2024 the best us president review

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(as of Nov 21, 2024 16:27:08 UTC - Details)

The complete rankings of our best - and worst - presidents, based on C-SPAN's much-cited Historians Surveys of Presidential Leadership.

Over a period of decades, C-SPAN has surveyed leading historians on the best and worst of America's presidents across a variety of categories - their ability to persuade the public, their leadership skills, their moral authority, and more. The crucible of the presidency has forged some of the very best and very worst leaders in our national history, along with everyone in between.

Based on interviews conducted over the years with a variety of presidential biographers, this book provides not just a complete ranking of our presidents, but stories and analyses that capture the character of the men who held the office. From Abraham Lincoln's political savvy and rhetorical gifts to James Buchanan's indecisiveness, this book teaches much about what makes a great leader - and what does not.

As America looks ahead to our next election, this book offers perspective and criteria to help us choose our next leader wisely.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

Reviewer: AmyC
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Wonderful book!
Review: This book has so much more information in it than any history book I've seen. The historians who did the writing are able to Bring out unknown and little-known happenings and tie it all together to explain so much! I enjoyed reading about each president, even though the authors are different, thus their styles are different, it was enjoyable to read. I'm sure I will use this book as a resource often and go back and read parts again and again!

Reviewer: Rick Mayo
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Subjective Rankings are Always Found in this Subject
Review: Regardless of standards and tables used to score, the results will always be subjective. There will always be a tilt, liberal or conservative, in the scholars review and summation. Will not disagree with the top three or bottom three; Lincoln, Washington & Franklin Roosevelt will always lead as Buchanan, Pierce & William Henry Harrison will always fall to the bottom. As long as imperfect humans are conducting "scientific" polls there will always be a bias on the results depending on your political tendencies.That being said, there is truly a concerted effort made to make these rankings as unbiased as possible. The effort is there but the resulting rankings do not support their efforts. Ranking Obama & Clinton as high as they are is a clear indication of the bias involved in these polls. Obama's tenure is not far enough in history to give an accurate assessment. Clinton's moral failures may be recognized as detrimental to his rankings but the more you examine in hindsight the more policy and administration failures are revealed. My feeling is that the compilers actually raised Clinton's rankings BECAUSE of his failures, not in LOWERED it because of them.The truth that is seen in each and every ranking is that political bias is evident in the middle and lower middle rankings. This is a very well researched book with excellent references to current authors of presidential biographies. It does reveal that the need to examine the "minor" chief executives deeper - like Zachary Taylor or Millard Fillmore, William Henry Harrison or Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland or Rutherford Hayes - to get a better understanding of their times and policies. To use 1999 biography notes is a sad statement on the position these men have held.I will give the effort 4-stars because of the attempt made to be 'scientific". I found the book easy to read and quite factual. It was well-researched, for the most part.I did find the final assessment on President Trump to be extremely biased against him and his election. The panel who assessed the potential term were not what could be considered "even-handed" in their approach. I appreciate the fact that they elected not to rank him but their opinions were highly subjective and to left of center.

Reviewer: sheridan
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Ultimately a great read
Review: Every chapter is defined by a President and one historian's understanding of the person. Often this understanding is laced with storytelling, interviews, and perspectives, but nevertheless each chapter provides a solid grasp of who these men really were. Abraham Lincoln's chapter, for example, emphasizes his time before the Presidency, and how Lincoln shaped his cabinet, philosophy, and personality before his rise to the Presidency. In telling this, you learn more about the Presidents' character and rationale, rather than the key decisions and accomplishments they achieved during their Presidency. I personally find this very enjoyable, but for those who should wish to seek a better understanding of history, perhaps a textbook is better. However, for those who want lessons in character, leadership, and determination, I highly recommend.

Reviewer: richard m tatoian
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Prompt Service
Review: The book arrived when promised and was carefully packaged and in excellent condition.

Reviewer: Richard
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Good book, but doesn't explain rankings rationale
Review: This book is a good source of other books on each president. The discussion for each president comes from a C-SPAN interview with an author that wrote a book on that president. After reading the write-up on the president, if you found that you want to learn more, they mention the author and book so that you can read their book. Understand that the write-ups for each president is not necessarily a summary of their presidency. Some are about a specific aspect of their presidency, and in the case of President Obama, it is primarily about his life before he was president. What I didn't like was that I bought the book for more details on the presidential rankings. The rankings were provided, and they were used for sorting the Presidents, but no explations were provided why they received their rankings. The inclusion of the rankings seemed to be more of a gimmick for selling the book. In the end, I still liked the book. I did learn more about the presedents, and I now have a list of other books I want to read.

Reviewer: Jane
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Great for Teachers
Review: As an elementary school teacher, I'm always striving to learn and discover new ways to talk about history, the presidents and to share lessons of leadership. This book will be my go-to resource for years to come for fun anecdotes, historical perspective and context to these presidencies, to inspire a love of history in my students and to help them build their own leadership skills.

Reviewer: Mike
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Thorough but not comprehensive
Review: Interesting and informative, presents a good and readable, but brief, summary of each president, key issues and accomplishments, and how they are judged by history.

Reviewer: Rose Reed
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A wonderful read!
Review: This is a must read for those interested in learning about our past leadership. Brian Lamb has done an outstanding job sourcing this work. The historians he prevailed upon to cover these presidents live up to their reputations as world class scholars. It’s hard to put the book done once started.

Reviewer: A.Stedmann
Rating: 2.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Information on many presidents are very party loyal - lacking in historical details. For example - why was there no historical explanation of the individual who shot President McKinley?As a reference book I expected more!