best biographies us presidents

My Journey Through the Best Presidential Biographies

Review of “The Trials of Harry S. Truman” by Jeffrey Frank

Published in 2022, Jeffrey Frank’s “The Trials of Harry S. Truman: The Extraordinary Presidency of an Ordinary Man, 1945-1953” offers …

Review of “An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford” by Richard Norton Smith

Published earlier this year, Richard Norton Smith’s long-anticipated biography of Gerald Ford is a valuable addition to the small collection …

Unrelated Reading: “Elon Musk” by Walter Isaacson

Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson 688 pages Simon & Schuster Published: Sept 2023 Despite my bias against biographies of people …

Review of “And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle” by Jon Meacham

Published last fall, “And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle” is Jon Meacham’s review of the 16th …

Review of “The Jeffersonians: The Visionary Presidencies of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe” by Kevin Gutzman

Published two months ago, “The Jeffersonians: The Visionary Presidencies of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe” is Kevin Gutzman’s most recent book. …

It’s the 10-Year Anniversary Post!

It’s hard to believe, but 10 years have elapsed since I embarked on what I thought would be a modestly …

Review of “His Masterly Pen: A Biography of Jefferson the Writer” by Fred Kaplan

Fred Kaplan’s literary exploration “His Masterly Pen: A Biography of Jefferson the Writer” was published two weeks ago. Kaplan is …

Review of “The Jazz Age President: Defending Warren G. Harding” by Ryan S. Walters

“The Jazz Age President: Defending Warren G. Harding” is Ryan Walters’s new biography of the 29th president. Walters is adjunct …

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BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

The Best Presidential Biographies For History Buffs

Dig into 46 top-notch biographies—one for each American president.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

The office of the American presidency is one of the most storied in history, equaling that of older monarchies in both richness and scope. For nearly 250 years, the residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have inspired admiration, provoked outrage—and everything in between—both at home and abroad.

In light of the current political climate, we're interested in our nation's leaders more than ever. In these uncertain times, perhaps the best way to understand our future is to first understand our past—and how we got here. Whether you're a history buff or simply a curious reader, you can find valuable insight in the best presidential biographies. With their comprehensiveness and readability, they'll be the literary torchlights for your journey through history.

Related: The Best Biographies and Memoirs for Every Kind of Reader

1) George Washington

By James Thomas Flexner

Flexner’s award-winning multivolume series humanizes a man who has reached almost mythic status in the American psyche. His nimble and dramatic prose paints a complex portrait of a novice who set the standard, a conflicted man of unshakeable purpose, who made his mark in history as few ever have.

2) John Adams

By David McCullough

McCullough has made a name for himself as an epic chronicler of great lives, and he lives up to his reputation in this magisterial biography of Adams, the Founding Father who could never quite escape the shadow of the man who preceded him. From his surprising role in the Boston Massacre to inaugurating the vice presidency, America’s second president had a first row seat to its birth and trial by fire, here told by McCullough with all the depth and sweep befitting.

3) Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

By Jon Meacham

Remembered as much for his philosophy as his politics, Jefferson is a fitting subject for the cerebrally-minded Meacham, who here weaves the story of a complicated polymath who Declared Independence and Purchased Louisiana, shaping his country in ways literal and figurative.

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4) James Madison

James Madison: A Life Reconsidered

By Lynne Cheney

The wife of former wartime VP Dick Cheney, Lynne observes the life of the first wartime president of what was now officially the United States of America. Briskly-paced and heavily researched, the author nimbly guides readers through Madison’s tumults and triumphs, from authoring the Constitution to seeing the White House burned down.

5) James Monroe

The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness

By Harlow Giles Unger

As Monroe shepherded the United States through a period where it began to assert itself as a regional power, Unger shepherds his audience through this riveting account of a transitional phase in American history and the key founding figure who charted its new course.

6) John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams: American Visionary,

The son of John and Abigail Adams, John Quincy Adams’ presidency might be of particular interest given our most recent election, as he was both America’s first Commander-in-Chief to run as part of a familial dynasty, and its first to win an election despite losing the popular vote. In this illuminating biography, Fred Kaplan reevaluates the life of this son of American royalty, making a case for why he was a more consequential president than often given credit for.

7) Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times

By H.W. Brands

Praised and reviled, but never ignored, Jackson was an American original, and Brands does him due service in this meticulously researched recounting of his life. From an orphanage to the Oval Office, from his battles with bankers to the Trail of Tears, Jackson and his outsized persona of a “tough guy” fighting on behalf of the common man against a “corrupt establishment” are as relevant today as they have ever been.

8) Martin Van Buren

Martin Van Buren

By Ted Widmer

An early sign of Americans’ tendency to follow up two-term presidents with their opposites, Martin Van Buren was everything Andrew Jackson was not: polished, deliberate, multilingual and politically groomed. Clinton White House veteran Ted Widmer is an appropriate choice to look back on the life and career of this most accomplished of figures, who nonetheless found himself under siege from all sides once he reached the peak.

9) William Henry Harrison

Old Tippecanoe: William Henry Harrison and His Time

By Freeman Cleaves

America’s shortest-serving president had a nonetheless fascinating life, done justice here by Freeman Cleaves. Running apolitically on his credentials as a war hero, Harrison helped set the modern template for a personally popular “non-ideological” figure to campaign for high office as a “problem solver.” His untimely death only a month into his term has rendered him somewhat of an enigma among presidents, and Cleaves explores this fertile ground with a historian’s eye and a writer’s flourish.

10) John Tyler

By Gary May

Dubbed “His Accidency” by his detractors in Congress, then-Vice President John Tyler became the first American to assume the presidency without ever being elected to that office, quickly seizing power amidst constitutional uncertainty. Noted secret government historian Gary May plumbs the depths of history to detail the hushed negotiations and go-it-alone diplomacy of this renegade president who circumvented congress in an effort to bring Texas into the Union.

11) James K. Polk

Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America

By Walter R. Borneman

Few presidents have seen their political careers careen from low to high as often as Polk, who went from Speaker of the House to a twice-defeated gubernatorial candidate before ending up in the highest office in the land. Not often remembered in accordance with his impact, Borneman leaves no stone unturned in this revealing portrait of a man whose work culminated in sweeping victory in the Mexican-American War.

12) Zachary Taylor

Zachary Taylor: Soldier, Planter, Statesman of the Old Southwest

By K. Jack Bauer

Bauer delves deep into the mind of the enigmatic 12th president, who could confound those around him with positions that defied his origins. An anti-slavery southerner who nonetheless himself held slaves, Taylor vied to use the force of his war hero status to hold the Union together in a time of impending civil war, only be to felled by disease in the second year of his presidency.

13) Millard Fillmore

Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President

By Robert J. Rayback

Fillmore was the last president to come out of the Whig Party, which, while having long since faded into history, was a major force in American politics for decades. Rayback deftly weaves together the life of President Fillmore, the party’s last contribution to America’s highest office, with the looming theme of political upheaval that gripped the country in the years before the Civil War.

14) Franklin Pierce

Franklin Pierce: New Hampshire’s Favorite Son and Franklin Pierce: Martyr for the Union

By Peter A. Wallner

Even the worst of presidents can make for fascinating subject matter, and Pierce is frequently ranked near the bottom by presidential historians. In his two-volume biography Peter Wallner gamely makes an effort to rehabilitate his subject’s military career from longtime charges of cowardice, and he starkly illuminates the political circumstances and personal failures that Pierce struggled with as the nation drifted ever-further toward a rupture point.

15) James Buchanan

President James Buchanan: A Biography

By Philip S. Klein

Another poorly-ranked president is given his day in Philip Klein’s account of backroom dealings and proverbial smoke-filled rooms as he illustrates that Buchanan’s “political animal” nature blinded him to the necessity of turning down the heat in a culture war that was rapidly reaching a boil. Supporting the expansion of slave territory and the infamous Dredd Scott decision because he believed they helped his political brand, Buchanan’s quest for personal glory in his single term would visit fateful consequences upon his nation for decades to come.

16) Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln Reconsidered

By David Herbert Donald

From humble beginnings to Mount Rushmore, few lives are as quintessentially American as that of the 16th president. Amongst the countless books on Lincoln’s life, Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Herbert Donald’s stands out for its sheer sweep – this is at once a grand historical epic and a personal tale of inspiration and tragedy. Readers will come away with an appreciation not just for Lincoln’s wartime leadership but for the struggles he endured at home, even as the very idea of the United States itself hung in the balance.

RELATED: 10 Civil War Books That Inform and Entertain

17) Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson

By Hans L. Trefousse

It is no coincidence that some of the worst-remembered presidents are those who immediately preceded and followed Honest Abe; standing next to a giant, anyone could look small. But Johnson holds the distinction of being one of only two American presidents to ever be impeached, andstep-by-step, Hans Trefousse lays out how the out-of-his-element Johnson was both overridden by Congress and overwhelmed by the job.

18) Ulysses S. Grant

Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

By Ulysses Grant

A military memoir is a proper vehicle for a figure revered less for his presidency and more for his battlefield heroics. With this account of his time in the Mexican-American War and his successful leadership of the Union Army to victory in the Civil War, Grant shows himself to be a compelling writer in his own right. Crisp and to-the-point prose offers an inside look at battle strategy like few other sources, and Grant’s personal insights into each wars’ merits make for an intriguing read.

RELATED: True Stories About America's Military Heroes

19) Rutherford B. Hayes

Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior and President

By Ari Hoogenboom

Hayes reasserted presidential power after Congress had taken charge during the two prior presidencies, and for this Ari Hoogenboom makes his case to reassert Hayes’ position in the presidential canon. Though often seen as ineffectual, Hoogenboom recontextualizes his subject’s accomplishments in light of how far the powers of the presidency had fallen, and compellingly relates Hayes’ personal push for progressive policies on a host of issues from public education to prison reform.

20) James A. Garfield

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President

By Candice Millard

The title of this account of Garfield’s life conjures images of plot and intrigue in the mind of the reader. So it should, for Candice Millard has written a biography that often reads like a thriller, breathless as it is in retelling the story of a man who rose from poverty to prominence, only to be felled by an assassin’s bullet less than a year after his election. But the bullet itself is only part of the plot–Millard then leads us through a whirlwind of experimental treatments and medical malpractice, as the last days of the president’s life play out like an episode of ER.

21) Chester A. Arthur

Gentleman Boss: The Life of Chester Alan Arthur

By Thomas C. Reeves

Arthur’s presidency was memorable for its quiet confidence, and Arthur himself for vastly surpassing expectations. Thomas Reeves charts the court of a man of limited ambition who was suddenly thrust into power and had to sink or swim. Under his steady leadership the United States suffered no major crises, and upon his retirement he was lauded in a bipartisan way that is almost impossible to imagine today.

22) Grover Cleveland

The Forgotten Conservative: Rediscovering Grover Cleveland

By John Pafford

Most famous for being the only president to be elected on non-consecutive occasions, John Pafford’s work reminds us that Grover Cleveland was much more than a historical anomaly. Cleveland felt a strong calling to “try to do right,” and in his first term he took on political corruption and nepotism in a way many would say is sorely needed in modern America.

23) Benjamin Harrison

Benjamin Harrison

By Charles W. Calhoun

Interrupting the presidencies of the popular Grover Cleveland (who actually defeated him in the popular vote), Benjamin Harrison was a political savant. Calhoun skillfully lays out how this grandson of America’s 9th president played the system like a fiddle, ousting the more popular Cleveland in an electoral college landslide, and then worked with congress to accomplish much in their limited time with Republican control, including passing the crucial Sherman Antitrust Act that established the baseline with which we break-up monopolies to this day.

24) Grover Cleveland

An Honest President: The Life and Times of Grover Cleveland

By H.P. Jeffers

Everything old was new again as Grover Cleveland reassumed the presidency after a four year absence. He picked up where he left off in his crusade for justice and honesty in political life, and it is this quality of integrity that H.P. Jeffers returns to again and again in this biography, which takes the more personal path of examining how Cleveland’s character shaped his presidency.

25) William McKinley

The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century

By Scott Miller

Miller’s expansive account of the 25th president’s life reads almost like a romance-era thriller. McKinley is both a swashbuckling figure, instigating and achieving sweeping victory for America in the Spanish American War, and a tragic one, cut down shortly after winning reelection. Miller weaves into this epic the story of his assassin, Leon Czolgosz, a large figure in his own right in anarchist history.

26) Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt Series

By Edmund Morris

Selected in its entirety by the Modern Library as one of the Best 100 Nonfiction Books of All Time, Morris’ three-volume look at “Teddy’s” life is, like its subject, the stuff of legend. Combining the accuracy of a historical detective with the literary verve of a master dramatist, Morris cruises through the extraordinary life of this politician, progressive, adventurer, explorer and, of course, president.

27) William Howard Taft

The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism

By Doris Kearns Goodwin

In the crowded field of presidential historians, Doris Kearns Goodwin is in a category all her own. Here she sets her subject’s presidency on not just his own terms, but as part of a titanic battle for the very soul of America, as Taft wages a brutal political war against his one-time friend Theodore Roosevelt. At issue was the widening wealth gap, corporate resistance to regulation, and a muckraking press. Readers need not be forgiven for seeing resemblances to their own time.

28) Woodrow Wilson

By A. Scott Berg

For this comprehensive look at one of the most consequential presidents America has ever seen, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Berg was the first to gain access to many primary source documents related to Wilson’s life. Those documents help Berg take readers on a breathless ride through the birth of America as an international power, as Wilson guides the nation through the pivotal role it played in what was a war unlike any seen in human history to that point in time.

29) Warren G. Harding

Warren G. Harding

By John W. Dean and Arthur M. Schlesinger

This unique writing pair (Schlesinger a revered historian and public intellectual, Dean an infamous figure from the Watergate-era Nixon White House) combine to offer a clear and concise look at the breakdown of a president’s public image. Popular upon his death, Warren Harding’s reputation took a posthumous plummet when the tawdry details of both his political and private activities became public. Few know about such things at the presidential level as well as Dean.

30) Calvin Coolidge

By Amity Shlaes

Shlaes gives us an even-handed look at the controversial Coolidge. Viewed by some as an upstanding champion of up-by-your-bootstraps Americanism, and by others as a cold-hearted worshipper of capital; whichever side of the debate you may fall on (or if this is your first forage into it) Coolidge remains an intriguing figure, as Shlaes’ New York Times bestseller here proves.

31) Herbert Hoover

Herbert Hoover in the White House: The Ordeal of the Presidency

By Charles Rappleye

A successful businessman who presided over the worst economic crisis in American history, Hoover is somewhat of an enigma. Charles Rappleye gamely dives into the life and mind of this complicated figure, who was both ambitious and timid, personally optimistic and publicly dour, and dismissed as “CEO” by American shareholders after only a single term.

32) Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox

By James MacGregor Burns

An epic presidency (Roosevelt remains the only man ever elected to the office more than twice; he won it four times) gets the epic treatment it deserves from James MacGregor Burns in this Pulitzer Prize-winning two-volume biography.

From his beginnings on the New York political scene to his becoming the most consequential figure on earth during World War II, Burns paints an endlessly captivating portrait of Roosevelt the intellectual, inspirer, warrior and even humorist.

Related: 10 Thought-Provoking Books About Leadership

33) Harry S. Truman

A man as underestimated as perhaps any in American history, “Give ‘em Hell” Harry today gets his due from one of the foremost historians of our time. McCullough thrills his readers with all the trials and tribulations of a bookish man who found himself at the heart of so many epochal events it boggles the mind. The end of World War II, the decision to use the atomic bomb, McCarthyism, the Korean War – McCullough conducts this concert of history with the expertise of a true maestro.

34) Dwight D. Eisenhower

Eisenhower: A Life

By Paul Johnson

“I like Ike” was Dwight Eisenhower’s election slogan, and it remains an apt one for a president who has remained popular in the public mind over a half century after leaving office. In this succinct biography Paul Johnson hits all the major beats of Ike’s life, from his modest Kansas upbringing to the shores of Normandy Beach, all the way up to the gates of the White House itself.

35) John F. Kennedy

John Kennedy

First published before his election to the presidency, James MacGregor Burns’ biography of the ‘up and coming’ congressman from Massachusetts gets its spot on this list because of the uniquely personal relation of the author to his subject. Burns and Kennedy were close friends, and the president-to-be granted him unprecedented interviews and access to both himself and the entire Kennedy clan. JFK was and remains a celebritized figure in our national consciousness, and so it is worthy to look at the more personal side of him revealed to Burns here.

36) Lyndon Baines Johnson

Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream

Goodwin makes a return to this list to chronicle the peaks and valleys of LBJ, to whom she was both a confidante and White House employee. She mines this relationship to offer frank insights into and eyewitness play-by-play of the life of a man whose domestic achievements of Medicare and the Civil/Votings Rights Acts were ultimately overshadowed by his failure in the Vietnam War, resulting in the almost unfathomable fall from winning one of the greatest landslide victories in presidential history to being drummed out of his own party’s primary race just four years later.

Being Nixon: A Man Divided

By Evan Thomas

This was the age of upheaval, and the political career of Richard Nixon waxed and waned with the times in true rollercoaster fashion. Thomas expertly guides us through Nixon’s early triumphs as Ike’s vice president through his nail-biting loss to JFK, from the misery of his defeat in a California gubernatorial bid to his shocking comeback to the presidency and landslide reelection, and finally, of course, to the most infamous moment of this remarkable life, as he becomes the first, and only president to ever resign from office.

RELATED: 8 Revealing Books About Richard Nixon and the Watergate Scandal

38) Gerald R. Ford

Gerald R. Ford: An Honorable Life

By James Cannon and Scott Cannon

The stunning series of events that led Gerald Ford’s elevation to the presidency (the resignations of Vice President Agnew and then President Nixon) sets the stage for the Cannons’ attempt to rehabilitate the image of an “accidental president” often mocked for being in over his head. The authors make a compelling case that the humble and honest Ford was exactly the figure America needed to follow the deception and corruption of the Nixon years, even if Americans did not at the time realize it.

39) James Earl Carter

The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter’s Journey Beyond the White House

By Douglas Brinkley

Renowned historian Douglas Brinkley gives a unique take on a unique figure. While most anyone would consider the American presidency the pinnacle of personal achievement, Brinkley makes the case that for Jimmy Carter the highest office in his country was but a stepping stone to his later work on behalf of causes and peoples all over the world. Utilizing the relationships he’d built in office allowed Carter to travel the world as a statesman and humanitarian in his long post-presidential life, advocating with faithful zeal on behalf of the many disenfranchised.

40) Ronald Wilson Reagan

Reagan: The Life

In both life and death Ronald Reagan was as much an avatar of his political movement as perhaps any president; to this day Republican presidential candidates go out of their way to compare themselves to “The Gipper” in all ways possible. Revered by many for his infectious optimism and Cold War warrior’s zeal, reviled by others for his administration’s multiple scandals and controversial economic practices, the actor-turned-president was a true American original, and Brands’ expansive account of his life will give interested readers all they could hope for.

RELATED: Step Inside the White House With These Entertaining Reads

41) George H.W. Bush

Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush

For the man who presided over the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War, and in the sands of Iraq, the first President Bush is today considered by many to be a historical footnote. Jon Meacham here makes the forceful case for a reevaluation of that conventional wisdom, as he draws on Bush’s personal diaries to paint a picture of a cerebral man who guided the nation through tumultuous times according to what he thought best for the country, even as it took its toll on his personal popularity.

42) William Jefferson Clinton

The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House

By John F. Harris

An apt title for the young man who found himself perpetually under siege from the day his presidency began, Harris’ appraisal of Bill Clinton’s life continually returns to the theme of survival. From losing the Arkansas governor’s mansion only to return, from his disastrous national debut at the 1988 DNC to his triumphant ascent to the presidency, from the ignominy of impeachment to leaving office with the highest approval ratings on record, Harris’ work offers an up close and personal view of a man who has inspired, frustrated and beguiled on his way to becoming one of the foremost figures of the modern era.

43) George W. Bush

Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House

By Peter Baker

Baker’s choice to feature Dick Cheney so prominently in both his title and his book on the years of “Dubya” is a fitting one, for few presidents have been so inextricably tied to their junior partners. However, Baker goes far beyond the simple explanation of Bush as Cheney’s puppet; rather, through hundreds of interviews and previously unreleased memos, he arrests our attention with the story of a friendship gone awry, from the president’s admiration of Cheney’s hard-nosed tactics that helped him eke out the closest election in American history to his disgust in their final years as one of the most disliked White House tandems the country has ever seen.

44) Barack Obama

The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama

By David Remnick

Any biography of the nation’s first African American president must address not only the life of its endlessly fascinating subject, but perform on-the-fly contextualization of the historical significance of something so fresh in our minds. Remnick clearly relishes the challenge, and his bestselling account of Obama’s life and task dovetails beautifully with an exploration of how America’s disgraceful past on the issue of race explosively gave way to its crowning achievement.

Related: The Barack Obama Reading List

45) Donald Trump

TrumpNation

By Timothy L. O'Brien

How prescient O’Brien’s title was, as we found ourselves at this strange point in history where it was indeed Donald Trump’s America. True to form, after granting the author dozens of hours of interviews and traveling privileges, Trump then turned around and unsuccessfully sued O’Brien, claiming the author misrepresented his wealth as smaller than it “bigly” was. (Years later, Trump's leaked tax reforms would vindicate O'Brien's depiction of Trump's finances.)

Likewise true to form, the president himself makes perhaps the best case for reading O’Brien’s book: he doesn’t want you to read it.

46) Joseph Biden

Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now

By Evan Osnos

National Book Award-winner Evan Osnos published this biography of President Joe Biden less than a week before Election Day 2020. At just 193 pages, the biography is surprisingly concise. But by blending interviews with both Biden and contemporary figures who know him best, including Barack Obama, Amy Klobuchar, and Pete Buttigieg, Osnos paints a picture of what the Biden presidency might look like—and why he may be exactly who this country needs right now.

Related: What Are Joe Biden's Favorite Books?

Featured photo courtesy of Wikipedia

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44 Presidential Biographies to Add to Your Reading List

Kate Scott is a bookstagrammer and strategic web designer serving women business owners and creative entrepreneurs. Follow her on Instagram @ parchmentgirl and visit her website at katescott.co/books .

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Ready to dive into history and learn more about the forty-four men who led these United (and sometimes not-so-united) States? Check out these definitive presidential biographies!

Ready to dive into history and read more about the forty-four men who have ruled over these United (and sometimes not-so-united) States? Check out these definitive presidential biographies. | Books | Books to Read | Reading | Reading List | History | American History | Presidents Day

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow— Winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, this nearly one thousand–page tome is the definitive biography of America’s first president.

John Adams by David McCullough— Winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize, this is one of my favorite presidential biographies because it has the rare combination of stellar historical research and beautiful, evocative writing.

Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham— This #1 New York Times bestseller explores Jefferson’s life through a political lens and offers a balanced view of the founding father’s strengths and weaknesses.

James Madison: A Biography by Ralph Ketcham

The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness by Harlow Giles Unger— At four hundred pages, this book offers an approachable introduction to America’s last—and oft-overlooked—founding father.

The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics by William J. Cooper— This new biography argues that John Adams’s less famous son has been sidelined by history and should be honored as a founding father alongside his predecessors.

American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham

Martin Van Buren and the American Political System by Donald B. Cole — This book provides an excellent introduction to the president you’d never heard of until that funny Google commercial came along.

Mr. Jefferson’s Hammer: William Henry Harrison and the Origins of American Indian Policy by Robert M. Owens— This book focuses on Harrison’s role in shaping America’s westward expansion and federal Indian policy in the Old Northwest.

Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America by Walter R. Borneman— This book offers a fascinating overview of Polk’s role in the westward expansion of America: wresting control of California and much of the southwest from Mexico, bringing Texas into the Union, and liberating most of Oregon from Britain’s grasp.

Zachary Taylor: Soldier, Planter, Statesman of the Old Southwest by K. Jack Bauer— This biography explores the contradictory nature of America’s twelfth president.

Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President by Robert J. Rayback

Franklin Pierce by Michael F. Holt— This book offers a concise overview of the troubled presidency of Franklin Pierce and posits that the fourteenth president placed party over politics to the detriment of the nation.

President James Buchanan: A Biography by Philip S. Klein— This short biography explores the life of the man who all but ensured the ignition of the Civil War and has been consistently ranked as one of the worst presidents in American history.

Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy by David O. Stewart— This book details the impeachment of Lincoln’s successor and the chaos of post-Civil War politics.

Grant by Ron Chernow— This outstanding #1 New York Times bestselling biography argues that Grant has been unfairly judged by history and was far more complex than we give him credit for.

Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior & President by Ari Hoogenboom

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard— This book chronicles James Garfield’s rise from poverty to the presidency and details the dramatic history of his assassination and legacy.

Gentleman Boss: The Life of Chester Alan Arthur by Thomas C. Reeves— This book recounts the life, early career as a lawyer and civil servant, and administration of the twenty-first president.

Grover Cleveland: A Study in Character by Alyn Brodsky

Benjamin Harrison by Charles W. Calhoun— This succinct biography offers an overview of the younger Harrison’s life as a leading Indiana lawyer, Lincoln campaigner, senator, and president.

President McKinley: Architect of the American Century by Robert W. Merry— This book contends that McKinley’s considerable achievements were overshadowed by his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, and seeks to restore his place in the presidential pantheon.

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

The William Howard Taft Presidency by Lewis L. Gould— This book offers a provocative analysis of Taft’s successes and failures in office and presents a compelling picture of the only president to later serve as a chief justice.

Wilson by A. Scott Berg— This compelling biography offers one of the most personal portraits of Woodrow Wilson, thanks to the author’s access to two recently-discovered caches of papers written by people close to the president.

Coolidge by Amity Shlaes— This New York Times bestselling biography chronicles the unlikely ascent of a small town New England youth to the presidency and offers a compelling portrait of the man who restored trust in Washington following the disastrous Harding administration.

Herbert Hoover in the White House: The Ordeal of the Presidency by Charles Rappleye— The result of detailed research, this this book argues that Hoover is not quite the passive president he is often portrayed as.

Truman by David McCullough— Another of David McCullough’s renowned presidential biographies, this book offers a nuanced portrait of the president who oversaw the conclusion of World War II and the Korean War.

Eisenhower in War and Peace by Jean Edward Smith— In this definitive biography, Smith provides new insight into Ike’s apprenticeship under General MacArthur, his wartime affair with Kay Summersby, and the 1952 Republican convention that catapulted him into the White house.

An Unfinished Life: Robert F. Kennedy by Robert Dallek

Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President by Robert Dallek— Originally a two-volume biography, this book has been condensed into a more readable four hundred pages of insightful analysis of Johnson’s presidency.

Richard Nixon: A Life by John A. Farrell— This uncompromising biography of America’s darkest president explores the many twists and turns that found Nixon at the point of impeachment.

Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter by Randall Balmer— This fascinating book places Carter’s politics in the context of his faith and documents how he challenged the conventional marriage of Evangelical Christianity with conservative politics.

Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power by Lou Cannon— This is the first in a two-volume biography. The second volume is President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime .

Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush by Jon Meacham

The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House by John F. Harris— The author of this biography covered Clinton for the Washington Post for six of his eight years in office, giving him unparalleled insight into the inner workings of the Clinton White House.

Bush by Jean Edward Smith— This book offers a well-rounded look at the younger Bush’s presidency and documents how the president’s tendency to ignore his advisers led to some disastrous decisions.

Obama: The Call of History by Peter Baker

The Making of Donald Trump by David Cay Johnston— This biography by a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist starts with Trump’s family origins and takes readers all the way up to the White House, detailing his long history of racism, mafia ties, shady business dealings, and ties to Russia.

Tell me about the best presidential biographies you’ve read in the comments!

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The Best Presidential Memoirs & Biographies

Looking for a deep dive into a president’s life we’ve rounded up some of the best president biographies and memoirs just for you. these us president bios delve into the history and politics that have shaped our country. read up on the lives of presidents obama, bush, clinton, jefferson, and more., hunting trips of a ranchman & the wilderness hunter, by theodore roosevelt.

Hunting Trips of a Ranchman & The Wilderness Hunter Book Cover Picture

Paperback $20.00

Buy from other retailers:, sources of strength, by jimmy carter.

Paperback $19.00

The life and selected writings of thomas jefferson, by thomas jefferson.

The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson Book Cover Picture

Paperback $22.00

Personal memoirs, by ulysses s. grant.

Destiny and Power

By jon meacham.

Decision Points

By george w. bush.

by Bill Clinton

Paperback $25.00

Dreams from my father, by barack obama.

Dreams from My Father Book Cover Picture

Hardcover $30.00

The audacity of hope.

Paperback $18.00

By bob spitz.

Paperback $24.00

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The best and worst autobiographies by US presidents

Former presidents often turn to writing to explain the important decisions they made and actions they took while in office.
Some autobiographies offer riveting first-person accounts of presidents' journeys to the White House, challenges they faced in office, and plans they have post-presidency.
Others are selective about what they include or are simply boring reads.
Here are the five worst and five best autobiographies written by presidents .

The roads that led each of the United States's presidents to the White House — from military service to state-level politics to real estate investing and reality-TV show hosting — vary, as do the lives lived by these heads of state after their years in office.

But many former presidents have a common thread in their post-POTUS years: They write, often about themselves.

Some former American presidents used memoirs to explain decisions they made and actions they took while in office, as Richard Nixon did with his 1990 memoir, " In the Arena ." Others write personal books that reveal more about themselves and their lives in the pre- and or post-presidential years — Jimmy Carter has penned several such works.

Some presidential autobiographies turn into runaway hits, topping bestseller lists and making millions of dollars for their esteemed authors. Others fade into obscurity.

Here we highlight a few of the notable hits and misses from this decidedly elite club of memoirists:

Best: "Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant" by Ulysses S. Grant

President Grant's memoirs are focused primarily on his time serving as an officer during the Civil War and in the Mexican-American War that preceded it.

Literary critics including Gertrude Stein and Edmund Wilson had high praise for Grant's " Personal Memoirs ," while Mark Twain, who helped edit and publish the book, called it "the best [memoirs] of any general's since Caesar."

Biographer William S. McFeely once wrote of the book that "no other American president has told his story as powerfully as Ulysses Grant did in his 'Personal Memoirs,'" which was completed shortly before Grant died from cancer in 1885.

Best: “The Audacity of Hope” by Barack Obama

In an upending of the standard order, this bestselling political memoir helped lead to the Oval Office rather than a stint in the White House paving the way for a successful memoir.

Barack Obama's "The Audacity of Hope" established the then-Senator as a star of the Democratic party and greatly elevated his public profile shortly before the campaign season that would lead to a 2008 electoral victory.

Obama's book was such a hit thanks to its upbeat messaging of hope and progress, and also the competence of his prose. His writing was often "eloquent and moving," in the words of a critic from The Guardian .

Best: "Mandate for Change," by Dwight Eisenhower

One of multiple installments of Eisenhower's memoirs, "Mandate for Change" covers his first term in office.

The book is personal, thoughtful, and almost novel-like in its narrative style. It is frequently credited with changing the way presidents wrote about their lives for the public.

Best: "The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson" by Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson was the first great Writer in Chief. In fact, it was his skill with a pen that established his place in American politics, with a young and previously obscure Jefferson serving as lead author of the Declaration of Independence .

" The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson " includes an autobiography written by the third president as well as dozens of his letters and selected official documents.

Reading the book gives you plenty of insight into the man, and even more of a look at the times in which he lived, and today, two centuries after its writing, the book remains popular. The Goodreads.com community has awarded it an average 4.15-star rating and many reviews posted even in 2018 are glowing.

Best: "A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety" by Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter is a rarity among former presidents in that many of the notable achievements of his life came outside of the four during which he occupied the White House, such as a 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.

In his New York Times bestseller " A Full Life ," Carter spends time reflecting on his presidency, but he dedicates more pages to his youth and life before taking office in 1977, and to the decades that have since elapsed.

Worst: "A Time to Heal" by Gerald Ford

Ford's accidental presidency started under the cloud of a corruption scandal and ended with a loss at the polls. During his truncated term, he achieved little of lasting note and was much maligned for pardoning his predecessor , Richard Nixon.

Echoing the justification Ford gave for pardoning Nixon's obstruction of justice charges, his memoir was titled "A Time to Heal."

Critic Nicholas von Hoffman called the work a " besottedly dull volume" in the New York Review of Books. I t's currently at the modest rank of #2,445,519 in Amazon's bestsellers books ranking.

Worst: "The Memoirs of Richard Nixon" by Richard Nixon

Nixon’s memoir was published relatively after he became the first president to resign.

While reviewer Gaddis Smith felt that Nixon " writes more clearly " than many of presidential memoirists that immediately preceded him (though she admits that's no great feat), writer John Kenneth Galbraith felt the president was trying to rewrite history in a manner implying "that Mr. Nixon never did anything wrong unless someone else had done something like it first."

Worst: "An American Life" by Ronald Reagan

Much of Reagan's "An American Life" consists of lengthy reproductions of letters, speeches, or memos that should have been edited down heavily or even merely referred to, not reproduced.

The 700-odd pages Reagan writes are plagued by "omission" and "selective facts," in the words of New York Times critic Maureen Dowd . A Daily Beast write up went even farther, calling the book " fact-free ."

Worst: "The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Great Depression" by Herbert Hoover

If it were ever to be republished, I'd suggest renaming "The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Great Depression" something like: "Totally Not My Fault, Guys."

Hoover spends much of this book trying to extricate his legacy from the Depression era. He writes, for example , that the Great Depression "first appeared in late 1929, eight months after my inauguration, and continued in the United States not only during my term but for eight years more, until the start of the Second World War in 1941."

Or, in other words, "I didn't start it, and the guy after me couldn't fix it!" (Also, WWII didn't start in 1941, Mr. Hoover.)

Worst: "The Autobiography of Martin Van Buren" by Martin Van Buren

If you're in the mood for more than 800 pages of minute, painstaking details about the most boring aspects of the eighth president's life, then by all means read this book. It's also a good choice if you can't sleep.

A 1921 review that appeared in The American Historical Review said Van Buren's writing "leaves something to be desired." Few other reviews are out there, because this dull book has all but faded away into the past.

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17 Great Books About American Presidents for Presidents’ Day Weekend

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By Radhika Jones and Pamela Paul

Feb. 17, 2017

There’s nothing like a big juicy presidential biography when you’re looking for guidance about history’s long and hard lessons. We’ve selected some of our favorites by and about presidents from the past few decades — and including one that reaches back into the 19th century. Here’s to an inspiring Presidents’ Day weekend.

WASHINGTON: “Washington: A Life,” by Ron Chernow

Before there was “Hamilton,” there was Washington, and Ron Chernow’s magisterial, deeply researched biography of our first president. Chernow excels at bringing mythic figures into full-fleshed life. As the Book Review noted when the book came out in 2010, “readers will finish this book feeling as if they have actually spent time with human beings.”

ADAMS: “John Adams,” by David McCullough

America’s once overlooked second president gets the full treatment from the best-selling author of multiple books of history. Adams, McCullough points out, was hard-working, moral, enormously intelligent, wise about politics and prescient about the American Revolution. Michiko Kakutani called the book “a lucid and compelling work that should do for Adams’s reputation what Mr. McCullough’s 1992 book, ‘Truman,’ did for Harry S. Truman.”

JEFFERSON: “American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson,” by Joseph Ellis

Jefferson remains one of the most controversial — admired and condemned — of American presidents, and Ellis’s book aims (and succeeds) at exploring some of the contradictions behind this enigmatic figure. The result is a fascinating and accessible portrayal of a complicated man, both in private and in public. As Brent Staples wrote in the Book Review, Ellis “is a remarkably clear writer, mercifully free of both the groveling and the spirit of attack that have dominated the subject in the past.”

“Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy,” by Annette Gordon-Reed

This important work of history, published in 1997, argued persuasively that Thomas Jefferson had fathered the children of one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. The book caused a sensation in Jefferson scholarship, and was subsequently backed up by DNA research on Hemings’s descendants. The book is equally important in uncovering the ways in which historians long discounted the relationship, and became, as our reviewer correctly predicted, “the next-to-last word for every historian who writes about this story hereafter.”

JACKSON: “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House,” by Jon Meacham

If anything, Andrew Jackson is even more of the lightning-rod figure today than he was when Meacham wrote this biography in 2008, with university campuses nationwide denouncing his legacy at the same time that President Trump has hung a portrait of the seventh president in the Oval Office. President from 1829 to 1837, a period that became known as the Age of Jackson, Jackson was the nation’s most significant populist president. “American Lion,” Janet Maslin noted, “balances the best of Jackson with the worst” and Meacham’s biography is cogent, fair-minded and insightful.

LINCOLN: “Lincoln,” by David Herbert Donald

There are so many books published about Lincoln every year — probably more books in total than on any other president — that prizes exist solely to honor books about our 16th president. Yet this (fairly massive) 1995 biography by David Herbert Donald, a Harvard historian, pulls together much of the scholarship into a definitive single volume that views Lincoln’s failings and fumbling as much as his achievements. Donald succeeds in demythologizing and humanizing one of the most admired public figures in American history.

GRANT: “Personal Memoirs,” by Ulysses S. Grant

There are several great biographies of Grant, including one coming from Ron Chernow this fall, but it’s quite possible that no one wrote about our 18th president and former commanding general of the United States Army better than Grant himself. Considered to be one of the gold standards of military memoirs, Grant’s book was an instant best seller, hailed by both critics and the public for its honesty and high literary quality, and has remained in print and on college curriculums ever since. Grant finished the book several days before he died in 1885.

McKINLEY: “The Triumph of William McKinley: Why the Election of 1896 Still Matters,” by Karl Rove

Surprised to know that George W. Bush’s former senior adviser is also an amateur historian? Some might be even more surprised to know that the book is quite good, with widely positive reviews from critics when it came out in 2015. Rove was long obsessed with McKinley’s election and with the repercussions that particular political moment has had since, down to the unexpected victory of Donald Trump. According to our reviewer, Rove’s “richly detailed, moment-by-moment account in ‘The Triumph of William McKinley’ brings to life the drama of an electoral contest whose outcome seemed uncertain to the candidate and his handlers until the end.”

THEODORE ROOSEVELT: “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt,” by Edmund Morris

It was this Pulitzer Prize-winning book that inspired Ronald Reagan to request the author, Edmund Morris, to be his official biographer. (The result of that endeavor, “Dutch,” didn’t go entirely according to plan.) The first of a three-part biography of Teddy Roosevelt (the other two volumes, “Theodore Rex” and “Colonel Roosevelt,” were equally acclaimed), this book is considered one of the best biographies of the 20th century. Our reviewer described it as “magnificent,” calling it “a sweeping narrative of the outward man and a shrewd examination of his character,” a rare work “that is both definitive for the period it covers and fascinating to read for sheer entertainment.”

WILSON: “Wilson,” by A. Scott Berg

Woodrow Wilson is one of those figures who go in and out of fashion, and he is currently very much out of vogue. Nonetheless, this fascinating 2013 book by the best-selling author of acclaimed biographies of Charles Lindbergh and Katharine Hepburn tells the tumultuous and unlikely story of the rise and terrible fall of our 28th president, who catapulted from the presidency of Princeton University to the governorship of New Jersey and into the Oval Office, with shockingly little government experience. The book begins with Wilson’s victorious welcome in Europe for the Treaty of Versailles; the rest follows like a haunted Shakespearean tragedy in vivid novelistic prose.

F.D.R.: “No Ordinary Time. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II,” by Doris Kearns Goodwin

This 1994 look at Franklin and Eleanor during the Second World War became a massive best seller for good reason. Written with the same historical nuance and narrative flair as her “Team of Rivals,” Goodwin’s book combines political, social and cultural history into a meaty (759 pages) but highly readable account of two extraordinary figures. As our reviewer noted, this story of a marriage is also an “ambitiously conceived and imaginatively executed participants’-eye view of the United States in the war years.”

EISENHOWER: “Eisenhower in War and Peace,” by Jean Edward Smith

Only a quarter of this book is devoted to Eisenhower’s presidency and beyond. Instead, the focus here is on the military experience that prepared Eisenhower for leadership: the ability to make do with limited means, to delegate authority, to cooperate with allies and keep up morale. It added up to a presidency marked by competence and stability. “Eisenhower’s greatest accomplishment may well have been to make his presidency look bland and boring: In this sense, he was very different from the flamboyant Roosevelt, and that’s why historians at first underestimated him,” the Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis wrote in his 2012 review. “Jean Edward Smith is among the many who no longer do.”

KENNEDY: “A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House,” by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Schlesinger served in the Kennedy White House, but far from clouding this history of Kennedy’s presidency, his closeness makes his a unique account of the era. The brevity of Kennedy’s tenure finds its counterpoint in this encyclopedic chronicle of those tumultuous years: the victory over Nixon, the challenges from Moscow and Southeast Asia, the momentum of civil rights. Our reviewer’s only complaint: He wished the book had been longer than its thousand-plus pages.

JOHNSON: “Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson,” by Robert A. Caro

Robert Caro, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Power Broker,” has written four volumes of his biography of Lyndon B. Johnson so far, with more to come — making the selection of just one of his installments a challenge. But then again, this book is an easy win. In the words of our reviewer, the former Times columnist Anthony Lewis: “The book reads like a Trollope novel, but not even Trollope explored the ambitions and the gullibilities of men as deliciously as Robert Caro does. I laughed often as I read. And even though I knew what the outcome of a particular episode would be, I followed Caro’s account of it with excitement. I went back over chapters to make sure I had not missed a word.”

NIXON: “Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man,” by Garry Wills

“It is no small undertaking to write about the intellectual history of the United States, provide an analysis of modern politics, and keep track of where Richard Nixon fits into it all. Therefore Wills’s book is very large.” That’s Robert B. Semple Jr. in the Book Review, taking stock of Wills’s extraordinary portrait of Richard Nixon, published in 1970, in the context of “a nation whose faith has been corrupted, whose youth knows it has been had, whose president is president only because he has been able to sell a sufficient number of equally deluded souls on the proposition that he can bring us together today ‘because he can find the ground where we last stood together years ago.’” Elsewhere in The Times, John Leonard wrote that “Wills achieves the not inconsiderable feat of making Richard Nixon a sympathetic even tragic — figure, while at the same time being appalled by him.” Nixon would serve nearly four more years before his resignation, but with regard to the verdict on his presidency, Wills had the last word. And still has it.

REAGAN: “ Reagan,” by Lou Cannon

This biography came out in the second year of Reagan’s first term, but its underlying theme, in the words of our reviewer — “that Mr. Reagan’s career represents a triumph of personality and intuition over ignorance” — stands the test of time. Cannon’s bracingly critical approach might strike a chord with current consumers of news: “Mr. Cannon pursues Mr. Reagan’s ‘lies’ and ‘ignorance’ relentlessly, from an occasion on which Mr. Reagan ‘freely lied’ about his acting experience and salary when he was breaking into Hollywood to his presidential news conferences which have become ‘adventures into the uncharted regions of his mind.’ The author is careful to make the distinction between ignorance and stupidity. Mr. Reagan, he says, has ‘common sense,’ but his photographic memory is cluttered with dubious information gleaned from his favorite periodicals, Reader’s Digest and Human Events.”

OBAMA: “Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,” by Barack Obama

In 1995, Barack Obama was a writer and law professor in his mid-30s, with little evidence of the presidential about him. His memoir traces his roots; it doesn’t prophesy his future. (“After college in Los Angeles and New York City, he sets out to become a community organizer,” our reviewer writes. “Mr. Obama admits he’s unsure exactly what the phrase means, but is attracted by the ideal of people united in community and purpose.”) But Obama’s voice, its cadences now familiar worldwide, provides a through line from the writer who “bravely tackled the complexities of his remarkable upbringing” to the leader who embodied those complexities in the highest office in the land.

An earlier version of this feature included an illustration that was published in error. The book that was shown with the description of Lou Cannon’s “Reagan” was in fact another work by the same author, “President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime.”

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8 Captivating Presidential Biographies

Brush up on your american history with these riveting reads.

Lauren Vespoli,

washington adams jackson lincoln grant roosevelt roosevelt nixon bios

In February we commemorate the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln on President's Day — an ideal time to remember those two legendary leaders as well as other influential American presidents. The following eight books are some of the best presidential biographies to come out in the past 30 years. They offer absorbing portraits of men faced with daunting challenges, usually both personal and political, and frank analyses of their often-complicated legacies.

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You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington

by Alexis Coe (2020)

This is a clear-eyed and occasionally playful portrayal of an American icon by Coe, a historian and cohost of the Presidents Are People Too! podcast. She debunks myths big and small, like the narrative that Washington's mother, Mary, was an obstruction to George's success and the oft-repeated story of his wooden teeth (they were actually made of ivory and teeth from other humans or animals, or sometimes built with a mix of metals). Rather than detailing all of his Revolutionary War battles, the book focuses on Washington's skills as a diplomat and spy. Coe breaks up the narrative with creative formatting, such as a timeline of diseases he survived (including malaria, smallpox and tuberculosis).

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by David McCullough (2001)

This Pulitzer Prize winner portrays the founding father and second president as a straight-talking, modest Yankee who was also one of the most influential architects of a young America. We follow Adams from the Boston Massacre and on to the Continental Congress, the court of King George II, where he represented American interests, and the White House (he was the first president to reside there). Throughout, McCullough incorporates Adams’ rich trove of correspondence with his beloved wife, Abigail, and with his friend and political rival Thomas Jefferson, to show how these two central relationships shaped his extraordinary life.

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Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

by David S. Reynolds (2020)

More than 16,000 books have been published about President Lincoln, but Abe manages to add a new dimension to the conversation with a focus on how Lincoln's engagement with the high and low culture of the antebellum period shaped the way he steered the country through the Civil War. As a cultural historian, Reynolds is able to introduce a cast of colorful characters, currently obscure but well known at the time, such as Charles Blondin, a tightrope performer who crossed Niagara Falls in 1859 with his agent on his back. Lincoln was often compared to Blondin, as he attempted to balance between liberals and conservatives in order to lead the country to emancipation.

American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House

by Jon Meacham (2008)

This lively biography — another Pulitzer Prize winner — looks at how Andrew Jackson's stormy presidency shaped the country's highest office, for better and, quite often, worse. Meacham makes the case that Jackson was responsible for the expansion of the executive branch and shows how he pioneered what we think of as modern politics, including campaigning directly to the American people and contentious partisanship. The book also looks at the political repercussions of scandals within Jackson's inner circle, such as the Petticoat Affair, which roiled his cabinet and led to the rise of his successor, Martin Van Buren. Meacham presents this controversial president as embodying the best and worst sides of America, in his unwavering belief in the common man and his vicious policy of Native American removal and support of the slave trade.

by Ron Chernow (2017)

Ulysses S. Grant was long cast as a drunken Civil War general and corruption-plagued president, despite his leadership of the Union Army to victory. Historian and Alexander Hamilton author Chernow repudiates that reputation, painting Grant as a brilliant military tactician, and focuses on his commitment to Reconstruction. As president, Grant passed legislation and sent federal troops to suppress the Klu Klux Klan and earned the admiration of Frederick Douglass, who called him “the vigilant, firm and wise protector of our race.” But Chernow also explores in great detail the man's flaws, such as his struggles with alcoholism and overly trusting nature.

Theodore Rex

by Edmund Morris (2001)

This is book two in Morris’ masterful trilogy on Theodore Roosevelt, published 21 years after the Pulitzer Prize–winning first book. Just as fascinating, Theodore Rex focuses on Roosevelt's two-term presidency, beginning in 1901, when at age 42 he became the youngest person to ever become president. Morris captures the man's energy and charisma, traits that helped him broker an end to the Russo-Japanese War (which won him a Nobel Peace Prize), maneuver the construction of the Panama Canal and lay the foundation for the National Park System — and that informed his proclivity for naked swims in the Potomac and rounds of boxing with his cabinet members — as well as his missteps on race relations.

No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in WWII

by Doris Kearns Goodwin (1994)

Goodwin weaves together the domestic lives of the Roosevelts and the nation during the upheaval during and after World War II in, yes, another Pulitzer Prize winner and a huge best seller. Drawing from 86 interviews with people who knew the president and first lady personally, the famed historian includes a wonderful level of personal detail — during the war years, for instance, Franklin would help himself fall asleep by imagining that he was sledding at his childhood home in Hyde Park, New York. She also describes how, as Franklin focused on winning the war, the remarkable Eleanor battled her husband to secure the home front and preserve New Deal gains , as well as make progress in civil rights, housing, and welfare.

Richard Nixon: The Life

by John Farrell (2017)

This unsparing and insightful bio includes new evidence of Nixon's meddling in Lyndon B. Johnson's attempt at a Vietnam War peace deal, substantiated by a cache of newly unearthed notes written by Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman. Farrell, a former political journalist, draws on interviews with Nixon's friends, family and associates, which were only unsealed in 2012, in order to show how Nixon created his political persona as a champion of “the forgotten man” and successfully fanned race and class divisions in the country — and also how the Watergate scandal that forced Nixon's resignation wasn't an anomaly but the last act in a decade-long pattern of illegal activity that left a dark legacy.

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Reading the Best Biographies of All Time

U.S. Presidents

Here is the roadmap for my journey through the best presidential biographies (for more detail see my site: www.bestpresidentialbios.com) .

Ratings are on a scale of 0 to 5 stars, with equal weight given to my subjective assessment of: (1) how enjoyable the biography was to read and (2) the biography’s historical value (including its comprehensive coverage and critical analysis of its subject).

Blue titles indicate Pulitzer Prize WINNERS. Blue italicized titles indicate Pulitzer Prize finalists.

This list was most recently updated October 9, 2016. If I’m missing a great presidential biography that you’ve read, please let me know!

Every book I review has been purchased by me. Bestpresidentialbios.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

U.S. Presidents

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The Founding Father and Continental Army commander shared some of his greatest wisdom through his words in letters and speeches.

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Donald Trump

Barack Obama

Ronald Reagan

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Lyndon B. Johnson

Abraham Lincoln

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James Madison

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The Best Presidential Memoirs as Audiobooks

Recommended by robin whitten.

When you listen to presidential memoirs as audiobooks, you can often hear an American president telling you their own story. Veteran audiobook reviewer Robin Whitten , editor of Audiofile magazine, recommends the best audiobooks about US presidents, and explains the crucial role of professional narrators in bringing big books to life.

Interview by Sophie Roell , Editor

A Promised Land by Barack Obama

My Life by Bill Clinton

Decision Points by George W Bush

Promise Me, Dad by Joe Biden

The Best Presidential Memoirs as Audiobooks - The Annotated Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant by Ulysses S Grant and Elizabeth Samet (editor), Mark Bramhall (narrator)

The Annotated Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant by Ulysses S Grant and Elizabeth Samet (editor), Mark Bramhall (narrator)

White House Diary by Jimmy Carter

1 A Promised Land by Barack Obama

2 my life by bill clinton, 3 decision points by george w bush, 4 promise me, dad by joe biden, 5 the annotated memoirs of ulysses s. grant by ulysses s grant and elizabeth samet (editor), mark bramhall (narrator), 6 white house diary by jimmy carter.

Y our recommendations focus on audiobooks where you can hear a president telling their own story, in their own voice. But you’re also going to mention some biographies, just so listeners have a wider selection to choose from, is that right?

Yes, we’re going to talk about presidential memoirs, primarily, today. But I realized that in the audiobook format, the idea of a memoir where you actually hear the subject—or in this case a president, or former president—is a relatively new phenomenon. Recording a living person in an audiobook studio doesn’t go back very far, probably to the 1980s. Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan did memoirs, but they were abridgements. They are archival because you hear their voices in the recording, but they are not full-length memoirs.

Perhaps the lucrative incentive of writing a memoir and recording it has encouraged the later American presidents. Earlier presidents seem to have waited to do a lifetime memoir. Now we have people writing memoirs about early parts of their lives, so in the course of a lifetime, there will be multiple memoirs, not just one.

Is it partly that it’s easier to make recordings now? As you said, the earlier ones are all abridged and quite brief, whereas now, Obama’s presidential memoir is 29 hours or so, which is a lot of time in a studio, narrating.

Let’s go through the audiobooks you’re recommending today. Why don’t we start with your favourite. Which of these presidential memoirs do you think is the best as an audiobook?

As an audiobook, hands down it’s President Obama’s A Promised Land , which has just come out in the last few months. It’s absolutely stunning as a listening experience, and I think his style of writing and presentation suit the format beautifully. As he’s said in interviews he’s done about the memoir, he wants to speak directly to listeners and in particular to young people. I heard him do a presentation for the high school system of Chicago, where he is talking to the students. In his lovely style he says, ‘kids, you’re not really going to enjoy all of it. But there’s a lot of really important stuff that I put in here for you.’ And I think that’s true. There are really wonderful lessons and thoughtful ideas for young people to take hold of.

As a genre the presidential memoir is going to include detailed stuff on, say, in Obama’s case, the passage of a healthcare reform bill. It’s not going to be edge-of-your-seat listening, I suppose.

Which one do you want to talk about next?

Let’s go on to the Bill Clinton memoir, My Life.

How highly do you rate Bill Clinton as an audiobook narrator of his memoir?

I think he has a very good presentational style. I listened primarily to the short one, with President Clinton, who did a narration of six hours. I loved it. You’re really hearing him, his style and his accent, his voice, which I recognize. When I then switched and listened to Michael Beck, who is the narrator of the unabridged version, it really seemed to lack something for me. That’s because I know what Bill Clinton’s voice sounds like. 20 years from now, the people listening probably won’t recall his voice so specifically.

When it comes out in a timely way, you appreciate the fact that you’re hearing a president tell the story of his life. It’s very effective that way. But if you are a serious reader of memoirs and history, you don’t want to miss anything that might have been cut out of the full memoir.

My Life follows very much the form of mixing personal and political life, which, of course, is completely intertwined for all of them. But I think that intersection of the personal and political in the Clinton memoir was a particularly interesting aspect of it, as he tells it.

Clinton’s memoir is quite candid, then? It’s a satisfying experience listening to it?

I think so. Of course, it was carefully prepared, but he was good with his presentation. Whether he wrote it completely himself or not, I don’t really know. With the Obama memoir, they say he did pretty much write all of it himself, which I’m not sure is the case for some of the others.

Not to give too many compliments to Obama, but even before he became president, he’d won a Grammy for the reading of an audiobook memoir. Bill Clinton is obviously a very good public speaker, a charismatic person, and I like his accent. But that doesn’t necessarily translate into perfect audiobook narration. I felt Obama was more professional at the actual audiobook delivery.

Right, and that’s because Obama has experience with two other audiobooks and he understands the storytelling nature of the audiobook format. You have to tell it like a story. You can’t just read the text well. And I think when you get to George W. Bush’s Decision Points , his style, it’s very clear that he’s reading what he has written. In this case, if I wanted to hear his version of his presidency, I probably would want to listen to Ron McLarty, who reads the unabridged version of Decision Points .

It’s complicated, isn’t it?

Yes, it’s sometimes complicated by what you think about their politics, but also whether you like the sound of their voice.

There’s also the archival nature of these memoirs. They are not only recordings of the presidents’ voices, but with their own story. That creates something that is very important history.

By saying it’s their story are you saying they’re putting their spin on it?

Let’s talk about Decisions Points next, as we’ve already mentioned it. This is George W. Bush’s bestselling memoir, which covers the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the financial crisis . It was quite an eventful presidency, so should make for interesting reading. How does it rate as an audiobook?

It’s interesting to see the variety of these memoirs. Much as I’m not a big fan of George W. Bush for his politics, it was an important time in history, and his take on it is important too, and hearing him talk about it. But I think his writing is not as well-suited to narrative. It doesn’t flow in a storytelling style.

“You appreciate the fact that you’re hearing a president tell the story of his life”

Next on your list of presidential memoir audiobooks is a reasonably short one—just under nine hours—by the man who has since become the 46th President of the United States. This is Promise Me, Dad , by Joe Biden.

This is Joe Biden ‘s first memoir, probably there will be others. It’s perhaps not as substantial a memoir as he may write later. He published Promise Me, Dad in 2017 and it’s more or less a memoir about his time as vice president at the time of his son Beau’s death. It’s a moving, personal story delivered with empathy.

I think right now people are very interested in Joe Biden. That’s why I put it on the list—if you want to know a little bit more about not just his own personal tragedy and how he felt and his reflections on that, but also about his time in the US Senate and as vice president.

It’s also interesting listening to this now and thinking about whether what he said he wanted to do then is something that he can actually implement as president. What is going to happen in the term that’s just starting?

Does Biden narrate the whole of Promise Me, Dad ?

Yes. It’s bit like Obama’s Audacity of Hope , or Dreams From My Father . Both of those are shorter. Just like Biden’s book, the scope of time was limited—they’re not about an entire presidency or an entire life.

But they’re still political. These are memoirs by people with an eye on higher office, rather than candid tell-alls of their life?

Let’s move on to the fifth presidential memoir audiobook you’ve selected, which, sadly, was not narrated by the president himself. At the beginning of Decision Points , George W Bush tells us that this was the memoir people recommended he read as he set out writing his own memoir.

Yes, for my fifth book, I picked probably one of the most highly regarded memoirs by an American president, which is The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant . Grant was the US president after the Civil War , after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. He had two terms as president, but his career before that had been as a general, as commander of the Union Army.

After his presidency, he wrote voluminous memoirs, looking back at a lot of the Civil War battles and giving his overview and perspective on the history. He seems to have found a voice in his memoirs, that maybe no one expected.

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The audiobook of the memoir is read by a professional narrator, Mark Bramhall. This is again very long, nearly 30 hours. Particularly for this long form, you have to engage your listeners and the narrator needs to be engaged with the material. In order to sustain your listeners, you have to keep a pace. What I really liked about Mark’s narration is that he was able to do that.

He manages to pull it off, does he?

He does, really well. Possibly years from now we’ll look back at these current memoirs, that were read by a professional narrator. If you’re really interested in the history of the time, having someone who paces your listening experience, who sustains the energy throughout the whole thing, will be a plus.

Wow, that’s fascinating that a narrator can keep it up for such a voluminous book.

Yes, it’s long. And we see the same thing when it comes to biographies.

Yes, before we get to the last presidential memoir you’ve chosen as a good audiobook experience, you wanted to mention a few presidential biographies that have been well done as audiobooks. Is that partly because biographies allow us to go a bit further back in time?

Yes, it allows us to go a little further back, but also because I think that audiobook biographies are a great category. And there are lots of interesting ones, particularly of several of the American presidents.

The Passage of Power is one of four, possibly five, volumes of Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon B. Johnson (the whole thing is called The Years of Lyndon Johnson) . Each of them is around 30 hours long and they’re all narrated by Grover Gardner, over a period of almost 20 years. He’s in the head of Robert Caro and is totally connected to that writing. He is an AudioFile Golden Voice Narrator and has a long career of nonfiction biography. He just knows how to make the pace for these very long, longform works to keep the listeners with him, with enough energy but not putting so much energy in that it’s exhausting for you as a listener.

“You have to tell it like a story. You can’t just read the text well”

Also, keeping the details straight. In all of these books there’s a lot of historical and political detail. If you’re reading with your eyes, if there’s a long section about legislation that you might not be interested in, you can just skip ahead a bit. You can’t do that easily in an audiobook—so that puts a burden on the narrator to get you through the long and perhaps less exciting parts of an audiobook memoir or biography.

Once you get to biographies, you also get the perspective of time. Memoirs are written when that person is alive, so there’s not as much opportunity for that. In this book you get Robert Caro’s perspective as a biographer and historian and possibly see the person and the presidency in a slightly different light. Lyndon B Johnson was a master of how to get really important legislation through the US Senate.

You also like the narration of Truman by David McCullough and read by Nelson Runger. Oh my goodness, this one is 54 hours! Was he a good president?

Harry Truman was a president that probably didn’t enjoy as much of a positive reputation for his presidency at the time, but the way McCullough was able to profile him brought him into a context that made his presidency better understood.

Alright, and then going back to the beginning of the American Republic, you also wanted to mention The Founding Fathers Collection . This is useful if somebody is comprehensively looking for audiobooks about presidents. It’s a nice collection of audiobooks to learn about some of the early presidents like Washington, Adams, Madison, etc.

Finally, let’s go back to the last memoir you chose that’s narrated by a president himself. This is Jimmy Carter’s White House Diary . Carter has done a lot of memoirs hasn’t he? There’s one about being a boy in Depression-era Georgia , then he’s also written A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety . He’s quite prolific, isn’t it?

He is. He enjoys writing. Maybe doing these memoirs of different parts of his life was more interesting to him than doing a definitive, long one starting with, ‘I was born in Georgia.’ He’s still recording programs in his 90s. His last book was faith-based, as I recall. I didn’t mention it, because it wasn’t about his life as president.

And White House Diary is a good one to listen to?

White House Diary is interesting. It’s a focused part of the time that he was in the White House. It’s shorter than some of the other books we’ve been discussing, it’s not an exhaustive look at his presidency.

He’s probably done more impressive stuff since his presidency, so maybe it makes sense that it’s not his only point of focus.

I think that’s true. He came to the presidency without a lot of political background, and that’s really hard. The humanitarian work he did in the years after the presidency is perhaps more significant in a way—like his involvement with Habitat for Humanity and other things that he has done.

February 15, 2021

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Robin Whitten

Robin Whitten is the founder and editor of AudioFile magazine . Started in 1992, AudioFile reviews and recommends audiobooks as a multi-platform resource, publishing in print, e-newsletters, the AudioFileMagazine.com website, and seasonal programs like AudiobookSYNC for teen audiences. AudioFile also maintains the Talent & Industry Guide, the sourcebook for audiobook professionals. Robin has served on the board of Directors of the Audio Publishers Association, and as an Audie Awards judge.

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Comeback: New Trump bio a go as publisher pulls plug on Biden book

A best-settling biographer of former President Ronald Reagan has struck a deal to work on a new book with former President Donald Trump ’s team, the latest sign that interest in the 45th president remains high.

Washingtonian Craig Shirley, author of several bestselling Reagan biographies, told Secrets he has already started researching for his book due out after the fall election. It has a working title of Comeback, he told us Thursday.

Shirley described his project as a “corrective” book that will push through past biased reports on Trump to provide a clear picture of who the former president is, the movement he leads, and his comeback from the 2020 defeat to President Joe Biden .

“It fixes up the mistakes of the past,” Shirley said of past biographies from many anti-Trump authors. “This is gonna be contrarian. It's going to go against everything the elites are preaching,” he added.

Shirley has not yet cut a deal with a publisher and expects to after the election. But considering the sustained popularity of and support behind Trump it should have a good market of bidders, an industry official said.

He described his plans for Comeback as a new book about unpopular Biden was withdrawn by mega publisher Simon & Schuster, which just published Shirley’s latest, The Search for Reagan .

Politico reported that Simon & Schuster canceled a contract with an Axios writer for a new Biden book due to reader lack of interest. In fact, several recent books about the Bidens have bombed, a highly unusual trend after decades of best-sellers on presidents still in office.

SEE THE LATEST POLITICAL NEWS AND BUZZ FROM WASHINGTON SECRETS

Shirley said he is not surprised that Biden’s unpopularity extends to disinterest in books about him and his family.

“That guy's got no appeal whatsoever, except to his power base,” Shirley said.

Comeback: New Trump bio a go as publisher pulls plug on Biden book

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Joe Lieberman, former US senator and vice-presidential nominee, dies at 82

Lieberman, Connecticut senator for four terms, was Al Gore’s Democratic running mate in 2000

The former US senator Joe Lieberman, who ran as the Democratic nominee for vice-president in the 2000 election and became the first Jewish candidate on a major-party ticket for the White House, alongside presidential candidate Al Gore , has died at the age of 82.

Lieberman died in New York due to complications from a fall, according to a statement from his family. He was a Connecticut senator for four terms.

Lieberman took one of the most controversial arcs in recent US political history. Though he had the status of a breakthrough candidate for America’s Jewish community as Gore’s running mate, his support for president George W Bush’s Iraq war heralded a rightward journey that saw him anger many Democrats .

Lieberman sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 but his support for the war in Iraq doomed his candidacy with voters, amid increasing anger at the invasion and its bloody aftermath. It also meant Lieberman was rejected by Connecticut’s Democrats when he ran for a fourth Senate term there in 2006.

However, in what he said was a vindication of his positions, he kept his Senate seat by running as an independent candidate, with substantial support from Republican and independent voters.

By 2008, Lieberman was a high-profile supporter of Republican senator John McCain in his bid to defeat Democrat Barack Obama’s quest to become America’s first Black president.

Thus Lieberman did manage to both impress and offend people across party lines. He expressed strong support for gay rights, civil rights, abortion rights and environmental causes that often won him praise of many Democrats, and he frequently fit mould of a north-east liberal. He played a key role in legislation that established the US Department of Homeland Security.

He was also the first national Democrat to publicly criticize President Bill Clinton for his extramarital affair with then White House intern Monica Lewinsky. He scolded Clinton for “disgraceful behavior”, earning the ire of his party – though his position has become much more standard in the wake of the #MeToo movement.

As he sought a political home outside Democratic politics, Lieberman’s close friend in the Senate John McCain was leaning strongly toward choosing him as vice-president for the 2008 Republican ticket, but Lieberman’s history of liberal policies were seen as too unpopular for McCain to pull off such a move with his conservative base. He plumped for Sarah Palin instead.

In announcing his retirement from the Senate in 2013, Lieberman acknowledged that he did “not always fit comfortably into conventional political boxes” and felt his first responsibility was to serve his constituents, state and country, not his political party.

Harry Reid, who served as Senate Democratic leader, once said that while he didn’t always agree with the independent-minded Lieberman, he respected him. “Regardless of our differences, I have never doubted Joe Lieberman’s principles or his patriotism,” Reid said. “And I respect his independent streak, as it stems from strong convictions.”

After leaving the Senate, Lieberman joined a New York law firm and took up company boards – as is common for retiring senators. But his public positions continued to be a mish-mash of liberal and rightwing views.

Al Gore and Joe Lieberman at a campaign rally in Jackson, Tennessee, in 2000. Lieberman nearly won the vice presidency on the Democratic ticket with Gore in that year’s disputed election.

He endorsed Donald Trump’s controversial decision to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and was a public supporter of Trump’s rightwing education secretary Betsy DeVos – a hated figure for many liberals. But at the same time, he endorsed Hilary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 in their runs for the White House.

Lieberman continued to push his message of compromise with his 2021 book The Centrist Solution, comparing far-right extremists to progressive leftists in a Guardian interview at the time, saying: “The divisive forces in both of our two major parties have moved further away from the centre. But I believe those more extreme segments of both parties are in the minority in both parties.”

He also said he was optimistic that “more mainstream, centrist elements” in the Republican party would take over again.

He remained active in recent years as the founding chairman of No Labels, an organization to encourage bipartisanship but which is currently exploring backing a third-party bid for the presidency as Trump and Biden face off again. Faced with criticisms that the group’s efforts could boost Trump’s chance at victory, Lieberman said last year he did not want to see Trump re-elected, but that he believed Democrats would fare better if Biden was not running. In recent weeks, No Labels has struggled to find a candidate as ballot deadlines near.

Lieberman grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, where his father operated a liquor store. He was the eldest of three siblings in an Orthodox Jewish family. A Yale law school graduate, Lieberman went on to serve as Connecticut attorney general in 1983, before defeating the incumbent Republican, Lowell Weicker, to earn his Senate seat in 1988.

Tributes poured in from both sides of the aisle on Wednesday night. Chris Murphy, a US senator from Connecticut, said in a statement that his state was “shocked by Senator Lieberman’s sudden passing”, adding: “In an era of political carbon copies, Joe Lieberman was a singularity. One of one. He fought and won for what he believed was right and for the state he adored.”

Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa and oldest sitting senator at 90, recalled working with Lieberman on whistleblower initiatives, saying in a statement: “Joe was a dedicated public servant working [with] anyone regardless of political stripe.”

Gore published a tribute praising Lieberman as a “truly gifted leader, whose affable personality and strong will made him a force to be reckoned with”, recounting his former running mate’s support of the 1960s civil rights movement.

Obama wrote that he and Lieberman “didn’t always see eye-to-eye”, but commended the former senator for supporting the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the passage of the Affordable Care Act: “In both cases the politics were difficult, but he stuck to his principles because he knew it was the right thing to do.”

Paul Harris and the Associated Press contributed to this report

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The Fix’s list of best presidential biographies

Last week, we renewed our call out to Fix readers to help us identify the best presidential biographies for each of the nation's 43 presidents . Fix readers delivered, helping us compile a comprehensive list, with plenty of time left in the holiday shopping season!

* George Washington: Washington: A Life , by Ron Chernow; His Excellency: George Washington , by Joseph J. Ellis.

* John Adams: John Adams , by David McCullough; Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams , by Joseph J. Ellis.

* Thomas Jefferson: Jefferson and His Time , by Dumas Malone; American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson , by Joseph J. Ellis; Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power , by Jon Meacham.

* James Madison: James Madison: A Biography , by Ralph Ketchem.

* James Monroe: The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation's Call to Greatness , by Harlow Giles Unger.

* John Quincy Adams: John Quincy Adams (The American Presidents Series) , by Robert V. Remini.

* Andrew Jackson: American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House , by Jon Meacham; The Life of Andrew Jackson , by Robert V. Remini.

* Martin Van Buren: Martin Van Buren (The American Presidents Series) , by Ted Widmer; Martin Van Buren : The Romantic Age of American Politics , by John Niven.

* William Henry Harrison: William Henry Harrison (The American Presidents Series) by Gail Collins; Old Tippecanoe: William Henry Harrison and His Times , by Freeman Cleaves.

* John Tyler: John Tyler (The American Presidents Series) , by Gary May; John Tyler: Champion of the Old South , by Oliver P. Chitwood.

* James K. Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America , by Walter R. Borneman.

* Zachary Taylor: Zachary Taylor: Soldier, Planter, Statesman of the Old Southwest , by K. Jack Bauer.

* Millard Fillmore: Millard Fillmo re: Biography of a President , by Robert J. Rayback

* Franklin Pierce: Franklin Pierce (The American Presidents Series) , by Michael Holt.

* James Buchanan: President James Buchanan: A Biography , by Philip S. Klein.

* Abraham Lincoln: Lincoln , by David Herbert Donald; Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln , by Doris Kearns Goodwin; With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln , by Stephen B. Oates; Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years , by Carl Sandburg; Abraham Lincoln , by Lord Charnwood.

* Andrew Johnson: Andrew Johnson (The American Presidents Series) , by Annette Gordon-Reed.

* Ulysses S. Grant: Grant , by Jean Edward Smith; Grant: A Biography , by William S. McFeeley.

* Rutherford B. Hayes: Rutherford B. Hayes , by Hans Trefousse (The American Presidents Series); Rutherford B. Hayes, and his America , by Harry Barnard.

* James Garfield: Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President , by Candice Millard.

*Chester Arthur: Chester Alan Arthur (The American Presidents Series) , by Zachary Karabell; Gentleman Boss: The Life of Chester Alan Arthur , by Thomas C. Reeves.

* Grover Cleveland (the 22nd and 24th president): Grover Cleveland: A Study in Character , by Alyn Brodsky; Grover Cleveland (The American Presidents Series) , by Henry F. Graff.

* Benjamin Harrison: Benjamin Harrison (The American Presidents Series) , by Charles W. Calhoun; Benjamin Harrison: Hoosier statesman , by Harry Joseph Sievers.

* William McKinley: Presidency of William McKinley , by Lewis. L. Gould.

* Theodore Roosevelt: Edmund Morris's Theodore Roosevelt Trilogy ; Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt , by David McCullough.

* William Howard Taft: The Life & Times of William Howard Taft , by Harry F. Pringle.

* Woodrow Wilson: Woodrow Wilson: A Biography , by John Milton Cooper Jr.

* Warren G. Harding: The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times , by Francis Russell; Warren G. Harding (The American Presidents Series) , by John W. Dean.

* Calvin Coolidge: Coolidge, An American Enigma , by Robert Sobel.

* Herbert Hoover: Herbert Hoover (The American Presidents Series) , by William E. Leuchtenburg.

*Franklin Roosevelt: Franklin D. Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom , by Conrad Black; No Ordinary Time , by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

*Harry S. Truman: Truman , by David McCullough; Harry S. Truman (The American Presidents Series) , by Robert Dallek.

*Dwight D. Eisenhower: Eisenhower: Soldier and President , by Stephen E. Ambrose; Eisenhower in War and Peace , by Jean Edward Smith.

*John F. Kennedy: A Thousand Days , by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.; An Unfinished Life , by Robert Dallek.

*Lyndon B. Johnson: Robert Caro 's multi-volume set; Robert Dallek 's two-volume set.

*Richard Nixon: The three-volume set by Steven Ambrose; Nixonland , by Richard Perlstein.

*Gerald Ford: Gerald R. Ford (The American Presidents Series) by Douglas Brinkley.

*Jimmy Carter: Jimmy Carter, by Julian E. Zelizer (The American Presidents Series).

*Ronald Reagan: President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime , by Lou Cannon; My Father at 100 , by Ron Reagan, Jr.

*George H.W. Bush: George H.W. Bush (The American Presidents Series) , by Timothy Naftali.

*Bill Clinton: First in His Class , by David Maraniss; The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House , by John F. Harris.

*George W. Bush: Decision Points (Bush's memoir) ; Peter Baker's forthcoming Bush book.

*Barack Obama: Barack Obama: The Story , by David Maraniss; The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama , by David Remnick.

This post has been updated.

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