American Presidents book series

[Inmate Trump]

American President Book Series


Has anyone read any of these? I'm interested in giving them a try. A book series with an entry for each president interests me, but I'm not sure if the quality is actually any good.

They have a book for each president up through George W. Bush, but none after him. Not sure if that means the series has ended or not.

[Thank you for being a friend...]

I like these and I also recommend the series about presidential elections.

[Orser67]

I read most of them and found them very hit-or-miss depending on the author. The ones written by historians tended to be what I'd hope for: relatively short (~200 pages) examinations of the presidents lives, generally with the most emphasis placed on their presidency. However, I quite disliked some of the other books; e.g. I thought the one on McKinley descended into tangents about the author's own political inclinations and theories.

Most of the books are probably a little more positive on their subjects than might be fully warranted (a common issue with biographies), though I vaguely remember one of the books (possibly Fillmore?) was humorously over-the-top in its criticism of the subject (not that I like Fillmore).

[Orser67]

Just to throw out a resource, this guy read a huge number of presidential biographies and reviewed each of them, could be worth taking a look.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Could be interesting for reading bios of some lesser-known presidents like Taylor, Hayes, Fillmore, Arthur, etc. but for most presidents you'd be better off getting a proper well-respected biography.  Unfortunately such a resource doesn't exist for some more minor presidents (the site Orser67 links only has two bios for Fillmore, both mediocre) so it would be nice to have a resource that explores the character and presidency of the man with a reasonable degree of scholarliness and depth.  For others, such as Jefferson, it could be nice to get a 200-page summary of his life rather than some 900-page comprehensive tome.  But then why are you reading a bio on Jefferson in the first place?  Pretty much everyone knows who Jefferson was and what the most consequential parts of his life were... if you're really interested in relations with the Spanish during 1806 or whatever, you are probably the kind of person who wants a 900-page tome of Jefferson.

[Inmate Trump]

Could be interesting for reading bios of some lesser-known presidents like Taylor, Hayes, Fillmore, Arthur, etc. but for most presidents you'd be better off getting a proper well-respected biography.  Unfortunately such a resource doesn't exist for some more minor presidents (the site Orser67 links only has two bios for Fillmore, both mediocre) so it would be nice to have a resource that explores the character and presidency of the man with a reasonable degree of scholarliness and depth.  For others, such as Jefferson, it could be nice to get a 200-page summary of his life rather than some 900-page comprehensive tome.  But then why are you reading a bio on Jefferson in the first place?  Pretty much everyone knows who Jefferson was and what the most consequential parts of his life were... if you're really interested in relations with the Spanish during 1806 or whatever, you are probably the kind of person who wants a 900-page tome of Jefferson.

Yea.

I find it appealing that there is a series out there that includes a book for each president. I like the idea of them sitting on my shelf. But not if the series is dead (there hasn’t been a book since Dubya).

And while I’m interested in reading biographies beyond Wikipedia pages, I don’t want to read a huge a$$ biography, like David McCullough’s 1,120 page Truman book.