Brian Lamb (1) (1941–)

Recently, a number of books have added a subcategory to the famous travelogue -- tours of bizarre, off-the-wall, sometimes off-the-map places. Among the weirdest of the weird must be the C-SPAN-produced "Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb?: A Tour of Presidential Gravesites." With wry gallows humor, and historical bemusement, the book offers a brief note about each US president, specific directions to their final resting places, and a brief essay.

The text is sprightly, despite its morbid subject show more matter. Each president's death is described, in addition to funeral arrangements. There are plenty of photographs of the cemeteries, crypts, and tombstones, including a color photo of each grave. Historian Richard Norton Smith adds a brief anecdotal note for each president, which are interesting and sometimes humorous.

I began reading the book on a whim, quickly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Historical nuts and political junkies should enjoy it, and many will decided to seek out the various tombs. For the truly obsessed, an appendix also gives locations of all vice-presidential gravesites. show less

This book attempts - and for the most part I believe it succeeds - to present a balance view of Lincoln by presenting positions by Lincoln detractors as well as Lincoln admires. I found the essays regarding Lincoln's character to be fairly consistent with each other. Both the detractors as well as the admires agreed that Lincoln was a genius when it came to oration, writing, convincing people to join his cause, and getting things done. They also agree that Lincoln lacked true belief in the show more Christian religion, and said many troubling things regarding race (colonization, deportation, white supremacy, etc.). I believe that this book captures much of the true nature of who Lincoln was as a man, and I would recommend it as a fair treatment of Lincoln. show less

An interesting review of all 44 of the American Presidents, ranking them in order of first to last (Trump has not been in office long enough to be given a rating).
Each president is given a chapter, and the information compiled by C-SPAN. The ratings were given by a team of 91 presidential historians. The ratings were based on a set of ten qualities of presidential leadership. They were: public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, international relations, show more administrative skills, relations with Congress, vision/setting an agenda, pursued equal justice for all, and performance within the context of the times.
I was not surprised by the "top ten" presidents. I mean, how can you go wrong in selecting giants such as Lincoln, Washington, or the Roosevelts? Nor was I shocked to see the bottom of the barrel, including James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, or Millard Fillmore. What was interesting were those presidents in the middle, and why they were ranked there.
Each chapter has great tidbits about the presidents, items on their early years, their beliefs, their quirks, and the people they selected to help them run the country.
I believe that this book would be a great one for anybody interested in our history. Rather than read 44 books on each one of the presidents, one could read this and get a good background on each one. I especially could see this book being used in a upper year high school civics class, or an introductory college level class. The high school teacher could assign a chapter to each student, and have them give a report to the rest of the class. So much better than they could get from Wikipedia!
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and will be referring to it in the future. show less

Some may find this book misleading, as it doesn't really explore the presidential rankings beyond surface-level explanations as to why Lincoln is the best and Buchanan is the worst. Even still, this works as a bite-sized look at every US president, their major accomplishments, their biggest faults, and their overall legacy.