Presidents

There's lots to read about American Presidents - they are why I chose to study Political Science

• Specific Presidents

  • George Washington, 1

    • His Excellency: George Washington, by Joseph Ellis; a fantastic one volume biography of George Washington, with particular inclusion of his updated papers in the mix. 

    • An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America, by Henry Wiencek; powerful book on Washington's role in slavery, and what it was like to be a slave for Washington.

    • Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, by Erica Dunbar; a readable account of how the Washingtons were intense in trying to track down a runaway slave.  

    • Washington: A Life, by Ron Chernow; the best single volume book on Washington - Pulitzer Prize winner and excellent.

  • Abraham Lincoln, 16

    • Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin; interesting look at the formation of Lincoln's cabinet - they were generally people who competed with Lincoln for the presidency and Goodwin thinkgs they made a great team because Lincoln didn't seek "yes-men."

  • Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32

    • FDR, by Jean Edward Smith; A great one-volume bio of the longest serving president.

    • No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, The Home Front in WWII, by Doris Kearns Goodwin; Eleanor gets more of her due in impacting policy during FDR's presidency.

    • Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, by HW Brands; another excellent single-volume bio of FDR.

  • Harry S Truman, 33 

    • Truman, by David McCullough; an excellent and positive biography of an underappreciated president.

  • Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34

    • Eisenhower in War and Peace, by Jean Edward Smith; awesome biography of Ike.

  • Lyndon B. Johnson, 36

    • Robert Caro's books on LBJ are awesome. 
      Wikipedia information on the series.
      Best book in the series: Master of the Senate, which focuses on LBJ's senate years, where he climbed to Senate leader for the Democrats, and majority leader.  Passage of Power is also very good; it focuses on LBJ as vice president to John F. Kennedy - and the coverage of JFK is fantastic.

  • Jimmy Carter, 39

    • His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life.  Fantastic book!

  • Ronald Reagan, 40

    • President Reagan, Role of a Lifetime, by Lou Cannon.  Fantastic book on Reagan's Presidency.

    • Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, by Edmund Morris.  Controversial book when it came out because the author placed himself in the book in some weird ways, but well written and great otherwise.

    • Reagan obituary from 2004 New York Times.

  • George Bush, 41

    • A World Transformed, by George Bush and Brent Scowcroft.  A great book about the foreign policy events of the Bush Administration.

    • George Bush: The Life of a Lonestar Yankee, by Herbert Parmet.  A fine bio of Bush.

  • Bill Clinton, 42

    • Death of American Virtue, by Ken Gormley, which is a thorough and fair telling of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal.

    • My Life, by Bill Clinton; an impressive writing achievement, and obviously self-serving.

    • The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House, by John Harris; a fair and readable book on Bill Clinton's presidency.

  • George W. Bush, 43

    • House on Fire, Bush and Cheney in the White House, by Peter Baker.

  • Barack Obama, 44

    • The Bridge, by David Remnick.  A bio of Obama up until his election to the presidency.  Readable and interesting.  

    • Dreams of My Father, by Barack Obama.  A memoir of sorts by the future president, written probably before imagining he would ever run for president.  It's really original.  

    • Reading Obama, by James Kloppenberg.  The author read most everything Obama wrote to get a feel for his world view and ideology.  Most interesting.  

  • Donald Trump, 45

    • Confidence Man, by Maggie Haberman; a bio-ish look at former President Trump.

    • The Divider, by Baker and Glasser; the Trump White House years.

  • Joe Biden, 46

    • Joe Biden: The Life, The Run, and What Matters Now, by Evan Osnos; for a guy who has been in politics as long as Biden has, there aren't any serious biographies of him, but this short book that came out just before his election as president is interesting and readable.

• Other sources to find books on specific Presidents

  • The American Presidents book series are short biographies on almost all of the presidents (100-200 pages each).

    • Amazon's list of books in the series.

    • The publisher's list.

  • University Press of Kansas also has a series on most of the presidents.  These books are a bit more academic and focus more on the presidency, but the few I have read are well done.  

  • AWESOME blog by a guy who decided to read all the books out there about the Presidents of the US.  Scroll down and find the list of presidents and the books he has read and reviewed.  I wish I read as many as he did.

  • Bob Woodward, the famed Washington Post reporter who, along with Carl Bernstein, uncovered the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon, has written MANY books about the presidents from Nixon up to Trump/Biden.  Here's the list of books.  His books are easy and fast reads.  

  • C-SPAN has lots of information on America's presidents.  Here is C-SPAN's fantastic series from a few decades ago, in which they traveled to presidential sites, visited with presidential scholars, and recorded lots of information about each president.