2024 the best us presidents of all time review

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From a preeminent presidential historian comes a “superb and important” (The New York Times Book Review) saga of America’s wartime chief executives
 
“Fascinating and heartbreaking . . . timely . . . Beschloss’s broad scope lets you draw important crosscutting lessons about presidential leadership.”—Bill Gates
 
Widely acclaimed and ten years in the making, Michael Beschloss’s Presidents of War is an intimate and irresistibly readable chronicle of the Chief Executives who took the United States into conflict and mobilized it for victory. From the War of 1812 to Vietnam, we see these leaders considering the difficult decision to send hundreds of thousands of Americans to their deaths; struggling with Congress, the courts, the press, and antiwar protesters; seeking comfort from their spouses and friends; and dropping to their knees in prayer. Through Beschloss’s interviews with surviving participants and findings in original letters and once-classified national security documents, we come to understand how these Presidents were able to withstand the pressures of war—or were broken by them.
 
Presidents of War combines this sense of immediacy with the overarching context of two centuries of American history, traveling from the time of our Founders, who tried to constrain presidential power, to our modern day, when a single leader has the potential to launch nuclear weapons that can destroy much of the human race.

Praise for Presidents of War

"A marvelous narrative. . . . As Beschloss explains, the greatest wartime presidents successfully leaven military action with moral concerns. . . . Beschloss’s writing is clean and concise, and he admirably draws upon new documents. Some of the more titillating tidbits in the book are in the footnotes. . . . There are fascinating nuggets on virtually every page of Presidents of War. It is a superb and important book, superbly rendered.”—Jay Winik, The New York Times Book Review

"Sparkle and bite. . . . Valuable and engrossing study of how our chief executives have discharged the most significant of all their duties. . . . Excellent. . . . A fluent narrative that covers two centuries of national conflict.” —Richard Snow, The Wall Street Journal

From the Publisher

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B078QTY62K
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Crown (October 9, 2018)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 9, 2018
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 97417 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 700 pages
Reviewer: Donald
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Eight Stories and a Synergy
Review: Author Beschloss explained that this book took him over ten years to write, because each of the eight president’s stories required the research of a complete book. (His sources included manuscripts, conversations, articles, hundreds of books, and visits to six presidential libraries.) The level of detail contained in each episode confirms this statement, and lends credibility to his depictions. Each story consumes multiple chapters.These stories revealed each president’s motivations, thoughts, and actions up to and through the war. Before long, the reader looks for common threads among the stories. And a working hypothesis emerges: that each president decided to direct, or to advance an uncertain country towards involvement in a war.This hypothesis can be confirmed to varying degrees in each episode. With Madison, Polk, and McKinley, provocations led to a president’s decisive action. However, Madison’s rationale was considered weak and the War of 1812 became unpopular. Polk’s and McKinley’s provocations contained an element of contrivance. Daniel Webster decried Polk’s role in the Mexican War, describing it as a “Presidential war.”With Lincoln and Roosevelt, war resulted from a hostile action against the Union/country. Wilson and Truman aided an ally or satisfied a treaty obligation. With Truman, an issue emerged over the absence of a declaration of war, or even a congressional resolution. Truman thought the Korean “police action” would end shortly, but wars rarely go as planned. Truman was misled by McArthur, who advised that the Chinese would not intervene.Both Truman and Johnson were fighting the expansion of Communism in Asia because, according to the prevailing “domino theory,” the fall of one country would lead to the fall of others. With Johnson, the picture became cloudier: Johnson was ill-advised by Secretary of Defense McNamara and others, who later reconsidered their positions. But by then, Johnson was irrevocably entangled. The book divulged that Johnson privately agonized over his situation.In the Epilogue, the hypothesis was extended to WMD and the Iraq War.This fascinating book was well-written, and held my interest throughout. The author’s insightful organization of these stories in a single volume enables a reader to compare U.S. wartime leadership across two centuries. Beschloss heightens reader interest by recounting details from the viewpoints of people “on the ground,” such as Major Andersen, commander of the garrison at Fort Sumter, and Captain Sigsbee, commander of the battleship USS Maine. An interesting twist: the author segues between episodes by tying each president into the previous story.I’m glad I waited the ten years.

Reviewer: Dean Chambers
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A very interesting read!
Review: What a fascinating study on wartime presidents since the United States came into being starting with the War of 1812. The author succinctly goes in depth behind each presidents motives emotions and struggles during each conflict... as well as the consequences of their decisions. He does a great critique of each presidents pros and cons... and I gathered that hindsight is always 20/20 and times change technology changes in each presidency many times more than what the founders imagined. As I was reading I was unsure how the book was going to end with not many chapters or pages devoted to Desert Storm or Iraqi Freedom or the current war in Afghanistan. However the book ended well and it was tied together to a good conclusion proving his thesis. It is also an interesting study on the growth of presidential power in 200 years with each war time presidents setting precedents for the succeeding presidents. I highly recommend this book!

Reviewer: tothemax
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Very interesting, ending was a bit rushed
Review: The author provides detailed and well researched content through LBJ. Then goes into a lightning round style summary of Bush 1, "W", Obama, & Trump. Granted each of those could be a few chapters each, but just seemed like a deadline was looming and was a departure from the original format. Includes content from archives that have reached the end of the security hold and provides some interesting details on the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. Hard to read in some sections with insights on how politics influence presidential decisions.Worth reading...

Reviewer: Robert Morris
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: How "the life or death of much of the human race" depends on the character of one person
Review: Today, opinions are divided with regard to whether or not there should be limits on the power of the President of the United States. In his column for The New York Times (Jan. 14, 2019, Charlie Savage recalls a meeting of President George Bush’s cabinet on January 8, 1991. Iraq had invaded Kuwait. "Half a million American troops were deployed and ready to attack. But many lawmakers were demanding a vote before any war. Rejecting mainstream constitutional views, William P. Barr, the deputy attorney general, told Mr. Bush that he wielded unfettered power to start a major land war on his own — not only without congressional permission, but even if Congress voted against it.“'Mr. President, there’s no doubt that you have the authority to launch an attack,' Mr. Barr said, as he later recalled."Nearly three decades later, President Trump has nominated Mr. Barr to return as attorney general. But unlike the self-restrained Mr. Bush, Mr. Trump revels in pushing limits — a temperament that, when combined with Mr. Barr’s unusually permissive understanding of presidential power, could play out very differently for the rule of law than it did last time."Keep this background information in mind as you read Michael Beschloss's latest book in which he examines eight Presidents presidents and the wars in which they became centrally involved, for better or worse. They are:James Madison, War of 1812 (1812-1815): Pages 64-96James Polk, Mexican-American War (1846-1848): 97-156Abraham Lincoln, Civil War (1861-1865): 157-239William McKinley, Spanish-American War (1898): 240-292Woodrow Wilson, World War One (1914-1918): 293-316 and 317-336Franklin Delano Roosevelt, World War Two (1939-1945): 369-484Harry Truman, Korean War (1950-1953): 435-491Lyndon Baines Johnson, Vietnam War (1965-1973): 492-480To assist your consideration of this exceptionally well-written book, I have selected five brief excerpts that suggest the thrust and flavor of Beschloss's style:o "Madison had clearly changed in his later years. By [historian Charles] Ingersoll's account, he now 'showed the strongest dislike of hostilities' and warned against the American system's 'perpetual liability' to enter a war. Ingersoll believed that by now, the old man's politics were 'simple and lovely...to avoid war at almost any price, and to preserve the Union.'" (Pages 94-95)o "Lincoln was profoundly moved to hear another Whig Congressman denounce Polk's war as blatant aggression, devised to 'force and compel' the Mexicans to sell their country...When Billy Herndon, that same year, questioned his friend about his antiwar zeal, LIncoln replied that if Americans should 'allow the president to invade a neighboring nation [e.g. Mexico] whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion...you allow him to make war at pleasure.'" (156)Years later, "by the night of his murder, Lincoln had won the Civil War, but in death, to a tragic degree, he lost the peace he had sought. The Martyred President had badly erred by allowing the selection of an 1864 running mate who had neither shared his talent for leadership nor his vision for peace." (238)o "For all his high-flown scholarly rhetoric about liberal democracy, the moment Wilson became a war President, he grabbed for authority with some of the passion of an autocrat, claiming that that 'unquestionable powers' were 'absolutely necessary,' and stepped on civil liberties. As a scholar, he had overestimated the ability of a President to change pubic opinion. In 1907, he had written that the Chief Executive possessed 'the only national voice in affairs. Let him once win the admiration and confidence of the country, and no other single force can withstand him, no combination of forces will easily overpower him...If he rightly interpret the national thought and boldly insist upon it, he is irresistible.'" (355-356)o "Feeling isolated, with his conspiratorial tendencies in full throttle, weakened by heart disease and other ailments, Johnson demonized his opposition and, in his increasingly troubled mind, allowed the war to become a titanic test of whether he could conquer those domestic political foes who defied him. A more coolheaded President might, by contrast, have cut his losses earlier. With half a century's hindsight, it is clear that whatever Johnson gained for the United States with his war in Vietnam was never worth its ruinous cost in lives, treasure, American self-confidence, or what Thomas Jefferson called 'the good opinion of mankind.'" (578-579)Beschloss suggests, "Were the Founders to come back, they would probably be astonished and chagrined to discover that, in spite of their ardent strivings, the life or death of much of the human race has now come to depend on the character of the single person who happens to be the President of the United States."It remains to be seen what awaits the United States in months and even years to come. Will traditional checks and balances prevail or will a President embrace a temptation -- "which the Founding Fathers saw in the European despots they abhorred -- to launch a major war out of lust to expand their own popularity and power"? With all due respect to political implications, there is a more serious cluster of issues to address, given Michael Beschloss's assertion that the fate of much of the human race will be determined by Presidential character, for better or worse.

Reviewer: Rashmi Kumar
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: The book goes in details and if somebody is not aware of american history may find it a wee bit hard sometime. But if go through you get a good grasp of the topic and it is interesting.

Reviewer: Stacey K Landers
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I highly recommend this as a gift for all the history lovers in your life.

Reviewer: Marcos Luz
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This book has huge information inside. It covers since the 1812 war against the British until Vietnam war and a little bit about Iraq and al-Qaeda too. The most important thing here is that the author did not stay on the common ground of those wars, he dove to the bottom of it.

Reviewer: Daniel
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Very good, especially for the ones who want to learn new new words, i.e. is not a book for beginners in English.

Reviewer: mishmish
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I haven't quite finished this book which is very readable as well as well documented and detailed. Some of the later wars will be more familiar to readers than the early ones such as Madison's war or Polk's, but there is plenty of material on all of them. One does end up with the feeling that the US has been at war continuously since its creation, and of course that leaves out the Civil War which even today divides the country in many ways. Wars bring about change in a country in many ways, the main effect seeming to be the increase in Presidents' executive powers. The vast powers of today's President are quite contrary to the Founders' attempt to restrict those very powers. Much food for thought here.