Titan of the Senate by William Doyle is a biography about the late Republican Senator, Orrin Hatch, and the goal he had of protecting and keeping children healthy, supporting AIDS patients, making sure that people of the United States are covered by Prescription medicine, and keeping those meds at a low-cost level.

I need to caveat this review though as Senator Hatch was a Senator from my own state of Utah, so I knew a lot more about the Senator than what is discussed in this book...

The biggest takeaway from this book would be how Senator Hatch was able to reach across the aisle and work with some of the most powerful Democrats, especially Ted Kennedy. Senator Hatch was considered the Titan of the Senate and Senator Kennedy was the Lion of the Senate. Together they protected the marginalized people of our country whether LGBTQ+ patients who were infected with HIV which turned into tragic and horrific AIDS and at the same showing compassion and empathy to those infected by learning about the disease and the transmission of the disease so that they could teach others that HIV patients were not going to infect you just by being around you or hugging you.
At the time of the AIDS scare people who were infected were treated as subhuman and sometimes even worse. This honestly was worse than what we saw through the COVID pandemic. As a daughter of an AIDS victim, via a blood transfusion, I watched in horror time and time again how people who claimed to be Christian followers, or protectors of marginalized communities even, treated people infected with HIV.
I saw firsthand as I walked into a clergy's office the clergyman spraying the seat with bleach after a member of his own congregation walked out of the office, us passing each other going in and out, and how the poor man witnessed this sanitization as he walked out with tears in his eyes and a slump in his posture because he was so embarrassed at the reaction of our leader and the sadness of his situation which he could not control and knew more than likely would lead to his untimely death in the near future. I reached out, patted his shoulder, and then hugged this man because it broke my heart the audacity of the leader to not even wait until the man had walked out of his office if he felt he needed to clean, and the ignorance of not understand that this man could not pass his disease on to me or anyone else just by sitting in a chair. This was only a minor reaction to what I witnessed, however, it was happening even after it was proven that you could not get HIV through the average contact with an infected person. Senators Hatch and Kennedy's bill wasn't passed in time for my mother to take advantage of the life-saving protocols that the Ryan White Care Act would have provided her. I am so grateful it happened in time for that one man in my church who continued to live and contribute greatly to other people's welfare by helping others with HIV learn to protect themselves via smart practices and taking the appropriate tests to protect others.

Senators Hatch and Kennedy continued working together to protect Children through the State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) so that not a single child went without healthcare and they worked together to form cohesive relationships with other Senators and House members to pass other bills that were just as life-changing as the SCHIP or the Ryan White Care Act.

This book is well researched and well written, however, I would have loved the author to not repeat the achievements of Senator Hatch and possibly laid out the topics a little more clearly so these achievements could be understood deeper. I would also have liked the author to give us a little more of Senator Hatch's personality and deeper into his Senate role outside of the biggest achievements with Senator Kennedy and a few others, which you can see he achieved in the timeline of his time in the Senate in the back of the book.

Both Senator Hatch and Senator Kennedy worked together and achieved success via how many bills there were able to pass (791 for Hatch and Kennedy was a close second to that before his death,) through their service to the American people) by working in a bipartisan manner. After the death of Senator Kennedy, Senator Hatch continued to reach across the aisle to achieve great things for our country, however after his retirement, this bipartisanship has stalled to a level of chaos and dysfunctional relationships between each major party and each Legislative branch. I truly believe that this book and its history should be read, researched more, and inspire our politicians to go back to the golden age of bipartisanship and start working together, quit the divisiveness, and start finding common ground and socializing with each other again to make our government work for the people, not the people waiting for the government to do something for us. WE THE PEOPLE is what this whole republic is supposed to be about.

If you like to read books about Political figures; If you want to have an inkling of what Politics were like before the last three Presidents then this book is for you.

Orrin Hatch is a legend. His passing this past April broke my heart. I am grateful to William Doyle for doing him diligence within the pages of this book and preserving his legacy in this way.

Mr. Doyle has published a biography of United States Senator Orin Hatch of Utah. Senator Hatch is largely seen as bland and forgettable, but perhaps that is simply due to a lack of flash as proposed by Doyle. The late Senator Hatch was a conservative standard-bearer virtually opposed to all progressive policies, but he was also a man of strongly held religious and moral conviction while not being a demagogue. This biography while partisan should be read if no other reason than for an understanding of why he resisted those policies.