In “Calhoun: American Heretic,” Elder makes one of America’s strangest and most controversial figures familiar without understating any of his flaws. From Calhoun’s youthful presidential dreams to his acerbic middle-aged reactionism, Elder tracks his subject’s career from the South Carolina upcountry and Yale College to Washington, D.C., interspersing the stories of his political battles in Congress and the War Department with details of his plantation life and personal reflections.
