The towering figure who remade American politics—the champion of the ordinary citizen and the scourge of entrenched privilegeThe Founding Fathers espoused a republican government, but they were distrustful of the common people, having designed a constit
The Republican efficiency expert whose economic boosterism met its match in the Great DepressionCatapulted into national politics by his heroic campaigns to feed Europe during and after World War I, Herbert Hoover—an engineer by training—exemplified t
The oddly named president whose shortsightedness and stubbornness fractured the nation and sowed the seeds of civil warIn the summer of 1850, America was at a terrible crossroads. Congress was in an uproar over slavery, and it was not clear if a compromis
The first “accidental president,” whose secret maneuverings brought Texas into the Union and set secession in motion
When William Henry Harrison died in April 1841, just one month after his inauguration, Vice President John Tyl
The controversial president whose time in office was defined by the September 11 attacks and the war on terrorGeorge W. Bush stirred powerful feelings on both sides of the aisle. Republicans viewed him as a resolute leader who guided America through the S
The towering figure who sought to transform America into a "Great Society" but whose ambitions and presidency collapsed in the tragedy of the Vietnam WarFew figures in American history are as compelling and complex as Lyndon Baines Johnson, who establishe
The genial but troubled New Englander whose single-minded partisan loyalties inflamed the nation's simmering battle over slavery Charming and handsome, Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire was drafted to break the deadlock of the 1852 Democratic convention. T
The rough-hewn general who rose to the nation's highest office, and whose presidency witnessed the first political skirmishes that would lead to the Civil WarZachary Taylor was a soldier's soldier, a man who lived up to his nickname, "Old Rough and Ready.
The plainspoken man from Missouri who never expected to be president yet rose to become one of the greatest leaders of the twentieth centuryIn April 1945, after the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the presidency fell to a former haberdasher and clubho
