United States Presidents

Washington was born and raised among Blacks and mixed-race people; he and his wife had blood ties to the slave community. Yet as a young man he bought and sold slaves without scruple, even raffled off children to collect debts (an incident ignored by earlier biographers). Then, on the Revolutionary battlefields where he commanded both Black and White troops, Washington's attitudes began to change.

Despite his reputation for rash decisions, brutal tactics, and intemperate behavior, Ulysses S. Grant was the only Union general who could win the war for Lincoln. Grant's aggressive strategies, swift movements and uncompromising battlefield attacks were praised in the North, feared in the South, and reviled by many of his own associates and staff. General Grant is, perhaps, one of the most controversial, enigmatic, and misunderstood generals in our nation's history.

President Bill Clinton's My Life is the strikingly candid portrait of a global leader who decided early in life to devote his intellectual and political gifts, and his extraordinary capacity for hard work, to serving the public. It is the fullest, most concretely detailed, most nuanced account of a presidency ever written, and a testament to the positive impact on America and on the world of his work and his ideals.

Though he was a great statesman, one of America's founding fathers, and the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson suffered from depression. In Jefferson's Demons, Michael Knox Beran examines episodes of melancholia in Jefferson's life. In particular, he focuses on the journey Jefferson made to Europe in 1787 to escape the depression that set in due to his tumultuous experience as governor of Virginia following the Revolution and his wife Martha's death.

Born just six years after the founding of the United States, Martin Van Buren seemed destined for politics. Known throughout his career as “Little Van” for his short stature, his impact on America was certainly not minimal. From the age of 14, the democratic Van Buren began a political career as an apprentice. He would later go on to fulfill several positions including senator for New York state, a brief stint as governor, Andrew Jackson’s secretary of state, and eventually president.

As a child growing up on his family’s plantation, young Thomas Jefferson had to find ways to entertain himself. He would spend hours reading, studying, and observing the plantation that surrounded him. He never expected that he would change the world one day. These little things that he did would add up, and once he grew older, he became the man we know him as today. The main author of the Declaration of Independence, a founding father, and ultimately, the third president of the United States.

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.

Wealthy Virginia planter, revolutionary general, and founding president, George Washington was the most illustrious public man of his time, a man whose image today still reflects his own careful shaping of his persona. In this thoughtful and incisive biography, Burns and Dunn dissect the strengths and weaknesses of Washington's presidential leadership, from his lasting foreign and economic policies to his polarizing denunciation of the political parties and his public silence about slavery.

John Quincy Adams: The Often Ignored Sixth President of the United States tracks the life and times of John Quincy Adams from boyhood until his death. John Quincy was the first case of the son of a president of the United States taking office after the father. In many ways, the two President Adams were similar in temperament and in performance. Neither understood politics; neither had the common touch. Both of them were scholars, and in another era might have made a career of teaching or research.

Do you want to learn about Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower but don’t have the time or patience to read a thick book? Then this is the short and concise book for you! In the book you will read about the many accomplishments of Dwight Eisenhower, including: His rise through the ranks in the Army to become the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during World War II. Served in the U.S. Army for over four decades. Becoming General of the Army. Elected the 34th President of the United States. Ended the Korean War within his first year as president. Kept America at peace during the ...

As the 2012 presidential campaign begins: Profiles of 12 men who have run for the presidency and lost, but who, even in defeat, have had a greater impact on American history than many of those who have served as president - from Henry Clay to Stephen Douglas, William Jennings Bryan to Al Gore - Plus, mini-profiles on 22 "honorable mentions."

Nineteenth-century African Americans felt deep affection for their "liberator" as a "homely" man who did not hold himself apart; Southerners felt a nostalgia for Abraham Lincoln as a humble "conciliator". Later, educators glorified Lincoln as a symbol of nationhood to help assimilate poor immigrants. Monument makers focused not only on a gigantic body but also on a nationalist "union", downplaying "emancipation". Among both Black and White liberals in the 1960s and 1970s, Lincoln was derided or fell out of fashion.

The author of the acclaimed biography of President James Polk, A Country of Vast Designs, offers a fresh, playful, and challenging way of playing “Rating the Presidents,” by pitching historians’ views and subsequent experts’ polls against the judgment and votes of the presidents’ own contemporaries.

This definitive history of presidential lying reveals how our standards for truthfulness have eroded - and why Trump's lies are especially dangerous.

This book includes key speeches from President Eisenhower during his Presidency (1953-1961) including key speeches on the post-war peace process and his speech on the so-called 'Eisenhower doctrine'. His inaugural address and farewell speeches are also included as well as his address to the Republican National convention in 1956. This collection provides an informative, first-hand account of the Eisenhower Presidency and the 1950s in America.

Clotel; or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States is an 1853 novel by the author and playwright William Wells Brown. Set in the early 19th century, it is the story of Clotel and her sister Althesa, who are fictional slave daughters of Thomas Jefferson. It is considered the first novel published by an African American and explores the destructive effects of slavery on African American families, the difficult lives of mixed-race people, and the degraded and immoral condition of the relationship between master and slave.

As Margaret Truman knows from firsthand experience, living in the White House can be exhilarating and maddening, alarming and exhausting, but it is certainly never dull. Part private residence, part goldfish bowl, and part national shrine, the White House is both the most important address in America and the most intensely scrutinized.

Just 75 years ago, the American government did something that most would consider unthinkable today: It rounded up over 100,000 of its own citizens based on nothing more than their ancestry and, suspicious of their loyalty, kept them in concentration camps for the better part of four years. How could this have happened? Uprooted takes a close look at the history of racism in America and carefully follows the treacherous path that led one of our nation's most beloved presidents to make this decision.

This is a collection of the speeches of President Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969). This extensive collection of 25 speeches spans domestic and foreign policy. Including numerous addresses and speeches on civil rights issues and the topic of Vietnam and foreign policy. Johnson's inaugural address and State of the Union speeches are also included.

In the early hours of May 6, 1856, the steamboat Effie Afton barreled into a pillar of the Rock Island Bridge - the first railroad bridge ever to span the Mississippi River. Soon after, the newly constructed vessel, crowded with passengers and livestock, erupted into flames and sank in the river below, taking much of the bridge with it. As lawyer and Lincoln scholar Brian McGinty dramatically reveals in Lincoln's Greatest Case, no one was killed, but the question of who was at fault cried out for an answer.