Dead Presidents: An American Adventure into the Strange Deaths and Surprising Afterlives of Our Nation’s Leaders

by Brady Carlson

Overview

An entertaining exploration into the death stories of our nation’s greatest leaders—and the wild ways we choose to remember and memorialize them.

To public radio host and reporter Brady Carlson, the weighty responsibilities of being president never end. As Carlson sees it, the dead presidents (and the ways we remember them) tell us a great deal about ourselves, our history, and how we imagine our past and future. For American presidents, there is life after death—it’s just a little weird.

In Dead Presidents, Carlson takes readers on an epic trip to presidential gravesites, monuments, and memorials from sea to shining sea. With an engaging mix of history and contemporary reporting, Carlson recounts the surprising origin stories of the Washington Monument, Mount Rushmore, Grant’s Tomb, and JFK’s Eternal Flame. He explores whether William Henry Harrison really died of a cold, how the assassin’s bullet may not have been what killed James A. Garfield, and why Zachary Taylor’s remains were exhumed 140 years after he died. And he explains the strange afterlives of the presidents, including why “Hooverball” is still played in Iowa, why Millard Fillmore’s final resting place is next to that of funk legend Rick James, why “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?” became a running gag for Groucho Marx, why Ohio and Alaska fought for so long over the name of Mt. McKinley (now known as Denali), and why we exalt dead presidents not just with public statues and iconic paintings but with kitschy wax dummies, Halloween costumes, and bobblehead dolls.

With an infectious passion for history and an eye for neglected places and offbeat characters reminiscent of Tony Horwitz and Sarah Vowell, Carlson shows that the ways we memorialize our presidents reveal as much about us as it does about the men themselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393243932
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	02/01/2016
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Brady Carlson is a reporter and the on-air host of NPR’s Weekend Edition for New Hampshire Public Radio. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and children.

Table of Contents

Presidents of the United States xi

Introduction 3

1 Monument Man 9

On George Washington's Transformation from Mortal Man to Immortal Icon

2 Well-Timed Exits 25

On the Postmortem Fortunes (and Misfortunes) of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, William Henry Harrison, Ulysses S. Grant, and Andrew Johnson

3 The First Patient 49

On James Garfield, Herbert Hoover, Zachary Taylor, and the Doctors Who Keep Presidents Alive (and Occasionally Make Them Worse)

4 Farewell, Mr. President 75

On William Henry Harrison, Woodrow Wilson, Gerald Ford, and Richard Nixon, and How the Presidential Funeral Was Born

5 Death Trips 93

On the Posthumous Travels of James Polk, James Monroe, John Tyler, and Abraham Lincoln

6 His Good Name 123

On William McKinley, Ronald Reagan, and Calvin Coolidge, and the Large (and Small) Hays Presidents Air Remembered

7 Robots and Sphinxes 141

On Lyndon Johnson, Rutherford B. Hayes, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, and Chester Arthur, and America's Presidential Libraries

8 Unintended Legacies 161

On William Taft, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, and How Presidents' Reputations Change over Time

9 Eternal Flame 183

On John F. Kennedy, the City of Dallas, and What Ties Them Together Every November 22

10 The Rest of the Set 205

On the Many Types of Presidential Obscurity and Mediocrity, with Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, Martin Van Buren, James Buchanan, and Warren Harding

11 Family Reunion 227

On the Adamses, the Harrisons, and Presidential Descendants

Epilogue 241

Acknowledgments 251

Notes 253

Illustration Credits 311

Index 313

Editorial Reviews

02/15/2016
Inspired by a lifelong fascination with America's chief executives, Carlson, a reporter and NPR host, adopts a novel perspective on American history by exploring the ways in which past presidents have been remembered and memorialized. Blending political biography and road tours of memorials and monuments across the nation, he digs into the stories beneath each grave and behind every tomb. A lover of details regardless of how grotesque or quirky, Carlson leads a field trip to the resting places of both distinguished and obscure presidents, and gives some interesting death factoids along the way, including that Zachary Taylor's rumored last meal was cherries and buttermilk, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on July 4th 1826, Ulysses S. Grant died of cancer before finishing his memoir, and attending doctors mistakenly killed James Garfield by sticking their fingers in his gunshot wounds. Carlson visits Mt. Rushmore, Grant's Tomb, Arlington National Cemetary, the joke-telling L.B.J. robot at the Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Tex., and Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, NY.—the final resting place of Millard Fillmore as well as singer Rick James. Carlson's book entertains and enlightens, and reminds readers that presidents are also human beings. Photos. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"Dead presidents haven’t been this surprising, entertaining, and even funny since my eighth-grade classmates and I saw animatronic Lincoln whirr to life or, later, when I voted for failed San Francisco mayoral candidate Jello Biafra."

Jack Hitt

"Thoroughly enjoyable."

Booklist

"[An] amusing survey of presidential death and remembrance."

Boston Globe - Kate Tuttle

"In this entertaining biography-cum-travelogue . . . Carlson shifts deftly among sombre, macabre, and playful stories and shows how the death-tourism industry reveals more than amusing trivia."

New Yorker

"The funniest and most entertaining book about death you’ll read this year—and my favorite book about corpses since Mary Roach’s Stiff. Plus, I learned a ton about our commanders-in-chief, many of whose lives got much more interesting after they stopped breathing."

A. J. Jacobs

"Lots of books explain how tough the presidents have it when they are alive—scandals, impeachments, gray hair—but here at last is a terrific investigation of the post-life presidency, a rollicking but always thoughtful exploration of the after-the-White-House whereabouts of the forever former chief executives. Brady Carlson is the perfect road-trip companion, smart and good-hearted, a combination that we can only hope for in presidents, alive or dead."

Robert Sullivan

"Brady is an exuberant guide to presidential wishes, myths, and monuments, both official and forgotten, and what dead presidents reveal about ourselves, our history, and how we imagine our past and the future."

New Hampshire Public Radio - Virginia Prescott

11/15/2015
Carlson, who never forgot a childhood visit to Abraham Lincoln's sarcophagus in Springfield, IL, has since traveled across the United States to visit every presidential gravesite and many presidential memorials. In this travelog, Carlson, a New Hampshire public radio reporter, focuses on these resting places, each a centerpiece for his accounts of presidential deaths, burials, and afterlives. The writing style is light, humorous, and sometimes glib, as Carlson reflects on events as solemn as the slain Lincoln's procession back to Illinois in 1865; as comical as the 1991 exhumation of Zachary Taylor, who died in 1850; or as obscure as the cheesemaking operation in Plymouth Notch, VT, that helps to memorialize Calvin Coolidge. Each of the 11 chapters offers loosely themed essays often covering several presidents, although perhaps the best chapter is devoted entirely to John F. Kennedy, describing the long effort by the city of Dallas to escape the legacy of his assassination. VERDICT Readers who enjoyed Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation will enjoy Carlson's similar book.—Robert Nardini, Niagara Falls, NY

Library Journal

2015-10-14
What dead American presidents reveal "about ourselves, our history, and how we imagine our past and future." In his spirited debut book, Carlson, host of NPR's Weekend Edition for New Hampshire Public Radio, looks at the curious ways that presidents have been commemorated—by buildings and tombs, statues and libraries, and even bars and gift shops. Some presidents (George Washington and Calvin Coolidge, for example) resisted being celebrated. "It is a great advantage to a President," Coolidge wrote in his autobiography, "and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know he is not a great man." Not all were so modest. John Tyler was "the first presidential pariah…and the first president the House considered impeaching"; yet he longed to be remembered as a great man, appointing a literary executor to review and eventually publish his papers. Franklin Roosevelt was the first president to establish his own library, setting a model for every successor. Besides millions of documents, letters, and government papers, the library contains his stamp collection and a papier-mâché Sphinx made to lampoon him when he refused to reveal if he would run for a third term. In the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum, a life-size robotic version of Johnson "stands behind a podium…and cracks jokes." Along his exuberant journey, Carlson found whole cities devoted to presidential celebration: in Buffalo, which claims connections to Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, and Teddy Roosevelt, a downtown pub is called Founding Fathers, where patrons can order a "Hail to the Chef!" sandwich. Rapid City, South Dakota, near Mount Rushmore, calling itself "the most patriotic city in America," features a complete set of life-size presidential statues. Mount Rushmore itself, the enthusiastic author learned, "was designed not to be an icon of American identity but…a tourist trap" meant to draw visitors to the Black Hills. A brisk, lighthearted travelogue with an exuberant guide.

Kirkus Reviews