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Best book on each president? (1 Viewer)

toshiba

toshiba

Footballguy
I want to read a good book about each president. I am going to start with Washington and go through at least Nixon.

I like a more story teller book, but should be total life encompassing and not just his term as President. I would prefer to you to have read the book about the president you suggest, but if there is a general acceptance of the best known author about a president that would work too.

We don't need suggestions in order, if you know good ones please post them here, that will be helpful. The problem is, I can go to a bookstore and pick up any book, but I would rather have it be an accepted biography then just some random person.

Thanks

1 George Washington

His Excellency: George Washington (Joseph J. Ellis)

2 John Adams

John Adams (David McCullough)

3 Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson (Albert Jay Nock)

American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (Joseph J. Ellis)

4 James Madison

5 James Monroe

6 John Quincy Adams

7 Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times (H.W. Brands)

8 Martin Van Buren

9 William H. Harrison

10 John Tyler

11 James K. Polk

12 Zachary Taylor

13 Millard Fillmore

14 Franklin Pierce

15 James Buchanan

16 Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln (David Herbert Donald)

Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America (Garry Wills)

Day Lincoln Was Shot (Jim Bishop)

17 Andrew Johnson

18 Ulysses S. Grant

19 Rutherford B. Hayes

20 James Garfield

21 Chester A. Arthur

22 Grover Cleveland

23 Benjamin Harrison

24 Grover Cleveland

25 William McKinley

26 Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Rex (Edmund Morris)

27 William H. Taft

28 Woodrow Wilson

29 Warren G. Harding

30 Calvin Coolidge

31 Herbert Hoover

32 Franklin D. Roosevelt

33 Harry S. Truman

Truman (David McCullough)

34 Dwight D. Eisenhower

35 John F. Kennedy

36 Lyndon B. Johnson

37 Richard Nixon

38 Gerald Ford

39 Jimmy Carter

40 Ronald Reagan

41 George H. W. Bush

42 Bill Clinton

43 George W. Bush

 
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Robert Dallek wrote a great book on LBJ.. i think he has written about other Presidents as well

eta: "Flawed Giant". covers 61 to 73.

check Amazon. he also wrote books about Nixon, FDR and JFK

 
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I took on this same project about a year ago and only got through Washington and halfway through John Adams' book (by McCullough). Obviously, I got sidetracked. :blackdot:

George Washington: His Excellency

I did read it and it was great.

I solicited opinions on other presidential biographies and the following books were recommended (but I have not yet read):

Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times by H.W. Brands

Lincoln by David Herbert Donald

Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris

Truman by David McCullough

Good luck!

 
Albert Jay Nock's Mr. Jefferson is a good read. The whole thing is available as a PDF here.

As mattyt mentioned, Truman by David McCollough is also quite good.

 
toshiba said:
I want to read a good book about each president. I am going to start with Washington and go through at least Nixon.I like a more story teller book, but should be total life encompassing and not just his term as President. I would prefer to you to have read the book about the president you suggest, but if there is a general acceptance of the best known author about a president that would work too.We don't need suggestions in order, if you know good ones please post them here, that will be helpful. The problem is, I can go to a bookstore and pick up any book, but I would rather have it be an accepted biography then just some random person.Thanks
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Wy would you stop at Nixon?
 
Fennis said:
toshiba said:
I want to read a good book about each president. I am going to start with Washington and go through at least Nixon.I like a more story teller book, but should be total life encompassing and not just his term as President. I would prefer to you to have read the book about the president you suggest, but if there is a general acceptance of the best known author about a president that would work too.We don't need suggestions in order, if you know good ones please post them here, that will be helpful. The problem is, I can go to a bookstore and pick up any book, but I would rather have it be an accepted biography then just some random person.Thanks
Click to expand...
Wy would you stop at Nixon?
Click to expand...
I think around WWII that the judge of history is not out on all these presidents and would end up getting more of a political biography and not historic.
 
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Ok.....

Washington - His Excellency by Ellis is probably the best you can do. In fact, if you are serious about this type of reading schedule - I've been in the process for about a year - you can't go wrong with Ellis on any topic.

Adams - McCullough's Adams is very good. But make sure you check out Joe Ellis' "American Sage."

Jefferson - Joe Ellis' "American Sphinx" is the best look at Jefferson ever written in my opinion.

Madison - Ralph Ketcham wrote a great bio on him in terms of knowledge - you can't find more info on him then in that book. It doesn't read particularly well though, because Ketcham tries to get every fact in there he can without story telling. So, it isn't as compelling as it can be.

***** Make sure you read Founding Brothers by Joe Ellis for an overall look at the first 4 Presidents, and a few other important men. This is required reading for anyone interested in Presidential bios. ********

There is a very good, short and sweet bio series on the President's called "The American President Series." This will be the place you look for a lot of the Presidents. The other problem you might find is that the string of 19th century guys before Lincoln just aren't well remembered in history, or frankly, important outside of their lack of action creating failure, to the American story and therefore they don't get a lot of coverage.

For Lincoln there are three required. David Herbert Donald's, which you have. You also must read Lincoln at Gettysburgh, and The Day Lincoln Was Shot. There are about 10 more books I could recommend on him, but those three are the top of the list all the time.

Once you get to the turn of the century, Teddy Roosevelt has a ton of books about him out there. Theodore Rex is probably necessary, as is "A Strenuous Life."

When you get to FDR, there is just a ton of stuff out there. If you get impressed with his WWII years in the White House - not so much the WWII story itself, but the FDR White House during that time, then I would recommend Winston and Franklin - yes, it's also a look at Winston Churchill, but it is a good look at FDR.

I can think of more later with some time.

 
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Good idea for a list. I'm also interested in the definitive work about Chester Alan Arthur. I have a feeling it could be written on the back of a cereal box.

 
bentley said:
Good idea for a list. I'm also interested in the definitive work about Chester Alan Arthur. I have a feeling it could be written on the back of a cereal box.
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I've seen one on Arthur. It was one of those 'touch and feel' books. They had a couple of hunks of carpet for his sideburns.
 
If you want an interesting book about the people who could have been President, Irving Stone's They Also Ran tells the stories of the losing candidate in each race up through Goldwater in 1964.

 
Election time is coming

If I was president,

I'd get elected on Friday, assasinated on Saturday,

and buried on Sunday.

If I was president...

If I was president

An old man told me, instead of spending billions on the war,

we can use some of that money, in the ghetto.

I know some so poor,when it rains that when they shower,

screaming "fight the power".

That's when the vulture devoured

[chorus]

If I was president,

I'd get elected on Friday, assasinated on Saturday,

and buried on Sunday.

If I was president...

If I was president...

If I was president...

If I was president

But the radio won't play this.

They call it rebel music.

How can you refuse it, children of moses?

[chorus]

If I was president,

I'd get elected on Friday, assasinated on Saturday,

and buried on Sunday.

If I was president...

If i was president

Tell the children the truth, the truth.

Christopher Columbus didn't discover America.

Tell them the truth.

The truth

YEAH! Tell them about Marcus Garvey.

The the children the truth YEAH! The truth.

Tell them about Martin Luther King.

Tell them the truth.

The Truth.

Tell them about JFK

If I was President

[chorus]

If I was president,

I'd get elected on Friday, assasinated on Saturday,

and buried on Sunday.

If I was president...

If I was president

 
FDR by Jean Edward Smith is a very good book on Roosevelt. On of my old professors actually wrote it.

edited for spelling.

 
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A Team of Rivals is the best book written about Lincoln that I have read. I have read Truman by McCullough and that was a great read. McCullough also wrote a book about John Adams that I understand to be the best out there on him as well. I cannot reccomend A Team of Rivals strongly enough.

ETA: I, too, read George Washington: His Excellency and thought it was a good read as well.

 
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Greco said:
A Team of Rivals is the best book written about Lincoln that I have read. I have read Truman by McCullough and that was a great read. McCullough also wrote a book about John Adams that I understand to be the best out there on him as well. I cannot reccomend A Team of Rivals strongly enough.

ETA: I, too, read George Washington: His Excellency and thought it was a good read as well.
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Team of Rivals was good, but I don't put it above the three I mentioned.
 
I almost made a thread identical to this one about a month ago. My knowledge of presidential history is pathetic, and I was hoping to change that.

I'll keep a close eye on this one.

 
On a side note,

Does anyway know of a good history site that is more or less structured as a textbook? I'm looking for something that will cover U.S. history from Columbus or earlier to the present and that will be more than a timeline of major events.

Also, if there are any good general history message boards, post some links.

Thanks.

 
I am starting to realize that if David McCullough wrote it, one should read it. Currently reading Mornings on Horseback by him, which is the Teddy Roosevelt story. Follows the Roosevelt family from the time of Teddy's Great Grand Father forward to his Presidency. The other one by McCullough that I read, 1776, was top shelf, too.

 
President Grant's own personal memoirs are supposed to be excellent (Mark Twain was his editor/ghost writer, IIRC). and Eisenhower's "Crusade in Europe" talks about what he did to win WWII in Europe.

And isn't there a book called "Mornings on Horseback" about TR and his formative years when he "went West" to recover from the death of his first wife.. (edit to add that looks like Greco beat me to this one.)

Joe Cannon has written a couple of supposedly excellent biographies of Ronald Reagan and there's also several Edmund Morris ones too.

 
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Greco said:
I am starting to realize that if David McCullough wrote it, one should read it. Currently reading Mornings on Horseback by him, which is the Teddy Roosevelt story. Follows the Roosevelt family from the time of Teddy's Great Grand Father forward to his Presidency. The other one by McCullough that I read, 1776, was top shelf, too.
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McCullough and Ellis. You read everything they write your doing well.
 
igbomb said:
On a side note,

Does anyway know of a good history site that is more or less structured as a textbook? I'm looking for something that will cover U.S. history from Columbus or earlier to the present and that will be more than a timeline of major events.

Also, if there are any good general history message boards, post some links.

Thanks.
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Should have done a little more digging before posting my questions:Online history text

History forum

 
For TR, please add The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, the "prequel" to Theodore Rex, by the same author, detailing his life up the point he became president. The man was truly a giant.

 
This book looks pretty interesting: The Cult of the Presidency by Gene Healy

Radley Balko reviews it here:

Presidential Power-Tripping

Monday, May 19, 2008

By Radley Balko

The most important issue in this November's presidential election isn't Iraq or terrorism or the economy, though it plays into all three. The most important issue is presidential power.

In our history and civics classes, we're taught that the genius of the Constitution is the checks and balances it imposes on the three branches of government. The founders understood that each branch — the president, the Congress and the courts — would seek to expand its power. They then set up a system that not only acknowledges man's desire to accumulate power but also one that harnesses that desire and uses it to keep any one branch from becoming too influential.

That system has mostly served us well. But an important new book details how the delicate balance of power in the federal government has been unraveling for nearly a century now, and underscores how important it is that we elect a president this November who understands the constitutional boundaries of the office.

Unfortunately, that isn't likely to happen.

"The Cult of the Presidency" by the Cato Institute's Gene Healy (I should disclose that Healy is a friend and former colleague) provides a history of the office of the presidency. It's a fascinating narrative of how the office that was meant to be little more than an administrator of the nation's laws (George Washington referred to it as "chief magistrate") has grown into the equivalent of an elected monarch.

It's a curious thing in America that each July we celebrate how the founding fathers threw off the shackles of an oppressive monarchy, that we favorably compare our republican system of governance with the world's tyrants, dictatorships and monarchies (and rightly so) -- and yet we then celebrate those American presidents who most behaved like tyrants, monarchs and dictators.

Presidents like Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman are regularly put at the top of lists of America's greatest presidents. This is true when both historians and the American public at large are polled. Yet these are presidents who did everything they could to expand the power of their offices, to extend the sphere of influence of the federal government and to bully through policies that met inconvenient hurdles otherwise known as checks and balances.

Woodrow Wilson ran for president on a peace platform, then dragged us through the bloody trench carnage of World War I. Oh, and he imprisoned thousands of critics and war protesters in the process. Teddy Roosevelt once lamented that he didn't have a war during his administration to make him great, and compared the stakes of his third-party run for the White House to the rapture and second coming of Jesus Christ.

Franklin Roosevelt broke the tradition set by George Washington of serving just two terms. When the Supreme Court rebuffed his attempts to pass unconstitutional legislation, he tried to expand the number of justices on the Court to ensure a friendly majority. Harry Truman was the first president to pull America into a protracted war without first consulting Congress. He then sought to nationalize private companies to ensure that war was properly outfitted.

These are odd men to call heroes.

Inexplicably, the presidents who knew and understood their constitutional limits, who respected those limits and who generally took a more laissez-faire approach to government get short shrift — even derision — from historians.

Men like Calvin Coolidge, Warren Harding, Rutherford B. Hayes and Grover Cleveland merely exhibited what Healy calls "stolid, boring competence." Historians loathe them, Healy writes, because they had the audacity to "content themselves simply with presiding over peace and prosperity" and not seek to remake the world in their own image. The nerve of them.

Today, the president oversees 1.8 million federal employees. The federal government is America's largest employer. Moreover, we today expect much more from the president than merely to enforce the nation's laws. We expect him to console us in times of tragedy or natural disaster, to inspire us in times of war. Some even look to the president for spiritual guidance. The enormity of the office grows more unsettling when you consider the set of skills and traits it takes to get elected. As Healy explains, the long, brutal, expensive primary and general election process selects people with massive egos, people willing to subject themselves to all sorts of abuse in the pursuit of power and people willing to accept favors from all sorts of interests as they ascend from office to office — favors from people who generally expect to be repaid.

George Washington set perhaps the most important precedent in the history of the idea of a constitutional republic when he declined to seek a third term. He could have been a king if he'd so chosen. Despite achieving myth-like reverence and adulation while still in office, Washington had the humility and the foresight to understand the importance of leaving power on the table. Doing so not only limited his own power but began the voluntary two-term tradition that lasted 140 years.

While both Barack Obama and John McCain have in some way acknowledged that the Bush administration has dangerously pushed the limits of executive power, neither has indicated exactly what powers, if elected, he would give back or what steps he'd take to make sure those powers aren't later invoked by a successor.

Perhaps it's too much to hope for another George Washington. Instead, this November, it looks as if our choices are a man who styles himself after John F. Kennedy and a man who idolizes Teddy Roosevelt.

That doesn't bode well for the next four years, or for the imperial presidency's continuing threat to American democracy.
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"The Shadow of Blooming Grove" by Francis Russell is the most comphrehensive on Warren Harding at 700 Pages. It includes a curiousity in that sections of some pages are blank as an injunction forced the printers to remove quotes from Harding's love letters to Carrie Phillips. Nan Britton affair and the false accusation that his wife poisoned him on the eve of the Teapot Dome scandal. Interesting book about an interesting life that a not very interesting man was thrusted into.

A shorter read is "The Available Man" by Andrew Sinclair which concentrates more on the political Harding. Easier read but still 344 pages.

 
Yankee23Fan said:
Ok.....Washington - His Excellency by Ellis is probably the best you can do. In fact, if you are serious about this type of reading schedule - I've been in the process for about a year - you can't go wrong with Ellis on any topic.Adams - McCullough's Adams is very good. But make sure you check out Joe Ellis' "American Sage."Jefferson - Joe Ellis' "American Sphinx" is the best look at Jefferson ever written in my opinion.Madison - Ralph Ketcham wrote a great bio on him in terms of knowledge - you can't find more info on him then in that book. It doesn't read particularly well though, because Ketcham tries to get every fact in there he can without story telling. So, it isn't as compelling as it can be.***** Make sure you read Founding Brothers by Joe Ellis for an overall look at the first 4 Presidents, and a few other important men. This is required reading for anyone interested in Presidential bios. ********There is a very good, short and sweet bio series on the President's called "The American President Series." This will be the place you look for a lot of the Presidents. The other problem you might find is that the string of 19th century guys before Lincoln just aren't well remembered in history, or frankly, important outside of their lack of action creating failure, to the American story and therefore they don't get a lot of coverage.For Lincoln there are three required. David Herbert Donald's, which you have. You also must read Lincoln at Gettysburgh, and The Day Lincoln Was Shot. There are about 10 more books I could recommend on him, but those three are the top of the list all the time.Once you get to the turn of the century, Teddy Roosevelt has a ton of books about him out there. Theodore Rex is probably necessary, as is "A Strenuous Life."When you get to FDR, there is just a ton of stuff out there. If you get impressed with his WWII years in the White House - not so much the WWII story itself, but the FDR White House during that time, then I would recommend Winston and Franklin - yes, it's also a look at Winston Churchill, but it is a good look at FDR.I can think of more later with some time.
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I love to read but where do you find the time? :lmao:
 
toshiba said:
1 George Washington

His Excellency: George Washington (Joseph J. Ellis)
Click to expand...
This book was so good I thought it was a better read on the Revolutionary War than "1776"."Dead Certain" was an excellent book on the Presidency of George W. Bush.

"What Draper does with great skill in Dead Certain is debunk caricatures of George Bush, both positive and negative. In place of the dim-witted bogeyman of the left and the resolute hero of the right, Draper introduces a three-dimensional man full of contradictions." -- Salon.com
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