All the Presidents' Children: Triumph and Tragedy in the Lives of America's First Families

I liked this one even better than The Raising of a President, which was altogether absorbing. All the Presidents' Children digs into the details of the the children's lives. I learned that Maureen Reagan had been a beaten wife, which was astonishing, given her powerful personality. Patsy Jefferson took care of her father to an almost obsessive degree. Margaret Woodrow Wilson was the first American to go to India and live in an ashram. Charlie Taft devoted his entire life to bettering his city and his country, and was one of the founders of the ecumenical Council of Churches--just taking a bit of time here and there to go fishing. But many presidential children died of alcoholism, too. Wead draws parallels in these lives, and his results show more are fascinating. show less

An interesting book about the children of America's most famous men. The book encompasses all of the presidential children from George Washington's stepchildren to George W. Bush's twin daughters. What I didn't like about the book was the various groupings of the children. I wish that the author had just gone chronologically from first to last and told their stories that way. It's still a good look at history from a different perspective. Good reading.

3883. All the Presidents' Children: Triumph and Tragedy in the Lives of America's First Families, by Doug Wead (read 28 Apr 2004) This book has a fascinating subject, and a lot of information on the kids of every US president, but is poorly organized, poorly written, carelessly proofread, and has an impossibly bad method of source noting. There is much unpersuasive psychoanalyzing, and sometimes jejune writing, but the subject matter is of interest.

Interesting. Easy to read. If you are interested in the people who have done this job for us and in all that they are or were, these stories show that, under all the public facade, president's families have it just as tough and just as easy as any other middle-to-privileged class family. Livin' ain't easy for most people. I'm keeping this book in my library.