Whatever you think of Donald Trump, his inauguration on January 20th is the capstone of the greatest ever comeback in American politics. Whether you seek succour in history or are ready to escape the news cycle, books can help. All 45 presidents have been the subject of at least two biographies, but these are five of the best.
The Bridge. By David Remnick.
Inconveniently for biographers, Barack Obama is a gifted writer—second among presidents, perhaps, to Ulysses Grant. He told his own story in “Dreams from My Father” (1995). Still, “The Bridge”, by the New Yorker’s editor, chronicles Mr Obama’s rise. Most entertaining is his account of Chicago’s South Side, where Mr Obama began his electoral career. This is not a comprehensive account of Mr Obama’s legacy—it ends shortly after his first term began—but it is a colourful portrait of a man who met his country’s moment.
John Adams. By David McCullough.
Americans’ reverence for the Founding Fathers can obscure their flaws. David McCullough’s John Adams is brave yet filled with self-doubt, exacting yet fussy. (He and Benjamin Franklin, forced to share a room while travelling, argue over whether the window should be open or closed at night.) The magic of this book is that this ordinary, pudgy man is waging an epic battle for his country’s independence. Often overlooked, Adams, Mr McCullough argues, was central to America’s birth: he pushed relentlessly for independence, served dutifully as vice-president and negotiated shrewdly with European powers.
Reagan. By Max Boot.
Ronald Reagan was a paradox: an affable communicator who won voters’ and staffers’ affection, but who was emotionally distant from everyone except his wife. That remoteness has frustrated biographers: Edmund Morris, who won a Pulitzer prize for his book on Theodore Roosevelt, found Reagan “inscrutable” despite years of conversations; he ended up writing a semi-fictionalised “memoir” of Reagan instead. Max Boot, a historian who advised Republican presidential candidates but broke with his party over Mr Trump, has triumphed over predecessors. He marshals a huge amount of research to provide a full account of Reagan’s life, from his boyhood in Illinois to his decline into Alzheimer’s.
Team of Rivals. By Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Steven Spielberg used this as the basis of his film “Lincoln” for good reason: Doris Kearns Goodwin is a dogged researcher and vivid writer. Her Abraham Lincoln is as Daniel Day-Lewis portrayed him: determined and humane. Like his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination in 1860, Lincoln opposed slavery, but was less radical than some. Being relatively unknown was an advantage, as was coming from what was then the Wild West of Kentucky and Illinois. It is a testament to Ms Kearns Goodwin’s narrative genius that, despite every event being known, her book has a propulsive sense of suspense: it is a genuine page-turner.
The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate. By Robert Caro.
The third volume of Robert Caro’s masterful series spans Lyndon Johnson’s arrival in the Senate in 1949 to his ascent to the vice-presidency. Johnson began his political career as a consistent opponent of civil rights, like the rest of his colleagues from the former Confederacy, but almost single-handedly pushed through the Civil Rights Act of 1957, now largely forgotten in the wake of President Johnson’s more ambitious legislation in the 1960s. This is as much a biography of the Senate as of Johnson’s time in it; readers will come away with a much deeper understanding of how the legislature, and political power, function. ■
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