The American Heritage History Of The Presidency

This discussion of the Presidency as an institution is an examination of the office itself, offered on a chronological framework.

Here, from American Heritage, is the story of our presidents. From George Washington’s reluctant oath-taking through George W. Bush’s leadership challenges after September 11, 2001, we view ambitious and fallible men through the new lens of the twenty-first century. Where did they succeed? Where did they fail? And what do we know now that we could not have known at the time?

The best way to examine the presidency now, writes the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Bruce Catton, "is to examine the lives and personalities of the men who have held it, because the presidency today is in many ways the sum of large and small contributions made by the different presidents." Here, in the first volume of American Heritage's history of presidents are the dramatic stories of the first eight men to hold the office: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren.