Sponsored by Book Marks: A Reading Tracker.
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I was really tempted to put Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior and President on here (see how I still did?), but I want to give you all some pretty digestible reads in the wake of Presidents’ Day. Here’s the thing: A lot of our presidents (and presidential candidates) have not been great. Many have been average. Some have been seriously harmful. Some have been tremendous. Many have been mixes of all these things! Everything is complicated, so here are some book picks to help you sort the wheat from the chaff:
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. This Pulitzer Prize-winning Lincoln biography traces his political success to his extraordinary empathy. If you’ve been to the Petersen House exhibits (this is the house where Lincoln died in D.C.) then you know about the Abraham Lincoln book tower (it’s 34 feet tall and 8 feet in circumference). Thousands and thousands of books have been written about Lincoln, but if you’re looking for one of the best-reviewed of all time, check this one out.
Unbought & Unbossed by Shirley Chisholm. This is Chisholm’s 1970 account of her life, from being a young girl growing up in Brooklyn to America’s first African American Congresswoman, all of which leads up to her 1972 presidential bid. She talks about speaking up against Vietnam, advocating for the pro-choice movement before Roe vs. Wade, and the consequences of a government that cannot hear the people. For a follow-up read, check out The Good Fight.
Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar. There’s a lot of glorifying of George Washington, which needs to be tempered by some real grounding in his reality as a fallible human being. Never Caught definitely accomplishes that, highlighting the story of Ona Judge, enslaved by Martha Washington’s family, who escaped and who the Washingtons could not let go.
So many books about presidents! And they will continue to be written! Lincoln has at least 15,000 books written about him, which is already so many, and then we have 44 other presidents, all with books about them (there’s someone staking their scholarly career on being the authority on Millard Fillmore, and y’know what, you do you). Happy Post-Presidents’ Day to all!