Presidential Biographies

Someone put the idea in my head (and I latched onto it like the compulsive, task-oriented, list maker that I am) to read a biography of every American President, in order (in order of the Presidents, not publication).

Does anyone have suggestions for presidential biographies?

I don't necessarily want "conservative" biographies, but I would like to find good biographies that don't have a left-wing slant. I don't read enough history or biographies to recognize which authors to avoid or to seek out.

Lincoln by David Herbert Donald is considered one of the best biographies in the huge field of Lincoln studies.

I would also recommend Lincoln's Melancholy by Joshua Shenk for some insight into Lincoln's depression.

Good ones that I've read which come to mind are Flexner - George Washington, Paige Smith - John Adams, Arthur Schlesinger - Andrew Jackson ( also did one on FDR - called The Age of Roosevelt), Carl Sandburg's Lincoln is less scholarly but a better read than Donalds, David McCullough's Truman and also John Adams, Allan Nevins - Grover Cleveland. You might try the following link for Biographies of others: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0760585.html

Here are links to reviews in London Review of Books (UK ideological counterpart of the New York Review of Books) of

some recent biographies of FDR:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n11/reyn01_.html

A biography of JFK:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n22/drew01_.html

These people are Lefties but they are generally cunning and thus write worth-reading book reviews.

I enjoyed President Kennedy:Profile of Power by Richard Reeves.

And Edmund Morris's Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. But the TR book was only part one. Morris is longwinded.

Just finishing, Paul Johnson's George Washington and it is excellent for a short read. This slender volume only reaffirms George Washington as a personal hero; and the true founder of our country. I found most interesting that while he was busy fighting and winning our independence such stalwarts as John Adams and Tom Jefferson were conspiciously absent.

Paige Smith is wonderful for all things American.

No.

When Character Was King is not a full biographical treatment, but is nonetheless a necessity to look into the heart of Reagan.

Avoid Dutch by Edmund Morris.

After reading Founding Brothers, I intend to read Joseph J. Ellis' biographies of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson. A wonderful writer.

Not a president, probably a good thing he wasn't, but Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton is well worth the time.

Thanks, everyone, for the great suggestions. I will update my list.

When Character Was King is already on my TBR shelf (although maybe not on LT yet), so I will definitely get to that one. Same with Founding Brothers.

Unfortunately, I have already read Dutch (can't get the touchstone to work), so can't avoid it. What was all that with the fictional, personal relationship???? That was the oddest biography I have ever read!

Here are a few biographies that I found interesting, must say that my favorite (listed first) is not of a President. All three concern our Founding Fathers.

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, Walter Isaacson Although written by a former chief of CNN, I found BF's life thoroughly interesting! It chronicles the life of a man who was transformed from a strong Loyalist to one who supported and encouraged those who worked hard to get what they want.

American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, a flawed but brilliant man, who at a very young age wrote the Declaration of Independence (albeit with the help of Adams, Franklin and others) and who also became more conservative with age.

His Excellency: George Washington, Possibly the most popular of the three, but perhaps for being in the right spot at the right time.

Some presidential bios I have enjoyed include:

John Quincy Adams: a public life, a private life

The Real Lincoln: a new look at Abraham Lincoln, his agenda, and an unnecessary war

Chester Alan Arthur (you're not going to find a lot of bios of him, but this short book was definitely worth the time)

Wilson's War: How Woodrow Wilson's great blunder led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and World War II (As I think more about it, this isn't really a biography per se. I thought When the Cheering Stopped was a good Wilson bio, though of course that only really covers his final years.)

Before the Trumpet: Young Franklin Roosevelt, 1882-1905 and A First-Class Temperament: the emergence of Franklin Roosevelt

(And no political-conservatives list would be complete without The Roosevelt Myth and/or Country Squire in the White House)

The Real Jimmy Carter

Also, the portraits of Washington, Jefferson, and others in Revolutionary Characters are quite good. I think I got a better idea of John Adams in Wood's chapter on him than from McCullough's whole tome.

This technically isn't a biography, but David Hackett Fischer's Washington's Crossing is excellent. It's about George Washington's campaign in the winter of 1776 and the crossing at Valley Forge. Fischer does give quite a bit of insight into Washington's character, especially how his early circumstances made him the man he was. Even though I knew "how the story ended", I could not put this book down.

All of Fischer's books on Colonial America (Liberty and Freedom) and the American Revolution (Paul Revere's Ride) manage to be both scholarly and entertaining. I highly recommend them.

Fischer's book was made into a TV movie on A&E, starring Jeff Daniels (!) as George Washington.

I believe Kirk's America's British Culture owes much to Fischer.

There's actually a whole series that are being written on all the Presidents, written by different people, and edited by Arthur Schlesinger: It's called "The American Presidents" (appropriate, huh?) and these are pretty fair and balanced. I haven't read all of them yet, but I liked the ones I read even about the Democrats (I chose the old Democrats like Jackson, Polk and Cleveland), my favorite (so far) is the one on James Monroe.

Got a link for those? Who is publishing them?

Also, I must take exception to the recommendation of The Real Lincoln by DiLorenzo. John Wilkes Booth would've liked it.

A lot of people have objected to The Real Lincoln since it came out. I've heard it said the way to tell the difference between a conservative and a libertarian is to ask them their opinion on Lincoln.

Easton Press has a whole series: one book for each President. Of course, Easton Press aren't known for being inexpensive, but they're very, very nice books (I have many).
http://www.eastonpressbooks.com/leather/product.asp?code=0029

Times Books (its a combination of Henry Holt and The New York Times) is publishing the American Presidents Series, here's the link http://www.americanpresidentsseries.com/
Youn can order them through Amazon. I can get some at my local library so check there first if you're not sure you want to own a particular one. Most appear to be balanced but of course I haven't read them all...yet.

There are several good Lincoln books out there, but my favorite Presidental biography is actually Reagan's autobiography, An American Life. There's also a very interesting book on Alexander Hamilton that has just come out, a collection of essays called "The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton." (Apparently this book does not yet have a touchstone.) There aren't many books on Hamilton, so it is a great effort.

Read this short essay:

http://www.mmisi.org/ir/40_02/mansfield.pdf

A bit late to the party, but here are a couple of books on this subject I have read, and recommend.

Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington by Richard Brookhiser

Grant by Jean Edward Smith

Both books I found to be excellent. Don't know about the "conservative" angle, but again, I found them highly informative and enjoyable.

Also recommend Alexander Hamilton: American by Richard Brookhiser

Hope these help.

Edit: I don't know why, but the touchstone for Grant by Jean Edward Smith is coming up with Personal memoirs of U.S. Grant by Ulysses S. Grant. That is not the book I am recommending. I am recommending the one by Jean Edward Smith. I have not read the other, so can't recommend it, but I want to read it, and suspect it would be a good read.

Thanks for the suggestions. Like I mentioned at the begining, I'm not looking for "conservative" bios necessarily, I just want to avoid pinko revisionist claptrap, and haven't read enough biographies or histories to know which authors to avoid.

I got to meet Richard Reeves when his book first came out, and he seemed an interesting, and thorough, author. He's no right-winger, but neither is President Kennedy:Profile of Power a hagiography. It was very thoughtful and interesting.

I think that you might want to focus more on the definitive biography. Personally, I've been going after whatever I can get my hands on. I just keep in mind who wrote the work and when it was written. Sometimes time has to pass before a decent biography is written - what we see written about Clinton or Bush now will probably be looked upon in horror a century from now. Stuff like that from years ago can be fun to read though - I just read one about Harding:

The strange death of President Harding,
from the diaries of Gaston B. Means, as told to May Dixon Thacker.

One good thing to consider is to check out the Encyclopedia Brittanica. At the close of each entry on each of the presidents will be a list of further reading. At least you'd get a historian's opinion on the best biography/ies.

Here are a couple of my favorite recommendations:

The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson by Herbert C. Hoover - yup! The only biography of a president by another president!

The personal memoirs of Ullyses S. Grant are supposed to be very readable and I would guess a unique look at the Civil War.

Someone else mentioned Joseph J. Ellis, Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams (1993). I liked it as well.

Margaret Truman's book on her father was pretty enjoyable. But remember, she supposedly yelled for her father to shoot a republican - and it was a rat in the White House. If you want a real treat, try the Private Papers of Harry S. Truman - those are the letters and diary entries that friends and family didn't let see the light of day while he was alive. Oh my! They are ... alive! I guess he would write a letter and his staff wouldn't let him send it out. I think ol' Harry must have used the unsent letters as therapy.

One really enjoyable read is "At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends" by Dwight D. Eisenhower. It's kind of like sitting in a rocking chair across from Ike in front of a roaring fire on a cold winter's night and just listening to him tell stories.

If you need a geek fix, try looking over the Diary and Letters of Rutherford B. Hayes:
http://www.rbhayes.org/hayes/diaries/
They are online in all their digital glory. I searched for his dog's names.

franklin and winston - more on the relationship between FDR and Churchill, and the personalities that clashed with Stalin

Anyonewho has not read the three Robert Caro works on Lyndon Johnson is depriving themselves of an enriching experience. Master of the Senate, The Path to Power, Means of Ascent.

To begin reading about President Nixon (I am biased, I love the guy) I'd recommend The Contender: Richard Nixon, The Congress Years and Nixon: A Life. The latter may be overly sympathetic, but the former will debunk much of the anti-Nixon agitprop spread so effectively over the years. For a very comprehensive look at his life, try Steven Ambrose's three volume series, beginning with Nixon: The Education of a Politician.

You should also do yourself a favor and read The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, an elegantly written book which will make you long for a president of real character. Robert Sobel's Coolidge: An American Enigma and the late Tom Silver (of the Claremont Institute's) Coolidge and the Historians, should be read along with Coolidge's own work.

I agree--excellent books, although the one problem that I had was that Caro repeated himself excessively in the second and third volumes.

#1: gg, did you ever follow through on this challenge? Just curious.

Six First Messages on one thread? Welcome. But wow, what's going on?

#31
Well, I started making a list over on listsofbests.com, but that's about as far as I got. Being a confessed "compulsive 'list' reader", I tend to compile more "Must Read" lists than I finish. But, knock wood, I've got another 40 or 50 reading years to go, so I'll get to it eventually.

Not a biography, but Reveille in Washington by Margaret Leech describes what it was like for President Lincoln and others living in DC so close to the action. Very readable.

Agree on the Robert Caro books. I just started reading The Path to Power not too long ago and cannot put it down. I am looking forward to reading the 2 follow-ups: Means of Ascent and Master of the Senate.

I'm reading Jefferson: A great American's life and ideas at the moment.

I recently finished the brief memoir, the Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge and was surprised at how entertaining it was. Silent Cal admired concision and here he tells you just what you need to know.

Did anyone happen to read the Garrett Epps article, "The Founders Great Mistake" in this month's Atlantic? His argument is that the design of the office of President, and the manner in which he/she is elected is flawed - with a large portion of the blame going to Alexander Hamilton's vision of an "elective monarch".

Epps argues for a constitutional revision or amendment, an overhaul of Article II that would include direct election of the Executive with specified and limited powers. In addition, after mid-terms election, if the congressional majority changes, the President would be mandated to make a partisan adjustment to his cabinet. Epps would also shorten the period between the point of an election win and inauguration to a single week, which would force candidates to name cabinet picks before the election (I like this idea).

But, it was this bit on Tyler, as the first "runaway" president that I thought of when I read your post, Oakes:

The most dangerous presidential malfunction might be called the “runaway presidency.” The Framers were fearful of making the president too dependent on Congress; short of impeachment—the atomic bomb of domestic politics—there are no means by which a president can be reined in politically during his term. Taking advantage of this deficiency, runaway presidents have at times committed the country to courses of action that the voters never approved—or ones they even rejected.

John Tyler, who was never elected president, was the first runaway, in 1841. William Henry Harrison had served only a few weeks; after his death, the obscure Tyler governed in open defiance of the Whig Party that had put him on the ticket, pressing unpopular proslavery policies that helped set the stage for the Civil War.

The article is here: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200901/founders-mistake/3

Oh, sure - the article is provocative, but not entirely convincing.

I'm actually beginning to see the wisdom in the British Constitutional Monarchy,you know, a personality to trot out for "we, the people" for parades, televised events, and - if not dog shows at Westminster perhaps NASCAR events - but one who has only symbolic power.

That way the cult of personality is served, dealt with, and does no actual harm.

As to happiness as the American birthright, good God, how did they let that one get by? But it explains some things, Southern California for example.

The Whigs will never forgive you and your associate membership has been withdrawn.

sshhh! You'll wake Henry Clay, and then we'll never get any sleep, none of us.

For years I looked for a brief way to learn about all the presidents.

You've probably seen those one-volume tomes. The one I have is To The Best Of My Ability ed. by James McPherson. Attractive book.

All The Presidents' Children I found to be packed with the sort of trivia mentioned earlier in this thread. I was particularly interested in children of presidents. Had they lived up to expectations? In most cases, no.

One of the bigger successes was Robert Lincoln. The Republicans wanted him to run for president -- not surprisingly, he said no thanks -- but he became Secretary of War for President McKinley instead. Often asked about his famous father, Robert cherished his privacy and admitted that he never knew his father very well. Abraham Lincoln was shot in April of 1865, the same month Robert dropped out of Harvard Law to become a captain in the Union Army. At wikipedia, you can read about the incident where John Wilkes Booth's brother saved Robert's life.

This is one of those books where even the appendices are fun to read. Appendix A lists the presidents and short biographies of some of their descendants. President Tyler was mentioned in this thread. The last of the Tyler children, Pearl Tyler Ellis, was born before the Civil War and died in 1947 after WWII. President Tyler's term of office began in 1841! He was our 10th president and was born in 1790. What a long stretch of continuity from the past. 1790 to 1947. It gets better. According to wikipedia, not this book, as of 2008 one Tyler grandson was still alive. Boggles the mind. We really are a young country.

Francis Grover Cleveland, son of the president, died in 1995. I was told that there are still Roosevelts around.

This link mentions four descendants of the Founding Fathers, including 26-year-old Jarrett McKay Adams, "great-great-great-great-great-grandson of John Adams and an Army veteran who served in Afghanistan."

http://www.usaweekend.com/06_issues/060702/060702founding_fathers.html

>47 barney67:

In addition to the train incident with the brother of John Wilkes Booth, Robert Todd Lincoln was quite the angel of death. He was present at the Garfield and McKinley assassinations, and in the general area at the time of the attempted assassination of Teddy Roosevelt.

Totally off topic: Roosevelt's would-be assassin fired at point-blank range, but the bullet was stopped by the thick manuscript for the campaign speech TR was about to give. TR held up the manuscript to show the bullet hole to the audience, shouting "It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose." He then proceeded to give the speech, with blood staining his vest.

Sarah Vowell has written a fascinating book called Assassination Vacation, describing her travels to sites associated with presidential assassinations. Very enjoyable if you like that sort of thing...especially because you don't have to listen to Vowell's unbearably whiny voice.

It's a great advantage to have lived through more than one historical period, and, if possible, in more than one country.

I can recall the height (depth?) of the Cold War, during the Cuban missile crisis, when a friend of mine emptied his bank account and bought the best hi-fi systen then available, because he thought he would soon be radioactive dust (he lived in Houston) and wanted to live, while he lived.

This was an extreme reaction but reflected the mood of the times, at least among a certain social layer. The atomic clock was at one minute to midnight, and clever people proved that with X number of missile systems each with a tiny annual probability Y of accidental release, we would face an increasing chance of nuclear holocaust within Z years, approaching near-certainty as Z increased.

The Religion of Peace was Christianity. All well-informed academic Sovietologists knew that the USSR would be with us indefinitely, and, with its 7% growth rate, would overtake us (with our 3%) by the end of the century. The Triple Revolution would bring us mass unemployment, unless we nationalized all industry and instituted a planned economy.

And then there was the clever man at Stanford (still an official clever man) who showed that we would all face world starvation by 1980.

(Okay, okay, I am throwing an easy underhander here for some liberal to knock out of the ballpark with equivalent conservative triumphalist quotations, beginning in 1990.)

Whole religions were founded on this end-of-the-world feeling in the 19th Century, and in fact, I would recommend to any ambitious and articulate young man, who wants to earn a good living and have continuous access to nubile (although often a bit daft) young ladies, to go into the New Religion business right now. (Advice: don't set an exact date for Apocalypse. Watch out for hidden video cameras when carrying out your personal ministry. Put something aside for the possibility of a Reformation. )

I just happened upon this thread, maybe you guys could help with a recommendation? I'm English and quite patently not Conservative in outlook, but even I need some kind of antidote to Bill Clinton's autobiography, My Life. Any recommendations for something with a bit more balance to it or at least something that approaches it from the other side of the political tracks and is a bit less self-serving? I'm hoping that somewhere inbetween the real story lies ...

The perfect balance to My Life is Because He Could, which is by former Clinton pollster Dick Morris, and was written specifically to challenge Clinton's version of the story. Another similar effort is also worth perusing ... Rewriting History which is Morris' response to Hillary's book Living History.

 

#53, Thanks, I'll check them out. I haven't ventured over to Hillary's side of the tracks yet but when I do, I'll bear both of these in mind.

No man is a hero to his pollster.

Shout out for American Lion by John Meacham. Have to say though Jackson is my favorite president, but what would I know!

#45: (Those Whigs were basically evil, statist, pro-national bank Hamiltonians.)

No need for past tense, Oakes:

http://www.modernwhig.org/issues.html

And I must say their platform looks profoundly better to me than either Dems or GOP, at the moment.

Surprise me.

although, I did see a tee shirt idea I liked the other day (non-whig related, but still pretty good):

Obama spent 825 Billion, and all I got was this lousy box of condoms

This is going to be a banner administration for some industrious cheeksters, as if it were Christmas every day.

I would buy Whig skateboard for one of your kids but I think they would get beaten up. :)

Things started going south for the sk8er crowd when municipalities started building designated "skate safe" parks - at that point, it's over, man. Any point you were trying to make - lost. (And don't forget your helmet!)

#63: thanks for the link - and I admit to loving this sort of thing, but part of the problem of cutting edge irony is the extremely short shelf life, and the potential to insult someone you'd rather not. That's why I'm going with the Russian: Наслаждайся капитализмом.

Thanks, my new running shirt.

The Karl Marx one is pretty good too, it translates roughly as, "Hey, kids, it was just a theory ."

John Dean is untrustworthy. He was neck deep in Watergate and then writes a book alleging Bush trampled the constitution. Anything to avert attention from his own malfeasance

Read Samuel Tilden...you'll be amazed at what happen during the 1876 election -
I am producing a documentary about him now and hope to have it ready by the
end of the year.

Read Samuel Tilden...you'll be amazed at what happen during the 1876 election -
I am producing a documentary about him now and hope to have it ready by the
end of the year.

Samuel Tilden the Real 19th President and The Life of Samuel J Tilden...1876 Stolen Presidency...What is nice about Tilden is although he was a Dem he was a Bourbon Dem - they were very conservative and big time Reformers against political corruption...His best friend was John Bigelow, a Republican a Statesman for France appointed by Lincoln. I do not want to overplug since I wrote one book and revised the other...but Tilden never conceded his Presidency. President Cleveland was also a Bourbon Dem...and so was Woodrow Wilson...before jumping ship.