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Prologue
Introduction
George Washington: The President in absentia
John Adams and John Quincy Adams: Like Father, Like Son
Thomas Jefferson: "...a work of art."
James Madison: "Nothing more than a Change of Mind."
James Monroe: "...getting things done."
Andrew Jackson: “Old Hickory” down Rachel’s Lane
Martin Van Buren: Winning
William Henry Harrison: No "LOG CABIN"... No "HARD CIDER"
John Tyler: A Party without a President
James K. Polk: “Who is James K. Polk?”
Zachary Taylor: "...devoted to the Union..."
Millard Fillmore: “Now you see him...now you..."
Franklin Pierce: “...young for the station...”
James Buchanan: The Fruits of Compromise
Abraham Lincoln: Lenses
Andrew Johnson: “Grounded”
Ulysses S. Grant: “...a dream remembered”
Ulysses S. Grant's Home in Galena, Illinois: The Gift of a Grateful Nation
Ulysses S. Grant's Childhood Home in Georgetown, Ohio and Birth Home in Point Pleasant, Ohio: 'Lys
Rutherford B. Hayes: The Foundation of Prosperity
The Sawed Off Tree Limb and the Unexploded Shell
The Emerson Lithograph
The Stately Forest
James A. Garfield: “...love’s labor...”
Chester A. Arthur: “I do, I will.”
Grover Cleveland: “...all that a president ought to be.”
Benjamin Harrison: “I Pledge Allegiance...”
William McKinley: “Remember the Ladies”
“The Advance Agent of Prosperity"
Theodore Roosevelt: “Do you remember the fun of him?”
William Howard Taft: His Home, My Home
Woodrow Wilson: "...a dream life.”
Warren G. Harding: “Normalcy” on Display
Calvin Coolidge: Keeping Store
“Constructive Economy"
Herbert Hoover: “Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Savior," "Caesar”
Harry S. Truman: The Myth of the “Retired Farmer”
Dwight Eisenhower: “...the nation...not myself”
John F. Kennedy: Roseland
Lyndon Baines Johnson: Plateau Live Oak
Richard M. Nixon: “Not because they wished it..."
Gerald Ford: “Junior”
Jimmy Carter: The Sweater President
Ronald Reagan: "We win. They lose."
Reagan Postscript: "...the other lady in my life..." Ronald Reagan's "Rancho del Cielo" near Santa Barbara, California
Afterword: (Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43)
Bill Clinton
George H. W. Bush (41) and George W. Bush (43)
List of United States Presidents
Presidential Homes, Libraries, and Sites We Have Visited
A Very Select Bibliography
INDEX
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Perhaps it was my afternoon visit to the Harding Memorial. Or maybe it was because I had seen a current edition of The Marion Star outside the Applebee's restaurant where Carol and I had just finished dinner. The Star had been the local paper that had launched Warren G. Harding into financial prosperity and a political career, and here it was, still being published in 2009. Whether these, or some other more esoteric, motivations were building up within me, less than a week later I found myself urged, even compelled, to write. As my earlier efforts had taught me, the only way I could really enjoy writing extendedly was under the compulsion of needing to record my thinking and experiences.
So why was I here at my computer beginning this book? Because of something that I have found to be of increasing importance to my life: a deeper, more sympathetic, more complex understanding of the men who have served as President of my country, the United States of America. There is, of course, an obvious reason not to write about this topic. So much information already exists about the Presidents that one could spend an ample lifetime trying to read it all and still not do much more than peruse a small portion of the available information. What could I, admittedly an amateur history enthusiast, have to add to this tsunami of data? My answer is actually quite simple: I have visited the places where the Presidents have lived. Nowhere in my research has anyone used the presidential homes as a touchstone on which to base an understanding of the men who have occupied the vital office of President of the United States.
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Innumerable tourists visit Mount Vernon. It is a handsome place, as they can testify, refurbished with taste and maintained in immaculate order. But the ghosts have been all too successfully exorcised in the process; Mount Vernon is less a house than a kind of museum-temple. We know that George Washington lived and died there; we do not feel the fact …. (2)
It is important that such comments not be construed as criticism of the loving conservation of this site, provided so ably by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association. Mount Vernon is arguably the most completely perfect example of presidential home restoration and conservation in the United States. It is just that I have been unable to find much of Washington the man in this place.
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