My Goal- To read one biography and /memoirs of each American President. A “grown up “book not a children’s bio. That
would take me a week.
So far this year I've read 141 books for my Goodreads challenge. It included mostly adult and YA novels, as well
as graphic novels. I didn’t include picture books or short chapter books because
then again I would have completed my challenge too soon. I also didn’t count the mad skimming/reading
of several dozen pregnancy/breastfeeding/child care books I devoured last year
in preparation for the birth of my daughter. Even with my busy schedule, I
always find time for books.
But why the Presidents? Why would I want to read about a bunch
of (mostly) dead white men when there are realms of fiction and fantasy to explore?
Well...I’ve never found an exact reason. I love history which
plays a part. But I guess it all started way back in college. I had an acquaintance
who prided herself in knowing all sorts of bizarre facts about the presidents.
She would challenge anyone to name any president and she would spout out a factoid.
I had a pretty similar thought “Who in their right mind studied the presidents?”
I will state that we were both theater major and American History was nowhere
on our required course studies. Also the person in question was bluntly; a
hippie. When she wasn’t talking about dead presidents she was foaming at the
mouth about her displeasure at the current commander in chief at the time:
George W. Bush.
Later a year after college working in my first theater job, somehow
I was challenge to learn the names of the presidents in order. Which I did,
studying over the course of an evening between set changes and reciting the
list the next day with great success. Soon this became my “parlor trick”.
Reciting the list while doing chores and even correctly stating it after 8
drinks in one very foolish Cinco de Mayo.
But really, what is so special about
learning 44 names in order? We can
recite lyrics to our favorite songs, and even sometimes entire movies and
musicals, but we can’t be bothered to learn the names of our former leaders.
Right now there are hot-headed true-blooded “’Mericans’” who couldn’t name ten
presidents much less all of them.
And what of those presidents? Besides the big names –Washington,
Lincoln , Roosevelt- can the majority of our citizens even recall the
historical contributions of our presidents. I’ve known college bound teenage
patrons, bright kids, who couldn’t tell me who was president during the major
wars in our history. I’m talking The Revolution and the Civil War, much less
who in command during the War of 1812 or the Spanish American War. I challenged some of our teen age volunteers
to list as many presidents as they could in two minutes as a way to keep them
busy at the desk. I think the most they got was 6…and they didn’t even include the
current president.
One thing lead to another as my interest peaks. I read books
on great presidential speeches. Picked up a children’s biography that had an interesting
twist. I think I read every one in the Mike Veneciza Getting to know the U.S. Presidents bio series (see I told you kid’s book weren't a challenge for me). Perhaps this is
when it became a personal obsession. It wasn’t enough for me to know their
names. I had to learn about them. Their lives, wives, likes, dislikes so on and
so forth. Unfortunately, the presidents
didn’t have a presence on social media to air out their dirty laundry. So one
must look to the books. The Secret Lives of Presidents, Presidential Anecdotes,
The Presidential Book of Lists.
The Greatest Presidential Stories Never Told. Sex Lives of the Presidents.Now I could tell you who was the tallest (Lincoln), shortest (Madison). Lived the longest, who had a PHD, and who had hardly any education. The staggering number of how many presidents are related to one another. (6 degrees of Kevin Bacon to the extreme) The more I learned, the more their traits became to grow on me. Adams’ stubbornness, Lincoln’s humor, and the fact that LBJ used words like “bunghole” in casual conversation. (True)
I don’t know everything. But I’m pretty confident on this
subject matter so far. But I’m not a political scientist. I don’t know
everything that is going on in Washington at this time, but I would like to
think I have a good grip on the basic facts. At least enough to challenge some
of my right wing hotheaded relatives to a contest of historical trivia and wipe
the floor with them. (Hey maybe for Christmas we can play a friendly game of presidential
trivia instead of behind held hostage by watching Fox News! Ah holiday memories)
So it’s time to take the plunge, and if I’m going to talk the talk, I’ll have to walk the walk. But the question was then, where to start. I looked into a couple other bloggers who have tackled the challenge.
The simplest would be to go in chronically order, first to last. But I will admit that sounded rather intimidating. The first three had such a wide collection of bios to choose from and they are BIG books. I kn0w I wanted to read John Adams by David McCullough (with a whopping 751 pages) With more history behind them, I was afraid of being consumed by reading these books and then getting either bored of frustrated and giving up before I got to the end. Going backwards seemed odd since at the time of my writing this, President Obama hasn’t finished his second term. I even toyed with the idea of starting in the middle and working my way backwards and forwards, ending with Washington and Obama.
Then the idea hit me of looking at the popular opinion polls. I’m not a historian or a political analysis. I’m an average American citizen, (whose job allows her to be surrounded books for 40 hours a week). Perhaps I could use that list and “save the best for last”. So I decided to work my way from the lowest ranked president to the most popular. I’m using a 2013 list from New York Time “data-driven analysis” Nate Silver.
I feel like I’m
looking at lists some school girls wrote, ranking the boys in their class from
cutest to ugliest
My reason. Well if you are on the bottom you haven’t really made a great contribution. Your bios are probably a “little less compelling” than a leader who guided the country through war, economic downfall or abundance prosperity. Hence…your books are going to be perhaps a little boring…or and short!
The trick now is getting anyone interested in this blog as I just told everyone that I’m starting with the lease popular (boring) presidents first. But who knows maybe we will learn something interesting…
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