Presidential Reading List
From charlesreid1
Overview of Project
The Presidential Reading Project is an idea I originally had when I read David McCullough's (very excellent) book Truman. I realized that, in reading about a President, I would learn not only about that President's personality and how he rose to his position, but I would also learn about American history, and the way that the current American government was shaped.
The project is a bit fuzzy; there are no "rules" per se, except that I plan to read at least one book about each President. There is no particular order to the readings, either; that way, serendipitous parallels between entirely different periods of time can be found.
List of Presidents
The following lists the name and year of each President, and links to the page listing books for each President.
Other Lists
US News and World Report has a list of the 10 worst presidents:
Washington Post has a discussion of the worst presidents:
I've created a page collating some of this information here: Worst Presidents
Resources
The way the books are chosen are varied. Sometimes it's "Hey, this one looks interesting!" Sometimes a book is chosen for its historical significance, sometimes a book is chosen because it's a Pulitzer Prize-winning book, and sometimes a book is chosen based on how many people gave it favorable reviews on Amazon.
There are a few bibliographies and resources I have used, however, to choose some of the books. These are listed below.
- http://www.presidentprofiles.com/
- Includes extensive bibliographies, with the choice of each book justified and explained in detail, for each President
- Wikipedia
- Duh! While the Presidential biographies on Wikipedia aren't the best, they often reference the better-known biographies, and also do a good job of presenting sources that take both sides (particularly important for Presidents who are considered the worst in history)