John Tyler : A President of Many Firsts

Rating:
Summary: An overpriced pamphlet
Review: This expensive booklet of less than 70 pages (including many illustrations) is intended as a souvenir of Tyler's restored plantation house. (Incredibly, although Tyler was born in 1790, the restorer is a grandson, still alive at the time of publication in 2001.) The pamphlet, based completely on secondary sources, is deliberately uncritical and minimizes the more unsavory features of Tyler's presidency. The three-page sketch in American National Biography provides a far more accurate understanding of the tenth president and his administration.