Presidential Anecdotes

Fun breeze through the presidents via little stories and quotations. Boller includes a short biography and some background information for each president, and then delves into stories like George and the cherry tree, Silent Cal's legendarily abundant sleep and Truman's colorful language. Where the anecdotes can be proved apocryphal or probably are, Boller notes the veracity and then tells the story anyway. It's a skewed but probably familiar view of history: personal stories about men who have headed (and sometimes led) the executive.

I have this book in my collection a very long time. I learned about it when the author was interviewed on the Phil Donahue Show. It is easy reading and is what I call history light. Each President gets a short three to four page overview and then the rest of the entry is filled with short anecdotes either about or told by that man. Some entries are longer than others, with Abraham Lincoln's the longest. Harry Truman also had a long entry. The later Presidents get longer entries, I suspect because there is more of the Press following them around and recording every little thing in their lives. There was nothing very enlightening in the book but it is good entertainment.

Interesting, short anecdotes written in an engaging manner.

Great for speaking, teaching, and preaching illustrations, waiting room reading, as well as light, "traveling reading" -- my copy is in the van.

A breezy, and interesting collection of information about the presidents. The contents match the title exactly, no surprises here. This makes fun light reading as one can stop and start whereever one wants. The book is disappointing in that these anecdotes, while quite interesting, are rendered useless for citation since the author did not document his sources.

In fairness I must expand AlextheHuns review. I completely agree with him, but those editions marked 'revised edtion' on the cover after 1996, now include a bibliographic index.