— Lest we forget, James Buchanan
There is something both cool and off-putting about Arthur M. Schlessinger Jr’s “American Presidents” series of books. This is a series of slender volumes, autobiographys of each of the American presidents, all of them highly sympathetic to their topic. (And the nature of these books is that they are side-projects for the authors.)
It works well for the more obscure presidents, who tend to not have books written about them. And some of the authors tabbed to write them are inspired:
William McKinley — Kevin Philips. McKinley is noted for having been at the start of a vast “Republican Majority”, Philips wrote “The Emerging Republican Majority” in 1968.
Warren Harding — John Dean. Scandal-plagued (albeit posthumously) presidency.
John Quincy Adams — Robert Remini. The “foremost Jacksonin historian” — take a detour to the president who preceeded him.
James Monroe — Gary Hart. I’m not entirely sure what the connection between author and subject is, but I’m sure one exists.
On the other hand, the “Sympathetic” nature tends to make you believe that every president in American history is a forgotten fore-runner to some Historical force, an unappreciated genius, and someone you should jab upward on the Historian’s parlor-game of ranking these guys. Except for James Buchanan — who, reading the back-cover, it looks like the author admits his bottom-of-the-bottom ranking is deserved.