Using Maine’s Thomas Brackett Reed, a Republican who served as Speaker of the House, political scientist Robert Klotz examines how parliamentary procedure and strict party discipline transformed the House of Representatives in the late nineteenth century. The subtitle of Klotz’s book, “The Gilded Age Speaker Who Made the Rules for American Politics,” captures the volume’s true focus. Far from a conventional biography, Klotz’s study serves as a vital tool for scholars who wish to understand the transformation of the House during the Gilded Age.

In eleven chapters, Klotz explores the most important professional components of “Czar Reed’s” political life. The bulk of the work the tactical and strategic choices Reed made at a time when the balance of power in the House of Representatives seemed to change with every election. Reed’s first term in office followed the notorious election of 1876, making him a member of the minority during the divisive 45th Congress. Reed readily employed commonplace dilatory tactics. The Republicans remained in the minority until 1881, when, as member of the new Republican majority, Reed began developing techniques that he would later master as Speaker of the House from 1889 to 1891 and again from 1895 to 1899. Reed shocked the political establishment when, after his reelection in 1898, he resigned the following year to practice law and lobby in New York City. In this regard, Reed is perhaps a figure twenty-first-century readers can recognize.

Reed is known to political historians and political scientists interested in the study of institutions. Yet, aside from popular biographies in 1930 and 2011, Reed’s life has avoided the kind of serious study that one would expect for such a consequential figure.Footnote ¹ Famous for opining that America was a “billion dollar country” when hounded by critics who attacked spending during the 51st Congress, Reed, who stood 6’2’’ and weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 pounds, was as combative intellectually as he was imposing physically. Employing personal papers, the Congressional Record, and a myriad of additional archival materials, Klotz systematically and thoughtfully approaches his subject. One emerges from this volume understanding Reed’s approach to governance, the importance of the “disappearing majority,” and the techniques Reed employed to overcome Congressional inaction.

This volume shines in depicting the ways in which custom and precedent left the House prone to inaction. In a practice that would astound neophytes today, members of the House were able to be physically present but not counted as such during congressional roll calls. It was therefore tremendously easy (disturbingly so, to critics who wanted action) for factions to delay action by employing the “disappearing quorum” to stall legislative business. Having learned how to play this game as a member of the minority during his initial years, Reed resolved to change the system while in the majority. The resulting “Reed Rules,” whereby members would be counted present by the speaker and his marshals even if they did not actively respond to roll calls, were a “‘watershed moment’ in the history of Congress” (110).

Readers hoping for greater insight into the climate and context in which Reed’s revolutionary changes took place will need to complement this volume with other sources. Although one gains insight into the changing relationship between Republican contemporary William McKinley, an ally during the 1880s with whom Reed would lock heads in the 1890s, for instance, a greater contextual picture is lacking. We learn that Reed’s bald pate and catfish mustache garnered him a reputation for resembling a Gilded Age Shakespeare, but we do not see the protagonist engaged with Maine’s most consequential politico, James G. Blaine. Republican factionalism—splits between reformist mugwumps and spoilsman stalwarts—does not receive a single mention. Nor do we understand how the issues of the day, such as the tariff, currency, election bills, or civil service reform, would take on greater meaning during the reign of “Czar Reed.” When coupled with a handful of political history surveys, however, Thomas Brackett Reed is a vital tool for understanding one of the most understudied aspects of Gilded Age political life.

The University Press of Kansas, which has been a leader in treating political history with care and seriousness, also missed an opportunity by not affording its author any illustrations in this volume. One reads in great detail about John Singer Sargent’s 1891 portrait of Speaker Reed but does not get to view it in Klotz’s book. Reed’s career also coincided with the heyday of political cartoons, and visual material from Judge, Puck, and other widely available sources would have similarly enlivened this monograph.

In spite of these modest reservations, Klotz’s important work deserves attention. Scholars such as Klotz, who work in an interdisciplinary fashion in an age of hyper-specialization, are absolutely essential. Lyndon Johnson’s biographer Robert Caro titled one of his volumes Master of the Senate to capture the Texan’s legislative brilliance. After reading Klotz’s examination of Reed’s political acumen, one might, with apologies to Les Misérables, think of Reed as Master of the House.