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Fearless: John L. McClellan, United States Senator. By Sherry Laymon. (Mustang, OK: Tate Publishing, 2011. Pp. 425. Acknowledgments, foreword, illustrations, notes, index. $29.95.)
Sherry Laymon has written the first full-length biography of Sen. John L. McClellan, a pivotal political figure in post-World War II American history. This is a sympathetic treatment of McClellan's career, one that verges on being laudatory; but at the same time Laymon does a wonderful job of highlighting the impressive range of significant roles that this conservative Democrat from Arkansas played over the course of a career that stretched from his election to the Senate in 1942 to his death in 1977. The son of an Arkansas farmer turned lawyer, McClellan rose to become one of the key powerbrokers in Congress, a bulwark of the conservative faction there, and the architect of a vast expansion of the federal role in law enforcement.
One of the several strengths of this book is the quality of the research. Laymon has delved deeply into McClellan's personal papers and tapped various other sources, including a range of important interviews. This research allows her to offer a...