Presidential biographies: you've lived through the ups and the downs of more than a few presidential administrations, and here's your chance to know even more. We've consulted the experts on presidential biographies from different eras

Bookmarks, May-June, 2008

Douglas L. Wilson

CODIRECTOR OF THE LINCOLN STUDIES CENTER, KNOX COLLEGE

Douglas L. Wilson is codirector of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College. He has written extensively on Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. With his partner Rodney O. Davis, he has edited The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (forthcoming 2008). His own books, Honor's Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln (1998) and Lincoln's Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words (2006), were both awarded the Lincoln Prize.

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The Life of Thomas Jefferson (3 vols.)

By Henry S. Randall (1858)

For historic figures like Thomas Jefferson, some of the older biographies, even those that are hopelessly biased and out of date, are indispensable for scholars, since they contain invaluable information found nowhere else. Randall's sprawling 19th-century biography is a perfect example, since he was unabashedly partisan and had the assistance of members of Jefferson's immediate family and access to family papers and other documents no longer extant. Yet Randall's book is still eminently readable and can be recommended both for its limpid prose and for its untroubled depiction of a Founding Father at a time when the battle over the meaning of the founding was about to tear the country apart.

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Truman

By David McCullough (1992)

* PULITZER PRIZE

At first, Harry Truman did not appear to be the stuff of which great national leaders are made, but when he was dropped unexpectedly into the presidency, he spent a long time proving he had the right stuff. No modern president has had so many diffcult crises to face or so many thankless decisions to make--the atomic bomb, the Cold War, Israel, Korea, MacArthur--and with so little public understanding or support. Through diligent research and a sympathetic reconstruction of Truman's patchwork career, McCullough helps us make sense of it all. Not the least of this writer's assets are his unerring sense of narrative and a masterly command of language, which together produce the most readable and enjoyable presidential biography I have ever read.

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Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America

A Biography

By William E. Gienapp (2002)

With an ever-growing number books being published on Abraham Lincoln's life and the civil war over which he presided, it is astonishing to find an authoritative work that covers the ground in only 200 pages. No more meticulous scholar has ever studied these interrelated subjects than the late William E. Gienapp of Harvard, and no one has come even close to writing so compact an account as Gienapp's. Yet in spite of the book's size, its discriminating history of Lincoln's life is surprisingly rich, and the narrative of his presidency and the unfolding of the war is crisp and coherent. This remarkable book is not only the best short work on Lincoln but one of the best of the stellar crop of Lincoln books that has appeared in the last 15 years.

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H. W. Brands

HISTORIAN

H. W. Brands is the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson, among other books. He is currently completing a biography of Franklin Roosevelt.

George Washington (7 vols.)

By Douglas Southall Freeman (1949-1957)

* PULITZER PRIZE

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They don't write them like this any more, which may be a good thing. Freeman--editor of the Richmond News Leader by day, historical biographer by night--loved his fellow Virginians to a fault. His four volumes on Robert E. Lee were even better than these seven on Washington (the last Washington volume was completed after his death), but both biographies won him Pulitzers. He tells more about Washington than any reasonable person nowadays should want to know--which is why he is cherished by all the unreasonable history fanatics out there.

Jefferson and His Time (6 vols.)

By Dumas Malone (1948-1982)

* PULITZER PRIZE

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Malone's work is almost as old-fashioned as Freeman's Washington, and only slightly more objective. Nonetheless, this masterwork recreates the world of America's philosopher-prince, who also happened to be a much tougher politico than his rivals had imagined. For over three decades, Malone channeled the ghost of Jefferson from his office at Jefferson's University of Virginia, and the connection clearly shows--for (mostly) better and (occasionally) worse.

The Years of Lyndon Johnson (3 vols. to date)

By Robert Caro (1982-present)

* NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR THE PATH TO POWER, PULITZER PRIZE AND NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR MASTER OF THE SENATE

This is my wild card. Caro hasn't even reached Johnson's presidency yet, and much of what he has written so far shades into melodrama, with the villains and heroes clearly distinguished. But it is glorious melodrama, riveting readers as Caro draws them into Johnson's world and making them wonder how Johnson--until now mostly the villain--will be redeemed by the time he becomes the great champion of civil rights.