If history is written by the winners, it's convenient that some of the biggest winners in the recent U.S. presidential election are historians. With the country tying its hopes to the wisdom of incoming President Barack Obama—a man who touted his appetite for presidential biographies early and often—looking back is suddenly trendy.
“We have no better advocate for history than a gifted and popular president who says that his reading about Roosevelt and Lincoln informs his decisions about the future. That not only makes it the cool thing to do, but it reminds people that the past can illuminate the future,” says Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer, author most recently of Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860—1861 (S&S, 2008).
As their field enjoys newfound attention, historians who've spent their careers reading and writing about past U.S. leaders have plenty to say about what distinguishes outstanding presidential biographies from all the rest, about how today's concerns color our view of yesterday's presidents and about what we should expect from future books about Bush 43.
For starters, they say, the best presidential books deliver the exhaustive research of a doctoral thesis with the narrative flair of an airplane read. “It has to be absorbing and engrossing and serious at the same time, and that's a hard combination,” says Newsweek senior editor Jonathan Alter, who wrote The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope (S&S, 2006) and has a deal with S&S to pen a book about Obama's first months in office.
The most exceptional biographies, says Douglas Brinkley, go beyond outward events to illuminate “the internal clock of a president,” as well as combine analysis with atmospheric details that transport readers back in time.
Which books make the cut? Historians single out Edmund Morris's Pulitzer Prize—winning The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (Random House, 1979) as one they admire. “Morris is very meticulous with his research and somehow brings the young Roosevelt back to life,” says Brinkley.
Other historians' favorites include Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox by James McGregor Burns (Harcourt, Brace, 1956), No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in WWII by Doris Kearns Goodwin (S&S, 1994) and Lincoln by David Herbert Donald (S&S, 1995). All get praise for providing insight into how a president's personal experiences affected his public decisions.
The Subject Matters
If there's such a thing as a shortcut to writing a great presidential book, it's to choose a great president as the subject. That explains why store shelves are stuffed with books on Lincoln and FDR—and light on biographies of, say, Chester Arthur—says historian Robert Dallek, whose books include An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917—1963 (Little, Brown, 2003). Lincoln and FDR stand out among their peers, he says, not just because they led the country through huge crises, but because they governed effectively.
“Most presidents, retrospectively, come across as ineffective. Most of them are nameless, faceless characters who don't register on anyone, including historians,” says Dallek, who predicts a similar fate for some recent U.S. presidents. “How long will it be before Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and the first President Bush are utterly forgotten?”
In some cases, though, notoriety will do just as well as greatness. Historians have an affinity for books about Richard Nixon, including Dallek's Nixon and Kissinger (HarperCollins, 2007), which reveals how the two leaders collaborated on some of the biggest foreign policy debacles and achievements in U.S. history, and The Final Days (S&S, 1976), Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's step-by-step account of the months leading up to Nixon's resignation.
What both books have in common, aside from their disgraced subject, is that they provide a vivid portrait of a time as well as a man. They also work because they serve up a rich slice of a president's life, instead of trying to be more comprehensive. “If you're flying by at 150 miles an hour, you inevitably are going to have to leave out some of the quirky details that readers savor,” says Alter.
Biographers don't just exploit the reputations of great or notorious presidents, they help shape them. Fawn Brodie's Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (W.W. Norton, 1974) raised public awareness of that president's affair with the slave Sally Hemings, profoundly influencing future study of Jefferson. And David McCullough's John Adams (S&S, 2001) is widely credited with revitalizing the image of our second president.
Still, no matter how skillful the writer, a president's tenure and books about him are interpreted through the lens of current events. Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals (S&S, 2005), about Lincoln turning his former opponents into advisers, resonated in a country fed up with an administration seen as intolerant of dissenting views even before Obama said that reading the book helped shape his thinking. As Obama began assembling his cabinet, Team of Rivals became not just a book title but shorthand for the “change” Obama promised.
By the same token, Alter's book about FDR's bold early moves to bring the nation out of the Great Depression has a currency he could only dream of during the flush years when he was writing it. Obama has talked about getting insights from Alter's book, and Defining Moment is a contender to replace Team of Rivals as the media's favorite cliché (though a new contender, from Adam Cohen, loooms; see sidebar, p. 32).
Brinkley anticipates a book he's wanted to write for a decade will benefit from the heightened interest in all things green this spring when HarperCollins publishes The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America: 1858—1919. “I think the timing is kind of interesting now because there's this need to save the last parcels of American wilderness from encroachment,” Brinkley says. “So I hope in that regard the lessons of 100 years ago, will have some application to our modern times.”
Conversely, current events can keep us from appreciating a president's legacy and affect his appeal with biographers. Historians say, for example, that LBJ's domestic achievements have not been adequately covered by biographers. (Robert Caro's masterful three-book series The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Knopf, 1982, 1990, 2002) only takes LBJ up to his years in the Senate.) President Johnson's efforts to fight poverty and promote civil rights have been overshadowed by his escalating U.S. involvement in Vietnam. “I think what has ill-served Johnson has been the Iraq War,” says Dallek. “It has rekindled feelings of stress over a war that probably shouldn't have been fought.” He added that five years from now, if the U.S. is out of Iraq and Obama's been successful in passing domestic legislation that evokes memories of Great Society reforms, readers might be more receptive to a biography that highlights the positive side of LBJ's legacy.
Is Bush the New Buchanan?
By their own reasoning, biographers can't know how future generations will judge President George W. Bush. Yet they have their hunches.
“I think he's locked in a struggle right now with James Buchanan for the worst president in American history,” Alter says. “But if things stabilize in the Middle East, which is possible, then his reputation will rise a bit and he'll maybe nudge past Buchanan. But I think he's going to be in the bottom rung no matter what he does.”
Dallek expects to see revisionist books aimed at burnishing Bush's legacy. “There will be an argument about him,” he says. “But I would think the prevailing interpretation of him will be pretty negative.”
Still, Holzer points to major mysteries regarding the past eight years—including why there hasn't been a terrorist attack in the U.S. since 9/11. “Is it because Bush did unconscionable things to the Constitution? Is it because he did brilliant things? Is it luck? I don't think we know that yet. And that's worthy of profound and dispassionate examination,” says Holzer. “And until that's done, I don't think we can close the book on the Bush administration.”
His other actions aside, historians have a specific, professional reason to be upset with Bush. In 2001, he signed an executive order placing severe restrictions on access to information made available through the Presidential Records Act of 1978. That raises fears that biographers may never have the material they need to accurately assess his presidency.
For his part, Bush will almost surely put his own take on events in a memoir. Biographers say instead of rushing into a big, fat tome about this presidency, he'd be smart to give readers some time to get over their Bush fatigue. Brinkley suggested that he ease into it with a smaller book focusing on the emotional side of what it was like to be president during 9/11.
Alter, who says presidential memoirs are almost never worth reading because they're not well written and rarely reveal any new information, would like to see Bush do something bold. “I think he has a chance to improve his poor standing in history with a surprisingly candid memoir. If he writes a self-serving, kind of cookie-cutter memoir, then it will be a huge nonevent,” says Alter. “If he actually digs deep and really comes to terms with his failures, it could be very, very interesting. But I'm not holding my breath.”
Further Sources:PW has been tracking new Lincoln books since last summer. Our adult reviews are gathered at www.publishersweekly.com/lincoln. For an overview of Lincoln books for children, see www.publishersweekly.com/lincolnkids.
