The Presidents: Noted Historians Rank America's Best--and Worst--Chief Executives

by Brian Lamb, Susan Swain, Douglas Brinkley (Introduction), Richard Norton Smith (Introduction)

Overview

The complete rankings of our best — and worst — presidents, based on C-SPAN's much-cited Historians Surveys of Presidential Leadership.



Over a period of decades, C-SPAN has surveyed leading historians on the best and worst of America's presidents across a variety of categories — their ability to persuade the public, their leadership skills, their moral authority, and more. The crucible of the presidency has forged some of the very best and very worst leaders in our national history, along with everyone in between.


Based on interviews conducted over the years with a variety of presidential biographers, this book provides not just a complete ranking of our presidents, but stories and analyses that capture the character of the men who held the office. From Abraham Lincoln's political savvy and rhetorical gifts to James Buchanan's indecisiveness, this book teaches much about what makes a great leader — and what does not.


As America looks ahead to our next election, this book offers perspective and criteria to help us choose our next leader wisely.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541774339
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	04/23/2019
Pages:	560
Sales rank:	364,941
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Brian Lamb is C-SPAN's founding CEO, chairman, and longtime on-camera interviewer.


Susan Swain is C-SPAN's co-CEO and, in addition to her senior management role at the network, has been an on-camera host for C-SPAN for more than thirty years, interviewing public officials, historians, and journalists for the public affairs network. The Presidents is her ninth book project with C-SPAN and PublicAffairs. She lives in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

Table of Contents

A Note to Readers on Style xiii

Our Special Contributors xv

Introduction Susan Swain xvii

The Magnificent Lion Richard Norton Smith 1

A Brief History of Presidential Rankings Douglas Brinkley 10

The Top Ten

1 Abraham Lincoln Harold Holzer 21

2 George Washington Ron Chernow 34

3 FrankHn D. Roosevelt Doris Kearns Goodwin 47

4 Theodore Roosevelt Douglas Brinkley 59

5 Dwight D. Eisenhower William I. Hitchcock 70

6 Harry S. Truman Aida D. Donald 81

7 Thomas Jefferson Willard Sterne Randall 93

8 John F. Kennedy Robert Dallek 105

9 Ronald Reagan Lou Cannon 114

10 Lyndon B. Johnson Robert A. Caro 126

…The Men in the Middle

11 Woodrow Wilson A. Scott Berg 139

12 Barack Obama David J. Garrow 150

13 James Monroe John Ferling 162

14 James K. Polk John Seigenthaler 171

15 William J. Clinton David Maraniss 181

16 William McKinley Robert W. Merry 192

17 James Madison Noah Feldman 203

18 Andrew Jackson Mark R. Cheathem 215

19 John Adams Gordon S. Wood 226

20 George H.W. Bush Jeffrey A. Engel 235

21 John Quincy Adams James Traub 247

22 Ulysses S. Grant Ronald C. White 259

23 Grover Cleveland H. Paul Jeffers 269

24 William Howard Taft Jeffrey Rosen 280

25 Gerald R. Ford James Cannon 291

26 Jimmy Carter Michael J. Gerhardt 302

27 Calvin Coolidge Amity Shlaes 311

28 Richard M. Nixon Evan Thomas 322

29 James A. Garfield Kenneth D. Ackerman 333

30 Benjamin Harrison Charles W. Calhoun 344

31 Zachary Taylor Elbert B. Smith 355

32 Rutherford B. Hayes Art Hoogenboom 364

33 George W. Bush James Mann 374

…And All the Rest

34 Martin Van Buren Michael Douglas Henderson 389

35 Chester A. Arthur Scott S. Greenberger 399

36 Herbert Hoover Richard Norton Smith 407

37 Millard Fillmore Edna Greene Medford 419

38 William Henry Harrison Ronald G. Shafer 426

39 John Tyler Edward P. Crapol 436

40 Warren G. Harding John W. Dean 443

41 Franklin Pierce Peter A. Wallner 454

42 Andrew Johnson David O. Stewart 464

43 James Buchanan Robert Strauss 475

Historians' Perspectives on President Donald J. Trump Douglas Brinkley Edna Greene Medford Richard Norton Smith 485

Postscript: The Presidency, National identity, and the Pursuit of Equal Justice Edna Greene Medford 497

Appendix I Historians' Survey on Presidential Leadership, Total Scores and Overall Rankings 503

Appendix II US Presidents in Chronological Order 505

Complete List of Featured Books 507

Acknowledgments 511

Index 513

Editorial Reviews

2019-03-07

A C-SPAN publication that employs surveys of historians to rank the American presidents, featuring lightly edited transcripts of interviews with historians who have published about each POTUS.

Because Donald Trump has not yet completed his term, he is not included in the rankings, but near the end, there is a transcript of a conversation among three historians about him—a fairly moderate, mostly nonjudgmental conversation. The pieces about each president are generally uniform in length (a dozen pages or so) and include basic biographical information with a justification for the reason that he has achieved his status. Unsurprisingly, Lincoln is at the top and James Buchanan at the bottom. Among the pleasures of the texts are the little-known—and sometimes quirky—details about the presidents: George Washington didn't like to be touched; Teddy Roosevelt saw the last live passenger pigeon; James Monroe nearly fought a duel with Alexander Hamilton; John Quincy Adams loved the work of Lord Byron. Also intriguing are the factoids that do not appear—e.g., the chapter on Franklin Pierce doesn't mention that Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote his campaign biography and that Pierce was with the author of The Scarlet Letter when he died. The issue of slavery comes up continually—no surprise since many of the early presidents owned slaves—and some writers try to soften this by mentioning how this was another time. Some of the contributors who deal with the low-ranking presidents (Harding, Pierce, Buchanan, and others) manage to find some things to admire: Harding appointed a great Cabinet; Buchanan was highly qualified. The contributor list is impressive: Douglas Brinkley, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Harold Holzer, David Maraniss, Robert Caro, Amity Shlaes, Evan Thomas, and Edna Greene Medford, among many others.

A text that will serve both as a solid reference work and as a milepost in the evolving and ever changing reputations of our presidents.

Kirkus Reviews

"Among the pleasures of the texts are the little-known-and sometimes quirky-details about the presidents... A text that will serve both as a solid reference work and as a milepost in the evolving and ever changing reputations of our presidents."
—Kirkus Reviews

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