American Presidents History

Through deep and thoughtful exploration of diaries, letters, and other personal writings penned during the spring and summer of 1865, Martha Hodes, one of our finest historians, captures the full range of reactions to the president's death - far more diverse than public expressions would suggest. She tells a story of shock, glee, sorrow, anger, blame, and fear.

In The Other Madisons, Bettye Kearse - a descendant of a slave named Coreen and, according to oral tradition, President James Madison - finally shares her family story, exploring legacy, race, and the powerful consequences of telling the whole truth.

James Beard award - winning author Adrian Miller vividly tells the stories of the African Americans who worked in the presidential food service as chefs, personal cooks, butlers, stewards, and servers for every First Family since George and Martha Washington. Miller brings together the names and words of more than 150 black men and women who played remarkable roles in unforgettable events in the nation's history.

Paul Jennings was born into slavery on the plantation of James and Dolley Madison in Virginia, later becoming part of the Madison household staff at the White House. Once finally emancipated by Senator Daniel Webster later in life, he would give an aged and impoverished Dolley Madison, his former owner, money from his own pocket, write the first White House memoir, and see his sons fight with the Union Army in the Civil War.

A brilliant, authoritative, and riveting account of the most critical six months in Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, when he penned the Emancipation Proclamation and changed the course of the Civil War. On July 12, 1862, Abraham Lincoln spoke for the first time of his intention to free the slaves. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, doing precisely that. In between, however, was perhaps the most tumultuous six months of his presidency....

In Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King, Thomas J. Balcerski explores the lives of these two politicians and discovers one of the most significant collaborations in American political history. He traces the parallels in the men's personal and professional lives before elected office, including their failed romantic courtships and the stories they told about them. Unlikely companions from the start, they lived together as congressional messmates in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse and became close confidantes.

Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Chernow returns with a sweeping and dramatic portrait of one of our most compelling generals and presidents, Ulysses S. Grant. Ulysses S. Grant's life has typically been misunderstood. All too often he is caricatured as a chronic loser and an inept businessman, or as the triumphant but brutal Union general of the Civil War. But these stereotypes don't come close to capturing him, as Chernow shows in his masterful biography, the first to provide a complete understanding of the general and president whose fortunes rose and fell with dizzying speed and frequency.

Patti Davis, the daughter of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, writes about losing her father to Alzheimer's disease, saying goodbye in stages, and watching the progression of a disease that steals what is most precious: a person's memory. Past and present come together in this illuminating portrait of grief, of a man, a disease, and a girl and her father.

The literature of the Gettysburg Address tends to fall into one of two extremes. At one end are those books that maintain that Lincoln wrote his speech hastily, even on a scrap of paper on the train en route from Washington to Gettysburg. In this version, Lincoln delivered his remarks to an uncomprehending public, which applauded politely, failing to appreciate his genius. Many of the books that argued this point of view are out of print today, but the myths and legends live on.

The founding fathers of the United States created a unique institution, the presidency, as they were determined to authorize an effective chief executive but wary of monarchy. They endowed this office with broad prerogatives and power but hedged it in with limitations. The presidency that developed over the next generation, however, was fashioned less by the clauses in the Constitution than by the way that the first presidents responded to challenges such as sectional enmity and the vexing Napoleonic warfare that jeopardized maritime rights.

We all know of Theodore Roosevelt being the US president from 1901 to 1909, an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, and naturalist. But few know of him being an acclaimed historian. Roosevelt’s The Winning of the West quickly became a bestseller. The first edition of his book sold out in little more than a month and helped establish Roosevelt as a literary man and scholar, placing him on a path toward future greatness.

Theodore Roosevelt in the Badlands chronicles the turbulent years Roosevelt spent as a rancher in the Badlands of Dakota Territory, following the sudden deaths on February 14, 1884, of his wife, two days after giving birth, and of his mother. Grief-stricken - and driven by doubts about his career after failed attempts as a reformer fighting political corruption -the young, Harvard-educated New York politician left his infant daughter in his sister's care and went to live on a Badlands ranch he had bought a year earlier.

Historian Joel Augustus Rogers provides his evidence that there have been 19th- and 20th-century presidents of the United States who had partial Black ancestry, including Harding, Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln.

The legacy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt enjoys regular acclaim from historians, politicians, and educators. But is that true? Deploying an abundance of primary source evidence and well-reasoned arguments, historian and distinguished professor emeritus David T. Beito masterfully presents a complete account of the real Franklin D. Roosevelt: a man who abused power, violated human rights, targeted dissidents, and let his crude racism imprison American citizens merely for being of Japanese descent.

A harsh and revealing political exposé of two beloved presidents. Judge Andrew P. Napolitano reveals how Teddy Roosevelt, a bully, and Woodrow Wilson, a constitutional scholar, each pushed aside the Constitution’s restrictions on the federal government and used it as an instrument to redistribute wealth, regulate personal behavior, and enrich the government. Theodore and Woodrow exposes two of our nation’s most beloved presidents and how they helped speed the Progressive cause on its merry way.

Abraham Lincoln, unlike most of his political brethren, kept organized Christianity at arm’s length. He never joined a church and only sometimes attended Sunday services with his wife. But as he came to appreciate the growing political and military importance of the Christian churches, and when death touched the Lincoln household in an awful, intimate way, the erstwhile skeptic effectively evolved into the nation’s first evangelical president. The war, he told Americans, was in some fashion divine retribution for the sin of slavery.

The death of a chief executive, regardless of the circumstances—sudden or expected, still in office or decades later—is always a moment of reckoning and reflection. Mourning the Presidents brings together renowned and emerging scholars to examine how different generations and communities of Americans have eulogized and remembered United States presidents since George Washington's death in 1799. Over twelve individually illuminating chapters, this volume offers a unique approach to understanding American culture and politics by uncovering parallels between different generations of mourners.

Franklin Roosevelt awoke on September 1, 1939 to the news that Germany invaded Poland, signaling the start of World War II. The president warned for years that Hitler's fascist regime posed an existential threat to democracy, but the American public remained stubbornly isolationist as fascist sympathizing groups, egged on by right wing media stars promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, plotted to overthrow the president. The situation was dire, and Roosevelt found himself facing an unexpected adversary: Charles Lindbergh.

Many books have been written about the amazing life of General Douglas MacArthur. This book is different. It contains information that is not reported elsewhere, information that tells us more about the greatness of this man, and how a powerful and popular US president, because of personal animosities, tried to destroy him. MacArthur led a 50-year career through some of the most difficult times in our nation's history, yet he never failed us. His Island-Hopping Campaign in the Pacific, his autocratic but benevolent rule over Japan that rebuilt their country into our great ally, his genius ...

The final resting place of Ulysses S. Grant, the victorious general in the Civil War and the 18th president of the United States, is a colossal neoclassical tomb located in the most dynamic city in the country. It is larger than the final resting place of any other president or any other person in America. Since its creation, the popularity and condition of this monument have reflected not only Grant's legacy in the public mind but also the state of New York City and of the Union. In this deeply researched book, presidential historian Louis L. Picone recounts the full story.