The Five Star

Dwight D. Eisenhower was the last army general to become President of the United States. Like Andrew Jackson and Ulysses S. Grant before him, his military performance begat his political popularity.  His military history, after all, was a long one. He served in the army from 1915-1953. He didn’t see combat in the first World
…read more

The Old Fashioned

Harry Truman helped me through some difficult times.  Yes, I know; that’s weird. In a period that was stressful for a number of reasons that are happily in the past, I tackled David McCullough’s Truman. It took forever to read this 1120 page book. After all, those more difficult moments usually aren’t the ones that
…read more

The Fireside

Franklin D. Roosevelt is one of the first presidents that I remember learning about in school. Well, the Roosevelts were more of a unit to me at the time. Now I can’t imagine being unable to distinguish between my Roosevelts. Many people know Roosevelt for saying, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” In
…read more

The Humanitarian

I have a soft spot for Herbert Hoover. My first Herbert Hoover memory (I understand that it’s not normal to begin a sentence like that) comes from a book about the presidents that occupied a number of my childhood hours. His entry listed his full name Herbert Clark Hoover. The owner of an associative mind,
…read more

The Silent

If people know that you’re into presidents, that it is your thing, you get to hear a lot of people tell you their favorite presidential anecdotes. One of the stories I hear most often is the one about a woman betting that she could get Calvin Coolidge to say more than two words to her.
…read more

The Teapot

I cringe a little bit every time I think about Warren G. Harding.  You see, in the summer of 1994 there was a song called Regulate that played on the radio all of the time This song was by Nate Dogg and Warren G. Knowing that there were scandals in Warren G. Harding’s presidency and
…read more

The Professor

One of the memories that I have of high school history from the year before I started to hate it (some teachers will do that to you), was a discussion of World War 1. It’s not the discussion that I remember so well, but one student’s ardent desire for peace and hope for what could
…read more

The Supreme

William Howard Taft was one of the first presidential biographies that I read when I decided a few years ago to embark upon a project to read a biography of each United States President. There are several things that stood out to me about him then. One of them is that he took dance lessons
…read more

The Rough Rider

There is so much one could say about Theodore Roosevelt. That, I suppose, is something you could say about all of the faces on Mount Rushmore. Roosevelt did so many things. He overcame childhood illness. He overcame losing his mother and his wife on the same day.  You could choose to look at him as
…read more