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A review by jeremyanderberg
Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote by Craig Fehrman
5.0
This new book was basically 337 delightful pages of heaven for me.
Nearly all of our presidents have been writers to some degree — whether in the form of a campaign book or a post-presidency memoir, presidential authorship has become almost a certainty in recent decades.
What Ferhman does is critically analyze those books our presidents wrote (or claimed to have written), from Ulysses Grant’s famed memoirs to Calvin Coolidge’s surprisingly well-done autobiography to JFK’s secretive process in “writing” the Pulitzer-winning Profiles in Courage. Those are just a few of the marvelous backstories Feherman uncovers for the reader.
In addition, he provides some great peeks into the Presidents’ reading lives — from Lincoln’s self-education in the backwoods of Kentucky, to Theodore Roosevelt’s voracious, near addictive appetite for books of all genres, to Obama’s self-actualization in his reading of black history and literature.
The only problem with this book is its incredibly niche subject matter — the combination of presidential/political history with literary criticism is neither common nor terribly popular.
That said, I loved it. Fehrman covers a great deal of ground that even major biographers have skipped over in favor of “sexier” storylines, yet to the book lover, these stories are unquestionably enticing. Even the footnotes, appendix, and sources offer bookish gems.
Nearly all of our presidents have been writers to some degree — whether in the form of a campaign book or a post-presidency memoir, presidential authorship has become almost a certainty in recent decades.
What Ferhman does is critically analyze those books our presidents wrote (or claimed to have written), from Ulysses Grant’s famed memoirs to Calvin Coolidge’s surprisingly well-done autobiography to JFK’s secretive process in “writing” the Pulitzer-winning Profiles in Courage. Those are just a few of the marvelous backstories Feherman uncovers for the reader.
In addition, he provides some great peeks into the Presidents’ reading lives — from Lincoln’s self-education in the backwoods of Kentucky, to Theodore Roosevelt’s voracious, near addictive appetite for books of all genres, to Obama’s self-actualization in his reading of black history and literature.
The only problem with this book is its incredibly niche subject matter — the combination of presidential/political history with literary criticism is neither common nor terribly popular.
That said, I loved it. Fehrman covers a great deal of ground that even major biographers have skipped over in favor of “sexier” storylines, yet to the book lover, these stories are unquestionably enticing. Even the footnotes, appendix, and sources offer bookish gems.