Best Presidential Biographies (nonfiction)
Top 10 Best Presidential Biographies (nonfiction)
: John Adams, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Washington: A Life, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Master of the Senate, Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, Decision Points, Wilson
| Author | David McCullough |
| ISBN | 0743223136 |
The enthralling, often surprising story of John Adams, one of the most important and fascinating Americans who ever lived.
In this powerful, epic biography, David McCullough unfolds the adventurous life-journey of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent, often irascible, always...
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
| Author | Doris Kearns Goodwin |
| ISBN | 0743270754 |
Winner of the Lincoln Prize
Acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln's political genius in this highly original work, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president.
On...
| Author | Ron Chernow |
| ISBN | 1594202664 |
The celebrated Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the father of America. With a breadth and depth matched by no other one-volume life, he carries the reader through Washington's troubled boyhood, his precocious feats in the French and Indian Wars, his creation of Mount Vernon, his heroic...
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
| Author | Edmund Morris |
| ISBN | 0375756787 |
'Colonel Roosevelt,' which takes its title from Roosevelt's favourite way of being addressed during his emeritus years, follows the African Journey with Mr. Morris's characteristic care. He uses primary sources, sometimes even rough drafts of letters and documents, and goes well beyond Roosevelt's...
| Author | Robert A. Caro |
| ISBN | 0394720954 |
The most riveting political biography of our time, Robert A. Caro’s life of Lyndon B. Johnson, continues. Master of the Senate takes Johnson’s story through one of its most remarkable periods: his twelve years, from 1949 through 1960, in the United States Senate. Once the most august and revered...
Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt
| Author | David McCullough |
| ISBN | 0671447548 |
Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt is the brilliant biography of the young Theodore Roosevelt. Hailed as a masterpiece by Newsday, it also won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography. Now with...
American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
| Author | Joseph J. Ellis |
| ISBN | 0679764410 |
It started when I was reading Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage, this niggling feeling of discomfort I get when reading a book when the author seems to be taking opportunities to lionize his/her subjects – or at the very least, portraying them in a simplistic, single facet. I’ve had this issue with...
A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House
| Author | Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. |
| ISBN | 1579124496 |
Written by one of our foremost historians and published in 1965, A Thousand Days is still considered the most complete and definitive portrait of John F. Kennedy and his administration. Handpicked by Kennedy to serve as special assistant to the president, historian and Harvard professor Arthur M....
| Author | George W. Bush |
| ISBN | 0307590615 |
In this candid and gripping account, President George W. Bush describes the critical decisions that shaped his presidency and personal life.
George W. Bush served as president of the United States during eight of the most consequential years in American history. The decisions that reached...
| Author | A. Scott Berg |
| ISBN | 0399159215 |
From Pulitzer Prize–winning, #1 New York Times–bestselling author A. Scott Berg comes the definitive—and revelatory—biography of one of the great American figures of modern times.
One hundred years after his inauguration, Woodrow Wilson still stands as one of the most influential...
| Author | Ronald C. White Jr. |
| ISBN | 1400064996 |
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The Washington Post • The Philadelphia Inquirer • The Christian Science Monitor • St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE CHRISTOPHER AWARD
Everyone wants to define the man who...
Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness
| Author | Joshua Wolf Shenk |
| ISBN | 0618773444 |
A thoughtful, nuanced portrait of Abraham Lincoln that finds his legendary political strengths rooted in his most personal struggles.
Giving shape to the deep depression that pervaded Lincoln's adult life, Joshua Wolf Shenk's Lincoln's Melancholy reveals how this illness...
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
| Author | Barack Obama |
| ISBN | 1921351438 |
Nine years before the Senate campaign that made him one of the most influential and compelling voices in American politics, Barack Obama published this lyrical, unsentimental, and powerfully affecting memoir, which became a #1 New York Times bestseller when it was reissued in 2004. Dreams from My...
Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever
| Author | Bill O'Reilly |
| ISBN | 0805093079 |
A riveting historical narrative of the heart-stopping events surrounding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and the first work of history from mega-bestselling author Bill O'Reilly
The anchor of The O'Reilly Factor recounts one of the most dramatic stories in American history—how one...
| Author | Amity Shlaes |
| ISBN | 0061967556 |
Calvin Coolidge, who served as president from 1923 to 1929, never rated highly in polls. The shy Vermonter, nicknamed "Silent Cal," has long been dismissed as quiet and passive. History has remembered the decade in which he served as a frivolous, extravagant period predating the Great Depression....
| Author | Rick Perlstein |
| ISBN | 0743243021 |
Politically insightful, Nixonland recaptures the turbulent 60s & early 70s, revealing how Dick Nixon rose from the political grave to seize & hold the presidency. Perlstein's account begins with the '65 Watts riots, nine months after Johnson's landslide victory over Goldwater appeared...
The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery
| Author | Eric Foner |
| ISBN | 0393066185 |
From a master historian, the story of Lincoln's—and the nation's—transformation through the crucible of slavery and emancipation.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Lincoln Prize
In this landmark work of deep scholarship and insight, Eric Foner gives...
Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief
| Author | James M. McPherson |
| ISBN | 1594201919 |
I thought this was a good companion history to Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Whereas that one delves into Lincoln's relationship with his fractious cabinet, McPherson's is a chronological history of Lincoln's interactions with his generals. After reading this,...
| Author | H.W. Brands |
| ISBN | 0465069592 |
From the New York Times bestselling author, an acclaimed biography of President Teddy Roosevelt
Lauded as "a rip-roaring life" (Wall Street Journal), TR is a magisterial biography of Theodore Roosevelt by bestselling author H.W. Brands. In his time, there was no more popular national figure...
| Author | Robert V. Remini |
| ISBN | 0801859115 |
Available in paperback for the first time, these three volumes represent the definitive biography of Andrew Jackson. Volume One covers the role Jackson played in America's territorial expansion, bringing to life a complex character who has often been seen simply as a rough-hewn country general....
| Author | Kathleen Dalton |
| ISBN | 0679767339 |
He inherited a sense of entitlement (and obligation) from his family, yet eventually came to see his own class as suspect. He was famously militaristic, yet brokered peace between Russia and Japan. He started out an archconservative, yet came to champion progressive causes. These contradictions...
| Author | John Ferling |
| ISBN | 0805045767 |
John Ferling's masterful John Adams: A Life is the most comprehensive single-volume biography of the man who succeeded George Washington in the presidency and shepherded the fragile new nation through the most dangerous of times. Drawing on extensive research, Ferling depicts a reluctant revolutionary,...
An illuminating, clear and readable history of Eisenhower’s presidency. Newton concludes that Eisenhower was the right man for the times, rather than just an adequate caretaker, a babysitter-in-chief, or a bored, quiet old grandpa.
Newton emphasizes Eisenhower’s natural and consistent...
| Author | Dumas Malone |
| ISBN | 0316544736 |
The second volume in this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography tells the story of the eventful middle years in the life of Thomas Jefferson: his ministry to France in the years just before the French Revolution and during the early stages of that conflict; his service as secretary of state in President...
In Obama’s Wars, Bob Woodward provides the most intimate and sweeping portrait yet of the young president as commander in chief. Drawing on internal memos, classified documents, meeting notes and hundreds of hours of interviews with most of the key players, including the president, Woodward tells...
| Author | James MacGregor Burns |
| ISBN | 0156027623 |
This review is for both volumes of this biography
The two volumes of James MacGregor Burns’ magisterial political biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt are unique in their intricate and nuanced understanding of FDR as a political operator. While other biographies may give one more of...
| Author | Dumas Malone |
| ISBN | 0316544752 |
Volume III of Malone's exhaustive study of Thomas Jefferson. This book covers his last year as Secretary of State (1793) through his three year retirement to his home in Virginia, then his one term as Vice President (1797-1801) and concluding with his election to his first term as President in 1801 (yes,...
