The American Presidency

Rating:
Summary: Excellent tour through the history of the republic
Review: Definately one of the best "overview" sort of books I've read. The individual essays by different people serve to give a wide range of perspectives throughout the book. There's a very conscious attempt to show both triumphs and failures of each President, and a lot of incisive examinations of the longer-term consequences of various decisions. And throughout, a very readable and enjoyable style.

If you're a history buff, this isn't going to tell you anything new. If you're looking for some perspective on how we got to where we are, and just where it is that we actually are, you could do far worse than to pick this one up.

Rating:
Summary: Thought-Provoking, Perhaps Controversial Interpretations
Review: For non-scholars such as I, Brinkley and Dyer have assembled and edited generally outstanding essays written by eminent academics, each of whom focuses her or his attention on one of the 43 presidents of the United States. They are indeed "concise and thorough accounts," as Brinkley and Dyer suggest in their Preface, but they also attempt to do more than that. "They are deliberately and frankly interpretative, offering assessments of the individual men and of both great and small events. They are also, in varying degrees, contextual, situating presidents in their time and suggesting how the character of American society and culture shaped the character of presidential performance."

No doubt each reader will take issue with at least some of the interpretations such as Herbert Sloan's re George Washington, Michael McGerr's re Theodore Roosevelt, and Matthew Dickinson's re Bill Clinton. Fair enough. Lively, sometimes hostile disagreements still continue concerning Thomas Jefferson almost 180 years after his death. Of greatest interest to me are the chapters devoted to presidents about whom, previously, I knew little (if anything). For example, Martin Van Buren, Franklin Pierce, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, and Warren G. Harding. Being a compulsive highlighter of key passages in the books I read, I also enjoyed comparing and contrasting revealing information about various presidents in terms of the process by which they were elected, the challenges each faced upon taking office, how they responded to those challenges, and what the presidential historians now view (in retrospect) as their most significant contributions.

Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out Sidney M. Milkis and Michael Nelson's The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776-2000, Thomas E. Cronin and Michael A. Genovese's The Paradoxes of the American Presidency, Forrest McDonald's The American Presidency: An Intellectual History, and James Taranto and Leonard Leo's Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House.

Rating:
Summary: Good compilation, but with faults
Review: This is a great book to understanding the evolution of American politics and presidential powers, from George Washington to George W. Bush Jr. By giving a quick and concise look at each president and his accomplishments (or lack thereof), the book gives a fine introduction (my particular favorite was the one on Theodore Roosevelt) to whet the reader's appetite for more in-depth biographies, and in the back is a fine list of suggested further readings for every president.

However, the book was not without faults. Since this is a compilation of 43 essays each written by a different historian (with the exception of two cases where a historian wrote on two presidents), each could be a hit or miss. Some focuses too much on a president's activities before taking office and not enough after, some focuses too much on one term of presidency and very little on the other (the one on Ulysses Grant was especially guilty of this), and some gives you the feeling that the ending is rushed as the arthur is trying to wrap up assesments. Most importantly, I felt that Brinkley and Dyer should add transition pages between biographies to guide the reader from one president to the next (they do write quick wrap-ups after the biographies of some of the popular presidents, but these are not really the transitions I'm looking for), and this would've been especially important for anyone reading the book chronologically and trying to get a bigger picture of American history.

Overall, the strengths of this book outweigh the weaknesses, and I would offer strong recommendations for The American Presidency.