1 comments about The Presidency of Andrew Jackson (American Presidency Series).

1. The presidency of Andrew Jackson marks a significant change in American presidential politics. With the exception of John Quincy Adams, and a weak one at that, all previous presidents had been members of the unofficial American aristocracy that existed at the time of independence. Traditionally, they followed the principle of the office seeking the man and campaigning for the position was generally not done. There was little in the way of populist movements and political parties in the modern sense did not exist. That changed with the rise of Jackson to the presidency and expanded during his two terms in office.
   Jackson was the first president who was popularly elected to office, and the prelude to the election was the first true campaign for the position. He was also the first person from the west to be elected to the presidency and a military hero many times over. His reputation as a general places him nearly on a par with George Washington.
   Being the first "outsider" president, his election created a great deal of anxiety among the established powers in the east. Cole quite properly begins with a thorough discussion of this situation, as it created a good deal of tension that lasted for several years. There was also an enormous amount of economic expansion going on in the country, which began to exacerbate the regional tensions developing between the northern and southern regions of the country. A great deal of the book is spent examining these regional tendencies and with the perspective of hindsight, we can clearly see the gathering storm that finally led to war. This area is very well done, as the author properly describes all of the growing tensions, not just the problem of slavery.
   Cole also does an excellent job describing the personality of Andrew Jackson, sometimes compromising and other times very much "Old Hickory", as he refused to bend. His threat to use federal troops in the south was a genuine one, sparking a lot of animosity, yet accomplishing what he wanted to do. He surprised everyone with his reluctance to become involved in the Texan attempt to gain independence from Mexico. Most expected the "Old Hero" to be much more aggressive in expanding the nations' borders. In the book, we also see the rise of Martin Van Buren, called the little magician for his political ability. He truly was the first modern political power broker, the type of person necessary for effective presidential leadership.
   With the economic and physical expansion of the country beginning to proceed at an incredible pace, the
   Jackson years were those where the nation began taking on the characteristics of a modern nation. Cole does an excellent job of describing this transition, as well as the man who was at the helm when it was taking place. Andrew Jackson was one of the most complex men to hold the office, as well as one of the roughest. From the book, you learn about these different aspects of his personality as well as how the country was affected by them.

4 comments about When the Buck Stops With You: Harry S. Truman on Leadership.

1. Having read Alan Axelrod's illustration of FDR, I had to pick up this book. Again, an amazing representation of the American spirit and perseverance. I don't know that Truman would ever have sought out the presidency had FDR not recruited him for VP. I have actually used a few of the lessons taught in this book in my own job, having been thrown ultimatums at inopportune times. Having the knowledge attained from this book helped me deal with the issues in a way I had never quite tried.
   
   What really impresses me about Truman is his absolute decisiveness and resolution. And as history has come to show, the true legacy of a president is usually not evident immediately, rather many years down the road. I feel Truman's lessons will resound for centuries to come.



2. Author Alan Axelrod's 156 concise lessons on leadership from the life and writings of Harry S. Truman are vivid but, alas, often repetitive. The bigger paradox of this book is that many of the virtues it espouses - diligence, balance, thoroughness, patience and a thirst for learning - are thwarted by its very structure. Truman, a voracious reader, would likely have found these one or two page chapters frustratingly short. Any leader really seeking to model himself or herself on Truman should use this as an appetizer and move immediately onward to a meaty full-length biography or memoir. With that in mind, we recommend this book to executives and political leaders who haven't yet met Truman - or to those who only want a brief visit, a leadership pep talk and a few pithy quotes.



3. Those who have read Patton on Leadership and/or Elizabeth I, CEO are already aware of Axelrod's unique talent for rigorously examining an abundance of historical and (especially) biographical information to derive especially important lessons in leadership. In this volume, his subject is Harry S Truman. (How much I would enjoy being included during a "fantasy dinner" with Patton, Elizabeth I, and Truman!) Within a dozen chapters, Axelrod identifies and then briefly but insightfully discusses 156 "lessons" to be learned from the life and career of the 33rd President of the United States. Axelrod also provides a "Truman Timeline" and "The Sources of Truman on Leadership" (suggested readings) in an Appendix.

   Most experts on the American Presidency rank Truman among the greatest, a fact which would have astonished those old enough to remember when Franklin Delano Roosevelt died and Truman was sworn in as his successor. There was little in the background of "The Man from Missouri" to suggest that he was equal to the task during one of the most dangerous periods of his nation's history. World War Two was still in progress, what became the Cold War was developing, West Berlin would soon be isolated by the U.S.S.R.'s blockade, the Korean War lay ahead, and the quite legitimate threat of thermonuclear weapons created an unprecedented sense of menace throughout the civilized world. Truman did indeed rise to the task and as Axelrod correctly indicates in this volume, there are many important lessons to be learned from his leadership from 1945 until 1952.




4. When Harry S. Truman left the presidency in January 1953, his approval rating stood at an historic low. But his reputation has been on a steady rise ever since. His blunt, plainspoken honesty has touched a responsive chord among Americans who feel their current leaders, whatever the party, offer them little but lies and double-talk.

   Therefore, Truman seems a natural choice for the latest manual on leadership from Alan Axelrod. The author draws extensively from Truman's own public statements and private diaries to extract a series of 156 lessons on leadership, divided into a series of chapters with themes like "Hell: Giving and Getting" and "Do The Right Thing."Although primarily aimed at the business person, these lessons have value for anyone in a leadership role, including, of course, the poltical realm.

   Truman's decisiveness, his high moral standards, his unwillingness to accept anything less than the best from himself or his colleagues all shine through in this work. A timeline helps place Truman's life in context, and the bibliography offers a number of potential sources for anyone with an intertest in further exploring the life and philosophy of our thirty-third president.--William C. Hall

No comments about The Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt.

4 comments about America's First Families (HC) : An Inside View of 200 Years of Private Life in the White House.

1. This is a fascinating book. It is a wonderful compendium of trivia, probably not available in any other volume. It contains a wonderful assortment of pictures of First Families, some of which have never before been published. The book is well organized into chapters detailing various aspects of the Presidential families' lives and activities. for me, one of its prime attractions is that it does not include the politics or issues of the President's era.
   At times, it is a little confusing, because the author skips from one family to another rather abruptly, so it requires a little getting used to in order to follow the narrative.
   I would strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in the social and "human" aspects of the White House families.



2. This book gives an insight into the private lives of the first families. We learn about their extended families, hobbies, illnesses, preparations for leaving the White House when their terms are completed, etc. The pictures are what really makes this book great. We see Lyndon Johnson in bed with his wife watching tv and we see the older George Bush in bed too (can you imagine Nixon or Clinton letting down his guard like this?). We see Gerald Ford in his bathrobe. If you always wanted to see such a sight, there is a photo of Eleanor Roosevelt in a bathing suit and a rare photo of Franklin in shorts with his polio ravaged legs exposed to the camera. We see painful personal moments such as the famous photo of Nixon hugging his daughter Julie when he made the decision to resign. In short this is, at times, a very rare personal and intimate glimpse into the lives of the first families. I enjoyed it and recommend it highly.



3. I have been fortunate enough to read Mr. Anthony's brilliant "First Ladies" mini-opuses, and highly looked forward to this epic on the lives of our First Families. I sat for three hours stright with an almost constant smile on my face as I ran through the pages. What an amazing acheivement Mr. Anthony has pulled together! I can only imagine the painstaking research needed to find out the tidbits sprinkled throughout. There is so much information in this novel that it almost boggles the mind at times and is a bit overwhelming. I wondered if everything was sinking in, when I saw Mr. Anthony speak at the Richard Nixon library on CSPAN one night recounting the tales found here. Every story he told was instantly recalled and sentences finished before explaining. The sheer knowledge that one can gain from reading this novel is tremendous. (Where else can you find a list of President's favorite movies? By Reagan selecting Rambo, it does nothing but prove what a complete and utter moron we had occupying the White House under his reign).....Point proven further....When listing President's favorite reading options, Mr Anthony lays out beautiful examples of this. President Clinton enjoys biographies of his predecessors, Eisenhower military biographies and TR, anything he could get his hands on. Reagan? Newspaper comics.....I shall leave my review at that.



4. I purchased this book yesterday and I can't put it down. It is filled with great pictures and stories of the forty-one famlies who lived in the White House. This is a great source of presidential trivia and provides a human element to the most famous family in America. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in American history and the lives of the presidents.

No comments about John Quincy Adams and American Global Empire.

1 comments about The Games Presidents Play: Sports and the Presidency.

1. In his latest work, "Games Presidents Play", author John Watterson has brought us an easy read and one filled with plenty of interesting anecdotes to satisfy even the most knowledgeable presidential historians. This book is clearly the perfect item for any reader with even a casual interest in the presidents and/or sporting activities in general.
   
   While there is some basic material about each man's time as the country's president, the primary focus of the book is to tell us about the athletic or sporting activities that aided the presidents in finding much-needed relaxation away from the office, while also having some influence on American culture in general on occasion.
   
   Watterson obviously begins with George Washington, and while the first president's physical strength and horsemanship are still held in great regard even today, what was interesting to this reader was Washington's fervent interest in the formal horse-racing and surrounding social functions that he often attended in Annapolis and Philadelphia.
   
   Not every president comes in for a writeup by the author -- after all, it is difficult to imagine men like John Adams or James Madison participating in anything more strenuous than an occasional horseback ride out of sheer necessity.
   
   The sporting activities of the presidents really began to gain national recognition with Theodore Roosevelt -- a man the author describes as one who "represents a melding of sports and politics that has now become commonplace." Watterson credits Roosevelt with originating what he calls "the twentieth-century sporting presidency."
   
   From there on we get a good deal more material on the sporting activities of the varios 20th century presidents, including such men as Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford (who actually was a very capable football lineman at the University of Michigan in the early 1930s), Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. The stories of Clinton bending the rules of golf to suit his fancy was no surprise to this reader, and Watterson mentions that Clinton's "critics suggested that his golfing character was a mirror image" of some of his other White House misbehavior that landed him in big trouble.
   
   Again, "The Games Presidents Play" is an easy read -- well researched and well written -- by an author who has previously produced one of the best books ("College Football") written on the off-the-field history of college football. GPP would make a nice gift for any reader with even a casual interest in the American presidency.
   
   R.S.
   Ventura, CA

No comments about The Reagan Diaries, Leatherbound Edition.

2 comments about Woodrow Wilson.

1. This book does a very good job of outlining the life of Woodrow Wilson. If you are not very familiar with the life and career of Woodrow Wilson then I would recommend reading this book. The book provided just the right amount of detail needed in order to provide you with insight as to what Wilson was all about.



2. The top five Presidents in American history are called "great" Presidents by historians, and the next five Presidents are usually referred to as "near-great". Woodrow Wilson, our 28th President, is usually placed into the near-great category. "Near-great" Presidents are those leaders who accomplished many of their goals, but fell just short in one area. And "near-great" is also how I would rate this biography by August Heckscher. It is easily the best one-volume biography of Wilson to appear in many years. Heckscher writes eloquently of Wilson's troubled childhood. The first President from the South since the Civil War, Wilson grew up in the shadow of his domineering father, a well-known and intimidating Presbyterian minister in some of the South's largest and wealthiest churches. The elder Wilson expected nothing less than perfection, and his son often had a difficult time meeting those expectations. As a result he often turned to his doting mother for emotional warmth and support, and as Heckscher notes, he would always be extremely dependent upon the support and encouragement of women to boost his self-confidence.
   Not surprisingly, perhaps, Wilson still grew up to resemble his father, for good and ill. On the positive side Wilson was strong-willed, extremely intelligent, ambitious, idealistic, and an eloquent orator like his father. But on the negative side he could be narrow-minded and self-righteous, humorless (at least in public), inflexible, and prone to making enemies. His health was also poor, and it can be persuasively argued that he suffered two major strokes before assuming the Presidency - once in 1896 and another in 1908. However, neither Wilson nor anyone else recognized them as strokes, but instead he regarded them as "nervous breakdowns". The first and only President with a Ph.D (in political science) Wilson enjoyed a distinguished academic career, first as a professor at Princeton University and then (from 1902-1910) as the President of Princeton. Wilson transformed the sleepy, laid-back campus into the distinguished university that it still is today, but his domineering leadership style earned him many enemies, and Wilson eventually quit after losing a bitter battle to change the living and social conditions on campus by forcing the wealthier students to live and work with the less well-to-do. In 1910 the corrupt Democratic bosses of New Jersey were looking for a "respectable" candidate to run for Governor - someone who could legitimately run as an "honest" candidate while being weak or naive enough to remain under their control. In Wilson, a nationally known college president and intellectual, they thought they had their man, or rube. Wilson accepted their offer, won the election, and then dramatically turned against the bosses, leading a major effort to clean up New Jersey politics. His about-face won national acclaim and helped make him the Democratic presidential candidate in 1912. In one of the nation's most colorful and historic presidential races, he defeated his two opponents - President Taft, the Republican candidate, and Teddy Roosevelt, the third-party Progressive candidate - and became President. During his two terms he passed major domestic legislation such as giving women the right to vote, ending child labor, and improving safety conditions in factories and mines. He also endured the crushing death of his first wife from kidney disease, quickly remarried a year later, and tried desperately to keep the nation out of World War One. In 1916 he barely won re-election in a race that was so close the winner wasn't announced for several days. In early 1917, after German submarines began sinking unarmed American merchant vessels, Wilson convinced Congress to declare war on Germany and the nation entered World War One. At the end of the war in 1919 came Wilson's greatest failure. Determined to bring about "world peace", Wilson helped create the League of Nations to peacefully settle disputes between countries. He knew, however, that without US membership and leadership the League would be useless. Unfortunately, Wilson's domineering leadership style as President had alienated the Republicans and even some members of his own party in Congress. Led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, they were determined to defeat Wilson and prevent US entry into the League. To gain public support for his cause, President Wilson went on a nationwide speaking tour by train. But in early 1919 he suffered a massive stroke that nearly killed him. He was not able to return to work for months (his second wife and staff kept the news from the public, and his wife was in many ways the "acting President" during this period). Wilson never regained the full use of his body or speech, and Lodge and his allies were able to easily defeat the League. An invalid, Wilson died in 1924 after predicting that the US would pay a huge price for its' failure to join the League, which was proven true when the League proved to be powerless to stop Hitler's rise to power in the 1930's. Heckscher eloquently lays out the details of Wilson's life. However, the book fails to turn up any original or new insights into Wilson's life and character that previous biographies have not already discussed. Additionally, Heckscher leaves out another dark side of Wilson's life - his strong racist beliefs regarding blacks. Wilson's low opinion of African-Americans has been an ugly blot on his Presidency that many historians chose to ignore until the last 20 years or so, and Heckscher would have been well-advised to at least mention in some detail this flaw in his character. Nevertheless, this is still an excellent and detailed account of a high-minded, well-meaning, but ultimately tragic President. Recommended!

No comments about Images of Greatness: An Intimate Look at the Presidency of Ronald Reagan.

5 comments about Jefferson and the Rights of Man (Jefferson & His Time (University of Virginia Press)).

1. This book is the second volume in Dumas Malone's six volume biography called "Jefferson and His Time". In the introduction Mr. Malone explains that, although he originally planned to cover Jefferson's life from the end of the Revolution and his appointment as Minister to France through the beginning of Jefferson's presidency as part of an originally projected 4 volume work, the depth of material required him to split this into two volumes.
   
   From the outset his decision to expand his work into an extra volume (as he would also later do with the period covering Jefferson's presidency) seemed as it might be an unwelcome one. Mr. Malone's straightforward prose, that I enjoyed and appreciated in the fist volume, was replaced with a more scholarly and cumbersome style. Especially during the first half of the book, covering Mr. Jefferson's time in France, Mr. Malone's excessive and often redundant analysis at times made me feel like a hamster in a wheel. Part of the issue seems to stem from Mr. Malone's decision to abandon the chronological flow of the first volume for topic themed chapters with considerable chronological overlap. While this does serve to organize related information, it also leads to much of the redundancy mentioned earlier.
   
   Luckily the second half of the volume, covering Mr. Jefferson's tenure as Secretary of State under George Washington's first term and the beginnings of his political rivalry with Alexander Hamilton, comes into much more distinct focus, and is very enjoyable.
   
   I do not doubt that this volume is as Mr. Malone intended, although for me it was not as enjoyable to read as the first, and regardless of the intent of the author or the strength of the material presented, is the most important factor in making my recommendation. More specifically, the first half of the book would receive 3 stars and the second half the full 5.



2. The book primarily focuses on Jeferson's political career, namely secretary of state, starting with the formation of the presidency (1788). The book sometimes focuses too much on the political front, and less on Jeferson's personal life and character.



3. Thomas Jefferson was no Satan. But, I will implore all the fanatics and sycophants who revere him as a 'man of justice and freedom' to wake-up from their slumber. Don't let the world laugh at your ignorance!
   Mr Jefferson was by every means a slave-holder. Thus, this idea of linking his name to the Rights of Man is a contradiction.
   If Dumas Malone must continue on this track, then he should mention the names of John Adams, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Abraham Lincoln, and we shall listen to him. Thomas Jefferson does not fit in this realm. He doesn't belong here! But, I am not really surprised. This book was published in 1951: at the peak of Color-Bar.



4. What can be said about this monument to Jefferson scholarship? I am sure that somewhere in universities around the United States there are "scholar squirrels who want to put down this invaluable resource in Jefferson studies. It is always the way that mice attempt to gnaw at lions. This is not a perfect work (and my remarks refer to all of the books in the series as a whole), there are somethings, namely Sally Hemmings references which are wrong and will not sit well with American 21st century mores. There is the issue of slavery which was handled much differently 50 years ago than it is now.
   Jefferson is not worthy of our interest because of Sally Hemmings and because he kept slaves. Jefferson is great because of the Declaration of Independence and his fight for the rights of man. While it may have been hypocritical to preach liberty and keep slaves, it is doubtful that slavery ever would have been abolished if Jefferson had never gained the prominence that he did. This book and the others that follow show why we should continue to honor the public man even though his private side may have been wanting.



5. Jefferson and the Rights of Man written by Dumas Malone is the second installment of a six part biography of Thomas Jefferson. As the first volume Jefferson: The Virginian was in the time frame of (1743 - 1784), this volume takes us from where the first volume ended in Jefferson's life, to the end of Washington's first term as President of the United States and his subsequent unanimous re-election, (1784 - 1792).

   Jefferson's European mission starts off this volume, concluding with his service as the United States's first Secretary of State under George Washington. But, in between we see Jefferson laying the seeds of his philosophy and the implication regarded as timeless and universal.

   George Washington's first term was a proving ground for Jefferson to get his views across to Washington, but Washington has Hamilton and there in lies the rub. As political parties were in their infancy, the time was ripe for a political view points to be exploited and Hamilton was up to task. So, naturally Jefferson had a different view point and was voicing his opinion to Washington.

   Jefferson in this period of time was primarily concerned with foreign affairs which kept him busy as Great Britain was being pulled into a European war. But the "war" between Jefferson and Hamilton was just begining. Jefferson was well aware of the implicit dangers in the political and economic situation, but Enlightenment was budding and thus, begining to give proof of his undying faith, that men and society can be saved by means of knowledge.

   This period in Jefferson's life is the richest with regards to private friendships and will lay the bricks to the foundation to the rest of his life. As Jefferson begins his battle with the Federalists, Hamilton is his primary opposition.