The Presidents
250 Years of American Political Leadership
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Narrated by:
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Iain Dale
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By:
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Iain Dale
About this listen
Essays on all 46 American presidents who have held the office over the last 230 years - from George Washington to Joe Biden.
There was a huge upsurge of global interest in US politics during the Trump presidency, culminating in the November 2020 election, the victory of the Democrat candidate Joe Biden and the subsequent, horrifying response in the storming of the US capitol. American politics is likely to remain deeply divided during the coming years and also the focus of global attention - with Trump mobilising his base for 2024. But the transatlantic fascination with the role and office of the US president isn't new at all and in fact reaches all the way back to the birth of the United States itself.
The Presidents features essays, written by a range of academics, historians, political journalists and serving politicians, on all 46 American presidents who have held the office over the last 230 years - from George Washington to Joe Biden. Each contributor has been carefully chosen based on expert knowledge of their subjects and personal connections, providing analysis of their subject's successes, failures and influence. Any hagiographical writing is shunned in favour of a 'warts and all' perspective on each president and the impact they've had on US politics - past, present and future.
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- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 14 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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How do you solve a problem like James Madison? The fourth president is one of the most confounding figures in early American history; his political trajectory seems almost intentionally inconsistent. He was both for and against a strong federal government. He wrote about the dangers of political parties in the Federalist Papers and then helped to found the Republican Party just a few years later. This so-called Madison problem has occupied scholars for ages.
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Good listen
- By James Shannon on 06-27-22
By: Jay Cost
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What It Took to Win
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- By: Michael Kazin
- Narrated by: Lee Goettl
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In What It Took to Win, the eminent historian Michael Kazin identifies and assesses the Democratic Party's long-running commitment to creating "moral capitalism" - a system that mixed entrepreneurial freedom with the welfare of workers and consumers. And yet the same party that championed the rights of the white working man also vigorously protected or advanced the causes of slavery, segregation, and Indian removal.
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Timely and informative History Book
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By: Michael Kazin
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John Tyler, the Accidental President
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- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 14 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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The first vice president to become president on the death of the incumbent, John Tyler (1790-1862) was derided by critics as "His Accidency." In this biography of the 10th president, Edward P. Crapol challenges depictions of Tyler as a die-hard advocate of states' rights, limited government, and a strict interpretation of the Constitution. Instead, he argues, Tyler manipulated the Constitution to increase the executive power of the presidency. Crapol also highlights Tyler's faith in America's national destiny and his belief in boundless territorial expansion.
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Terrible book :( Incredibly TEDIOUS.
- By Mike on 10-02-19
By: Edward P. Crapol
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Saving Freedom
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- Narrated by: Joe Scarborough
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- Unabridged
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History called on Harry Truman to unite the Western world against Soviet communism, but first he had to rally Republicans and Democrats behind America’s most dramatic foreign policy shift since George Washington delivered his farewell address. How did one of the least prepared presidents to walk into the Oval Office become one of its most successful?
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An engaging review of a remarkable president
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By: Joe Scarborough
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The American Experiment
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James MacGregor Burns’s stunning trilogy of American history, spanning the birth of the Constitution to the final days of the Cold War. In these three volumes, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner James MacGregor Burns chronicles with depth and narrative panache the most significant cultural, economic, and political events of American history.
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American History ABCs
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Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents
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Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents features outrageous and uncensored profiles of the men in the White House - complete with hundreds of little-known, politically incorrect, and downright wacko facts.
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Sloppy, dull, partisan
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Heaven on Earth
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Socialism was man's most ambitious attempt to supplant religion with a doctrine claiming to ground itself in "science". Each failure to create societies of abundance or give birth to "the New Man" inspired more searching for the path to the promised land: revolution, communes, social democracy, communism, fascism, Arab socialism, African socialism. None worked, and some exacted a staggering human toll. Then, after two centuries of wishful thinking and bitter disappointment, socialism imploded in a fin de siecle drama of falling walls and collapsing regimes.
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A biased yet informative masterpiece
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The Presidents
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- Unabridged
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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.
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Too Much Praise
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These Truths
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- Narrated by: Jill Lepore
- Length: 29 hrs
- Unabridged
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In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation. In riveting prose, These Truths tells the story of America, beginning in 1492, to ask whether the course of events has proven the nation's founding truths or belied them.
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Good Story but distracting sound engineering
- By MindSpiker on 11-21-18
By: Jill Lepore
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American Heritage History of the United States
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- Narrated by: Eric Martin
- Length: 23 hrs and 13 mins
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Douglas Brinkley takes us on the incredible journey of the United States - a nation formed from a vast countryside on whose fringes 13 small British colonies fought for their freedom, then established a democratic nation that spanned the continent and went on to become a world power. This book will be treasured by anyone interested in the story of America.
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Highly recommended!
- By M. Hu on 08-04-17
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How Ike Led
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- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne, Susan Eisenhower
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Few people have made decisions as momentous as Eisenhower, nor has one person had to make such a varied range of them. From D-Day to Little Rock, from the Korean War to Cold War crises, from the Red Scare to the Missile Gap controversies, he was able to give our country eight years of peace and prosperity by relying on a core set of principles. These were informed by his heritage and upbringing, his strong character and his personal discipline, but he also avoided making himself the center of things. He tried to be the calmest man in the room, not the loudest.
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A President of the UNITED States
- By Happy Doc on 09-10-20
By: Susan Eisenhower
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What listeners say about The Presidents
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Edie Shaver
- 07-10-22
Biased opinion
Thoroughly enjoyed UNTIL narrator’s opinion of Trump changed my mind. This has been the best book so far on the presidents BUT b/c narrator is not a fan, he made me wish I hadn’t purchased. Why RUIN the book? Keep opinions out.
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- T. Adams
- 01-02-23
Way too Biased to be Useful or Interesting
I got through Grant before I just gave up.
I wanted something that was a good summary of each of the Presidents so I could put some American history in better perspective, but the book is far too political, scattershot and preachy to get through unless you're a die-hard liberal.
First, most of the chosen authors are British, so almost all the referential things are from OUTSIDE American politics.
Second, the authors spent A LOT of time referencing political events around the Donald Trump presidency, which even just two years out makes it seem pretty dated and agenda-driven. The female authors especially spend a lot of time self-righteously condemning everyone in the 1800s as horrible people because they either had slaves or supported policies that supported slavery, which is reflected in their need to paint people as "bad" and "worst" for even moderate positions on slavery. I wish they were more even-handed considering the times.
How about instead of telling me for the 15th time how bad slavery was you utilize the time to educate your readers with more context? Some people want to learn history just for the facts and people, not to be preached to about how older values are backwards. By the time you get to Grant you're hearing a woman talk about "my ancestors this" and "my ancestors that." Nothing is added and it just becomes repetitive.
In fact, many of the authors really have no business talking about history at all. I got frustrated hearing about Liberal MPs from the UK or women who's sole qualification is running a Democrat or Labour podcast in 2020 giving lectures on mean Presidents. Many basic biographical details that could have been included just don't make it in. For example, Taft was 300 pounds yet I only found this out on the President AFTER Taft because Taft's author didn't include it. I got much more interesting information about several presidents from the OTHER president's descriptions because there was so much race talk that basic things were just never included.
Half of Washington's bio was talking about Trump, and Trump is mentioned at least a half dozen times in the early Presidents. Lincoln's chapter includes George Floyd and the Minneapolis race riots, which is probably going to age badly.
I'm going to look for something else because the political agendas, scattershot treatment of even basic facts of the mens' lives vs political lectures and agenda driven narrative from authors almost entirely from another country really make this a waste of time. I appreciate what I did learn, but it just made me want to go find other sources for better information. I'm an adult I think I can learn about the past without the constant posturing and moral lectures, thanks!
Also, I don't have the physical copy, but there appear to be mistakes in the reading. Many times there are references to dates that appear to be misread since they start with 19XX or reference time periods far removed from the one being discussed with no context as to why. I'm not sure anyone double-checked this recording vs the book. Maybe it was meant to be gotten out quickly since so many of the references are 2020 centric.
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