A Bloc of One: The Political Career of Hiram W. Johnson

This is the first full-length study of one of the major political figures of twentieth-century America, Hiram Johnson (1876-1945). At the start of his almost four decades as United States Senator from California, Johnson was an insurgent, a progressive in the stamp of Robert LaFollette and Theodore Roosevelt. Elected governor in 1910, he thoroughly revamped the state’s political system while helping to shape a progressive movement on the national level as well. Johnson left the governorship in 1917, midway through his second term, to enter the United States Senate, where he served until his death in 1945. An isolationist to the end, Johnson fought for decades against U.S. involvement in foreign affairs, and from his deathbed voted in 1945 against American entry into the United Nations. Johnson’s public career encompasses almost all the significant political issues, both domestic and international in American life for almost half a century.