United States Presidents

For more than 20 years since his New York Times best seller Don't Know Much About History first appeared, Davis has shown that Americans don't hate history, just the dull version dished out in school. Now Davis turns his attention to what is arguably the most important and most fascinating subject in American history: our presidents. From the heated debates over executive powers through the curious election of George Washington in 1789 and, for more than 200 years, up through the meteoric rise of Barack Obama, the presidency has been at the heart of American history.

On January 20, 2017, Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States of America. The outspoken businessman, real estate developer, and television personality had previously declared some interest in becoming a candidate for public office in 2000 and 2012, but it wasn't until June 2015 that his political goals became clear.

John Adams once wrote, “People and nations are forged in the fires of adversity.” That was very much Adams’ experience. Having been born in the English colony of Massachusetts in 1735, he not only witnessed a new nation emerging from the shell of infancy, but he also participated in its growing pains. Adams was a man who was frequently asked to assume roles in which he had little experience, like that of a diplomat to France and England. In a sense, he was a part of the vanguard that the government had thrown into the fray.

The legacy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt enjoys regular acclaim from historians, politicians, and educators. But is that true? Deploying an abundance of primary source evidence and well-reasoned arguments, historian and distinguished professor emeritus David T. Beito masterfully presents a complete account of the real Franklin D. Roosevelt: a man who abused power, violated human rights, targeted dissidents, and let his crude racism imprison American citizens merely for being of Japanese descent.

Behind the demeanor that made Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower so popular was a cold-as-steel intelligence that kept his country prosperous and out of danger. Because his operating methods were so deeply hidden, it is only in the past few decades that historians have grasped the full extent of his achievements. Ike in Love and War shows the hidden sacrifices that made Eisenhower remarkable. It probes the mission that was driving him: the quest to reconcile his skill as a fighter with his mother's pacifism, which led him to become the greatest peacekeeper of his age.

Award-winning author John Ferling is a leading authority on the American Revolution. His entertaining and enlightening histories have greatly improved our understanding of early America and the Founding Fathers. Now Ferling opens a window to the past and explores the contentious presidential election of 1800.

Noah Webster's name is now synonymous with the dictionary he created, but his story is not nearly so ubiquitous. Webster hobnobbed with various Founding Fathers and was a young confidant of George Washington and Ben Franklin. But perhaps most important, Webster was an ardent supporter of a unified, definitively American culture, distinct from the British, at a time when the United States of America were anything but unified - and his dictionary of American English is a testament to that.

At the start of 1932, the nation's worst economic crisis has left one-in-four workers without a job, countless families facing eviction, banks shutting down as desperate depositors withdraw their savings, and growing social and political unrest. Amid this turmoil, a political decision looms that will determine the course of the nation. It's a choice between two men with very different visions of America: Incumbent Republican Herbert Hoover and New York's Democratic Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

As he did for Abraham Lincoln and John Quincy Adams, award-winning biographer Fred Kaplan offers a fresh, illuminating look at the life of Thomas Jefferson and his contributions as a writer.

Even compared to his fellow founders, George Washington stands tall. Our first president has long been considered a stoic hero, holding himself above the rough-and-tumble politics of his day. Now John Ferling peers behind that image, carefully burnished by Washington himself, to show us a leader who was not only not above politics but a canny infighter---a master of persuasion, manipulation, and deniability.

While it’s widely known in the US that the first president did not have any biological children, few are aware that he had several stepgrandchildren. In First Family, we see Washington as a father figure, as well as meet the children he helped raise and trace their complicated roles in American history. First Family brings new focus and attention to this surprisingly neglected aspect of George Washington’s life and legacy.

Ever wanted to learn more about Abraham Lincoln but never felt you had the time to read a comprehensive work? Here, author Cynthia A. Parker removes that pain by offering an opportunity to get to know the United States' 16th president - to learn of his youth and upbringing, his early career, his romantic life, and of course his pivotal role in holding the Union together during his terms as president amid civil war.

The US government lied to the American people about President Kennedy's death. But, ironically it was the American people who solved the crime. Over the past half century, hundreds of researchers investigated one or more parts of the murder, often using their own expertise, such as photography, computers, science, medical expertise, and analytical skills. Taken together, their detailed work illuminated what really happened.

George Washington—hero of the French and Indian War, commander in chief of the Continental Army, and first president of the United States—died on December 14, 1799. But what do we really know about Washington as an upper-class man?

Though he was a great statesman, one of America's founding fathers, and the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson suffered from depression. In Jefferson's Demons, Michael Knox Beran examines episodes of melancholia in Jefferson's life. In particular, he focuses on the journey Jefferson made to Europe in 1787 to escape the depression that set in due to his tumultuous experience as governor of Virginia following the Revolution and his wife Martha's death.

In 1784, Thomas Jefferson was a broken man. Reeling from the loss of his wife and stung from a political scandal during the Revolutionary war, he needed to remake himself. Wandering through Europe, Jefferson saw and learned as much as he could, ultimately bringing his knowledge home to a young America. There, he would rise to power and shape a nation. More than two hundred years later, Derek Baxter, a devotee of American history, stumbles on an obscure travel guide written by Jefferson—Hints for Americans Traveling Through Europe—as he's going through his own personal crisis.

The Rough Riders was a nickname given to the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry, one of three such regiments raised in 1898 for the Spanish-American War and the only one to see combat. The United States Army was small, understaffed, and disorganized in comparison to its status during the American Civil War roughly thirty years prior. Following the sinking of USS Maine, President William McKinley needed to muster a strong ground force swiftly, which he did by calling for 125,000 volunteers to assist in the war.

George Washington spent more of his working life farming than he did at war or in political office. For more than 40 years, he devoted himself to the improvement of agriculture. Washington at the Plow depicts the "first farmer of America" as a leading practitioner of the New Husbandry, a transatlantic movement that spearheaded advancements in crop rotation.

We all know of Theodore Roosevelt being the US president from 1901 to 1909, an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, and naturalist. But few know of him being an acclaimed historian. Roosevelt’s The Winning of the West quickly became a bestseller. The first edition of his book sold out in little more than a month and helped establish Roosevelt as a literary man and scholar, placing him on a path toward future greatness.

The following recording is a telephone call from President Lyndon B. Johnson (August 27, 1908 - January 22, 1973), the 36th president of the United States, to Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 - December 26, 1972), the 33rd American president, wishing him a Merry Christmas.