Britton's portrayal of Harding and his colloquialisms paints a picture of a crude womanizer. In his 1931 book "Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s", Frederick Lewis Allen wrote that on the testimony of Britton's book, Harding's private life was "one of cheap sex episodes" and that "one sees with deadly clarity the essential ordinariness of the man, the commonness of his 'Gee dearie' and 'Say, you darling'." Britton's book was among those irreverently reviewed by Dorothy Parker for "The New Yorker" magazine as part of her famous "Constant Reader" column, under the title "An American DuBarry".