My son Chris sends that passage from "Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream" (by Doris Kearns Godwin (commission earned)).
Chris is reading biographies of all the U.S. Presidents, as you may remember from earlier posts. Someone emailed asking for a list of all the books in that project, and, though I don't do everything you might ask, I did do this.
Then, I gave the photo to Grok to transform into a written list of the books. It did a pretty good job but there were at least 10 mistakes, so I went through everything to get the titles and authors straight. Here it is!
- Washington: A Life — Ron Chernow
- John Adams — David McCullough
- Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power — Jon Meacham
- The Three Lives of James Madison — Noah Feldman
- James Monroe — Tim McGrath
- John Quincy Adams — James Traub
- The Life of Andrew Jackson, Vol. 1: Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 1767–1821 — Robert V. Remini
- The Life of Andrew Jackson, Vol. 2: Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, 1822–1832 — Robert V. Remini
- The Life of Andrew Jackson, Vol. 3: Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1833–1845 — Robert V. Remini
- American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House — Jon Meacham
- Andrew Jackson — H.W. Brands
- Martin Van Buren — Bradley
- William Henry Harrison — Gail Collins
- President without a Party: The Life of John Tyler — Christopher J. Leahy
- A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Maverick Who Changed the Presidency and America — Robert W. Merry
- Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America — Walter R. Borneman
- Zachary Taylor — John S. D. Eisenhower
- Millard Fillmore — Robert J. Rayback
- Franklin Pierce: New Hampshire’s Favorite Son — Peter A. Wallner
- Franklin Pierce: Martyr for the Union — Peter A. Wallner
- Franklin Pierce — Michael F. Holt
- President James Buchanan — Philip S. Klein
- James Buchanan and the Coming of the Civil War — John Quist and Michael J. Birkner
- Lincoln — David Herbert Donald
- Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 1 — Michael Burlingame
- Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 2 — Michael Burlingame
- Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln — Doris Kearns Goodwin
- Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy — David O. Stewart
- Grant — Ron Chernow
- Rutherford B. Hayes — Ari Hoogenboom
- Rutherford B. Hayes — Hans Trefousse
- President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier — C. W. Goodyear
- Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President — Candice Millard
- Chester A. Arthur — Thomas C. Reeves
- A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland — Troy Senik
- Benjamin Harrison — Charles W. Calhoun
- The President and the Assassin — Scott Miller
- The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt — Edmund Morris
- Theodore Rex — Edmund Morris
- Colonel Roosevelt — Edmund Morris
- The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey — Candice Millard
- The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism — Doris Kearns Goodwin
- Woodrow Wilson: A Biography — John Milton Cooper Jr.
- Wilson — A. Scott Berg
- Warren G. Harding — John W. Dean
- My Search for Warren G. Harding — Robert Plunkett
- The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge
- Coolidge — Amity Shlaes
- Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times — Kenneth Whyte
- Herbert Hoover in the White House — Charles Rappleye
- FDR — Jean Edward Smith
- No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II — Doris Kearns Goodwin
- Truman — David McCullough
- Eisenhower: In War and Peace — Jean Edward Smith
- The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s — William I. Hitchcock
- JFK 1917-1956 — Fredrik Logevall
- President Kennedy – Richard Reeves
- Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream — Doris Kearns Godwin
- The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson — Robert A. Caro
- Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson — Robert A. C
- Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson — Robert A. Caro
- The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson — Robert A. Caro
- President Nixon: Alone in the White House — Richard Reeves
- Richard Nixon — John A. Farrell
- An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford — Richard Norton Smith
- The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter — Kai Bird
- Reagan — Bob Spitz
- What It Takes: The Way to the White House — Richard Ben Cramer
- Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush — Jon Meacham
- First in His Class: The Biography of Bill Clinton — David Maraniss
- The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House — John F. Harris
- Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House — Peter Baker
- A Promised Land — Barack Obama
- Confidence Man:The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America — Maggie Haberman
- War — Bob Woodward
- Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again — Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson
I didn't put Amazon links on everything, but here's the "Althouse portal" to Amazon if you ever want to support this blog by causing Amazon to send me a commission.
पोस्ट्स
७७ टिप्पण्या:
“Swimming with LBJ.”
I’d rather drown. Even if he didn’t kill JFK that pig would still be hands down our worst president ever.
The book focused on the Garfield murder was wonderful. All the Carl very good as was Theodore Rex. Am reading the Hoover book now and it is excellent. Calvin Coolidge served two terms: who knew?
Not Carl but Caro Not craw but claw
“Calvin Coolidge served two terms: who knew?”
And that’s the way it should be.
I wonder what you would get if you asked Grok to summarize all those book in one paragraph, or ask for it's main take away from them all.
I thought 2, 27, 33, 35, 48, and 53 were all extraordinary.
I think that they call a man like LBJ a "bankwalker." Of course the term has been appropriated so many times, it's hard to find the original meaning on line.
A fair number of our Presidents have inspired a fair number of very good books. I guess Carl Sandburg's Lincoln and Schlesinger's Jackson have fallen from the canon. I bet someone will soon write a really nasty, down and dirty bio of Wilson. I read the Meacham bio of Jackson. He wasn't so enamored of his subjects as many of Jackson's earlier biographers........I wonder what inspires someone to do all the research to write a thorough bio of Millard Fillmore. There's no way you're ever going to make the charts or sell the movie rights.
.
A fair number of our Presidents have inspired a fair number of very good books. I guess Carl Sandburg's Lincoln and Schlesinger's Jackson have fallen from the canon. I bet someone will soon write a really nasty, down and dirty bio of Wilson. I read the Meacham bio of Jackson. He wasn't so enamored of his subjects as many of Jackson's earlier biographers........I wonder what inspires someone to do all the research to write a thorough bio of Millard Fillmore. There's no way you're ever going to make the charts or sell the movie rights.
.
If you do a book on Biden you will need to hire a good translator, but I don't know what language that was.
Lots of LBJ stories. Humphrey would be summoned down to Texas, and would arrive in business attire. We're going hunting, which HHH loathed. Canada's PM Pearson had won the Nobel Peace Prize in the 1950s. Invited to give a talk at a U.S. campus. Mentions that U.S. should halt the bombing in Vietnam, if only temporarily. Urgent summons to WH, finally in a small circle of advisors. LBJ picks him up by shirt front. "You pissed on my rug."
Chris needs to find some better gay porn than reading about decades old LBJ pool parties..
Try gay.com chat rooms.
Real people, not decaying old men to enjoy...
Larry and Chris need to hook up, mama...
bagoh2o,
> I wonder what you would get if you asked Grok
>... for it's main take away from them all.
Easy:
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power to corrupt absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."
For some reason that second sentence from Lord Acton gets left off of most quotes.
Why give Jake Tapper any money? Bob Woodward?
Shitty list
What inspires an author to invest a chunk of their career writing a book on Millard Fillmore or Chester A. Arthur?
Rumors about Lyndon and Doris circulated back in the day. True? False? Who knows?
Carl Sandburg's Lincoln is now regarded as mythic or legendary (like the stories about LBJ and DKG?) rather than factual.
Schlesinger Jr.'s Age of Jackson didn't even mention the Trail of Tears, save for a few cryptic lines about a Georgia missionaries case (or something like that) possibly in a footnote.
John Dean grew up in Harding's hometown and may even have served as a paperboy for the newspaper Harding edited. Still, I think I'll pass on his bio.
More than a third of the authors on the list are intensely on the left politically - Richard Reeves? Please - making much of their volumes deeply suspect. Caro is the most intriguing author of them all on the list.
They would have a ball swimming in the room with a pool.
LBJ was a complete lunatic. Ladybird seemed like a sweet lady. I never understood what she saw in him.
I've heard participants were much more enthusiastic about JFK's swimming parties.
I know a person who, when he was a. boy, caddied for Richard Nixon at a tournament in Miami. He said that Nixon wore oxfords, and only played golf when the cameras were around.
Doris Kearns Goodwin: the Plagiarizer Historian
Why are politics so full of bully-able people?
https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5LWNvcHk_6721ffbd-b144-4805-b65e-c4eca6d02736
Grok 1 paragraph summary of each of the books; Grok read them so you don't have to!
I am sure the Trump books are completely level-headed and sober examinings of his tenure.
and bullies, don't forget. People that can't stand bullies and won't put up with them, don't stick around, that's mostly why.
Ladybird was the iron fist in the velvet glove. She came from money, as I recall, and knew what control was. They made quite an empire together - with the assets in her name.
This one was funny:
46. My Search for Warren G. Harding — Robert Plunkett
This is a comic novel (1983), not a biography. A hapless researcher chasing Harding papers and rumored love letters in Ohio stumbles through farce, sex, and archival obsession. It is a satire of biographical hunger, not a study of the twenty-ninth president.
He does have a legitimate biography of Warren Harding as well.
I could probably ask Grok to cycle. through each of Althouse's posts and find the one where she avers that the word "grok" irritates her. I am sure it was pre Grok, and was based on the use of the original Heinlein invented word by commenters here.
Speaking of pool rooms, the Whitehouse desperately needs a billiard table.
"65. An Ordinary Man — Richard Norton Smith
Smith’s large Ford biography argues that the un-elected president’s very ordinariness—decency, legislative craft, the Nixon pardon as a wound he chose—was the point of the mid-1970s restoration. It is the fullest life of Ford we have."
Ford was able to project "decency," that's for sure. Ford was rewarded with the presidency for his work on the Warren Commission that proved that a "magic bullet" killed JFK, and he pardoned Nixon to keep the fact that Nixon was deposed by the same deep state that facilitated the assassination of JFK, from coming out at trial, where Nixon would have a lot of power of discovery—IMHO.
David McCullough's John Adams is wonderful. A true history of the birth of America. And Abigail and John's correspondence is the core.
"Speaking of pool rooms, the Whitehouse desperately needs a billiard table."
When they finish the ballroom...
"What inspires an author to invest a chunk of their career writing a book on Millard Fillmore or Chester A. Arthur?"
To be outstanding in one's field. Alone.
The ancient Greeks exercised in the nude partly to discourage flab. Johnson just wanted to show off his johnson. How much of the modern Texan ethos began with or was enhanced by him?
Richard Norton Smith was all over CSPAN in the 90s, as DKG was on PBS. He had a quest to visit every presidential grave & birthplace, IIRC, and ended up the Librarian for several of them. CSPAN turned it into a series.
I've read the John Adams, Jefferson, Grant, and Lincoln bios on the list, all good. I read a different bio of Washington (Flexner, the one-volume version), also good. You could not pay me to read Haberman's book on Trump. And in any case, the Trump story is ongoing.
I'd never heard of Spitz's bio of Reagan, but it sounds like it might be ok. But I'm less interested in reading about those who were President in my lifetime. Madison, Monroe, JQ Adams, and Jackson are next on my list.
Boatbuilder: “ Abigail and John's correspondence is the core.”
Saltpeter, John. Pins, Abigail.
CC, JSM
Wow an impressive book shelf. But remember - paperbacks are for losers. Closers get hardcover.
JFK used to have sex pool parties. Even Arthur Schlessinger got laid. God, what a female white house aid had to do back in those days. Talk about "above and beyond the call of duty".
…funny how LBJ never earned the ‘unpresidential’ label. I suppose it is his part political party and part there were no mean tweets bitd…
LBJ was FDR without the class. He was just a raw-boned barbarian from the Texas frontier who got a veneer of civilization and then got shipped off to DC.
My apolitical mother always hated him. Partly for the Vietnam war, and partly because he showed his surgery scar on TV and held up his dog by his ears. "No class" was her verdict.
Hard for someone like her, who'd grown up on sanitized images of FDR, Ike, Truman, and JFK to accept a Cornporn vulgarian like johnson as POTUS.
…there’s always been groupies. The craziest ones you would never pick out in a crowd. Guess its exciting…
Had FDR not be constrained by the morality of the day, God knows what he would've done. Probably divorced Eleanor for one. Whether he would've had covert sex pool parties is anyone's guess.
…ah cornpone. don’t google the other…
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a good biography of Franklin Pierce, who was a classmate and friend. When you're finished, you know why he was elected and why he wasn't much and you like him anyhow.
I recall reading at the time that picking up beagle puppies by their ears is NOT cruelty to animals, that their own mothers pick them up by the ears with their teeth and carry them around. Any beagle-owners care to comment?
So LBJ enjoyed pool orgies with his male advisors.
The Best & The Brightest
I forget who it was, but some wise man once observed that it would be an exaggeration to say that "the Best and the Brightest" were actually the Worst and the Stupidest, but it would be closer to the truth.
Woodrow Wilson was a racist who started the downfall of the country. FDR was a slick rich conman who accelerated the decline. But LBJ was a sneaky smart evil bastard who ruined the country by his cynical fake "war on poverty" but also my life by making a decade of it where every decision I made was in light of my draft status. I hope he is in one of the lower rings of hell.
"LBJ picks him up by shirt front. "You pissed on my rug.""
That war really tied the room together.
Sounds like Wilson, FDR and LBJ are directly responsible for making RJ a crybaby
You don't write the Fillmore or Arthur bio to earn money but to pad your academic resume in a bid for tenure. I wonder if being chosen to write a volume for the American Presidents series is being invited to join the club. Do the writers get together and network?
So there's a reason for writing the books. Why you'd want to read three biographies of Franklin Pierce, though, is still a mystery.
LBJ had no inhibitions about the body and its functions. I wonder why he wasn't more popular with the hippie generation.
Reading about Pierce is probably the most depressing. Guy should have just stayed home.
Do books #51 and #52 acknowledge that FDR’s capricious policies extended the a depression by at least 7 years? Do either #54 or #55 explain why Eisenhower repeatedly undercut his Vice President during the 1960 election. I was in high school at the time and I came away with the impression that Ike preferred John Kennedy.
Woodrow Wilson was a racist who started the downfall of the country. LOL.
Yeah, Wilson's being a "raciss" was the worstest thing ever. Unlike FDR or pretty much any POTUS prior to Truman.
I have read that when Wilson was elected, the U.S. Navy was 20% black, including 10% of the officers, and when he left office the only non-whites were a few menials, like the Filipino stewards who traditional did (maybe still do?) a lot of the cooking and cleaning on Navy ships. Also that Mrs. Wilson visited the main Post Office in D.C., which occupired an entire block, and saw black men and white women working together in the same space. She told Woodrow to put a stop to that, and he did. And that's just fine with RCOCEAN II.
So let's see: the worst presidents are probably, in order, Buchanan, Woodrow Wilson, Joe Biden, Jimmy Carter, then FDR and then Bill Clinton. The best are clearly Washington and lincoln and Coolidge, Reagan, Polk, Trump, Eisenhower, Grant and Harding. And oddly, Grover Cleveland. Oh, can't forget Jefferson and Adams.
#37 must be on McKinley; Robert Merry wrote one also, which I enjoyed.
Lazarus is correct about tenure as motivator. I'm surprised it wasn't brought up sooner.
Also: Woodrow Wilson is the best reason why the democrats claim of "the parties switched in the 60s and 70s! That's why you can't blame us for slavery and racism!" is utter bollocks. If the parties truly "switched" the modern Democrat party would be relentless in their disavowment and attacks on Wilson, one of if not the most racist president ever. But he's still a Democrat party hero. He's the most fascist president we ever had; the creator of the Administrative State, and the most racist president. He's a true Democrat. Oh, and he is Jill Biden's favorite because Woodrow let his wife run the presidency too.
I've lived literally next door to the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library for over 18 years now. I used to be able to say that I'd never set foot inside, but I did go into the ticket-sales and gift shop area once to ask them to tell their buildings-and-grounds guy he had tent caterpillars in his black walnuts and needed to take care of them before they spread to the neighbors' yards, like mine. (They were all on the lower branches, so stepladders sufficed: once they get into the higher branches, you have to hire a cherry-picker at 20 times the price.) I've still never seen any of the exhibits, except Wilson's 1919 Pierce Arrow limousine, which anyone can see through the picture window without paying. It's a handsome car.
@Dr. Weevil--no way that 10% of USN officers were black before Wilson. Petty officers maybe, but even that seems like a stretch to me.
Nixon glumly observed that history is written by historians. It's true that for the most part they have a liberal bias, but liberal biases are subject to change. The reputations of some heavyweight Democrat Presidents have recently taken a fall: Jefferson, Jackson, Wilson ain't what they used to be. Truman is the only Democratic President I can recall whose reputation has grown over the years.......On the other hand, Grant's and Eisenhower's reputations have gone up considerably........The best historians have a good story to tell. Jackson will always have a great story and historians will want to tell it. LBJ and JFK will always be more interesting than Nixon and Ford......Sometimes mediocre is the better choice though. I think there's a good chance Taft might have been a better choice than either TR or Wilson, but he's not the kind of Prez you want to read about.
History is very important and I love exploring it, but it’s a different country. It’s something we lose touch with once we can’t talk to anyone who was there.
Didn't Biden also like to swim in the nude in front of his Secret Service people (both men and women)?
Biden was the lifeguard when LBJ and his Top Men were checking out each other wieners poolside.
They would all dry their dicks off on Biden’s leg hairs.
Presidents weild immense power, and I rate them on what they do with their power, not what they think about certain groups. Who cares if Wilson was a "raciss"? The important thing is he got us into WW 1, fought it a certain way, and then helped negotiate the terrible Versailles treaty and wanted us involved in the League of Nations.
That LBJ was a disgusting vulgarian, is frankly irrelevant next to his getting into Vietnam and not knowing how to get us out, his out of control spending, and social liberalism. 30,000 dead GIs and Marines are more important then swimming naked or picking up his dogs by the ears.
3 books on Franklin Pierce - that must be a record. And say what you want about TR - he made good copy.
More Americans died in war in Lincoln's 4 years than in all others combined, half the country was in ruins, and tens of thousands starved afterwards. Does that make him a great president? Greatness would have been avoiding most of that somehow. He won the war, but his election also precipitated secession. His call for troops made VA & NC secede, and they provided much of the Confederacy's money and men.
Netflix has a surprisingly good adaptation of book 33: Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President — Candice Millard . . . 4-part series called "Death by Lightning." James Garfield was apparently an exceptional man and promising president before shot down by a lunatic. And he inspired Garfield, who had been a hack VP to strive toward greatness himself.
Your son should add Victor Davis Hanson's new book: The Counterrevolution: The Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement
"3 books on Franklin Pierce - that must be a record."
I think 2 of them are a 2-part set.
I have a book on Franklin Pierce in my Kindle but didn't convince Chris to include it. It's this written by his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne.
President-Vice President relations have always been fraught with difficulties. Presidents feel the need to continually make clear that they are top dogs and the vice presidents resent it. Sometimes, presidents do almost wish their successor came from the other party -- it's a way of eliminating a rival.
Eisenhower regretted the slighting remark he made about Nixon (when asked which of Nixon's ideas he had adopted, he responded, "If you give me a week, I might think of one. I don’t remember"). His response may have been instinctual and emotional and hard to rein in.
Actually, though, Kennedy and the press took Ike's remark out of a context that modified and mitigated it. Ike's snappishness may have been more about the reporter than a reflection of his more considered thoughts about Nixon. Or he might well have been captivated by the (real or invented) Kennedy charisma, as so much of the country was.
In 1860, Southerners had Lincoln Derangement Syndrome. Would we fault Trump if the Democrat states decided to secede when he was elected?
Wilson was a racist in a way that subsequent presidents who've been accused of being racist haven't been. Was he more racist than earlier presidents had been? Well, he did more about it than those immediately preceding him did.
The Wikipedia article "Golden Thirteen" is pretty good on the subject of black naval officers.
It was a racist country, north, south, east, and west. See James Loewen's "Sundown Towns" for details.
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