“God help the country”) is more relevant than ever.

How did the man dismissed as an accident of history shape the next fifty years of American politics?

• The Nixon Pardon: An in-depth look at the controversial decision that cost Ford the election but earned him a Profile in Courage Award decades later.
• An Underrated President: Go beyond the Saturday Night Live caricature to uncover the tough, decent leader who guided the nation through crisis with little fanfare.
• Pivotal Economic Policy: Discover how Ford’s introduction of economic deregulation and his handling of a severe downturn set the course for the modern American economy.
• A Bridge in US History: Explore how Ford’s administration connected the Republican pragmatism of Eisenhower to the rising conservatism of Ronald Reagan.
• Meticulous Research: Built on a decade of work, drawing from thousands of documents and hundreds of interviews to create the definitive account of a consequential life.

Director of five presidential libraries, a familiar face to viewers of C-Span and the PBS News Hour, Richard Norton Smith is the author of, among other works, Thomas E. Dewey and His Times, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation; and On His Own Terms; A Life of Nelson Rockefeller.