There is a considerable body of literature about Al Smith's life and political career, which is rather remarkable for a man who did not rise above the governorship of a state. A good place to begin is with Smith's own words. His autobiography, Up to Now (Viking, 1929), unfortunately concludes with the 1928 presidential election. Several years later he published observations on government and governing in The Citizen and His Government (Harper, 1935). In addition, there are collections of Smith's addresses and state papers as governor of New York, Progressive Democracy (Harcourt, Brace, 1928), and of his speeches during the 1928 presidential campaign, Campaign Addresses (Democratic National Committee, 1929). Using these sources but also others, Richard M. Lynch published an anthology of excerpts from Smith's speeches and writings entitled Alfred E. Smith (Vantage, 1966).

There are three biographies dating from the 1920s: Henry Moskowitz, Alfred E. Smith (Thomas Seltzer, 1924); Norman Hapgood and Henry Moskowitz, Up From the City Streets (Harcourt, Brace, 1927); and Henry F. Pringle, Alfred E. Smith (Macy-Masius, 1927). The first two were preconvention campaign biographies, though they are not without valuable information. Pringle's book is more interpretive and penetrating. The next biography did not appear until after Smith's death in 1944. This was Frank Graham, Al Smith (Putnam, 1945).

The next quarter-century brought several important works on Al Smith. The first was Emily Smith Warner's The Happy Warrior (Doubleday, 1956), a sympathetic and revealing biography by a daughter who knew her father as no one else did. Soon thereafter came the first scholarly biography, Oscar Handlin's Al Smith and His America (Little, Brown, 1958), which adroitly placed Smith in the urban, ethnic context of his era. Also worth reading is A Tribute to Governor Smith (Simon and Schuster, 1962), a brief but insightful memoir by one of Smith's closest associates, Robert Moses. These publications were followed by Matthew and Hannah Josephson, Al Smith: Hero of the Cities (Houghton Mifflin, 1969), which is strongest in dealing with Smith's earlier years, and by Richard O'Connor, The First Hurrah (Putnam, 1970).

In 1983, Garland published two valuable and complementary academic studies of Smith's political career: Paula Eldot's Governor Alfred E. Smith and Donn C. Neal's The World Beyond the Hudson: Alfred E. Smith and National Politics. More recent biographies include Empire Statesman (Free Press, 2001) by Robert A. Slayton and Alfred E. Smith (Hill and Wang, 2002) by Christopher M. Finan, each of which has its virtues.

Other sources for those seeking a comprehensive understanding of Al Smith and his times would include the memoirs of and scholarship about his closest associates (e.g., Belle Moskowitz, Joseph M. Proskauer, Robert Moses, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Charles Murphy), studies of the 1928 presidential election (principally Edmund A. Moore's A Catholic Runs for President and Allan J. Lichtman's more sophisticated Prejudice and the Old Politics), and the numerous dissertations on aspects of Smith's life and political career.

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