CHARACTER ABOVE ALL: Ten Presidents from FDR to George Bush - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684827093 ISBN 13: 9780684827094

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1997

Synopsis

A series of incisive essays on ten United States presidents encompasses Doris Kearns Goodwin on FDR, David McCullough on Truman, Richard Reeves on Kennedy, Stephen Ambrose on Eisenhower, and Peggy Noonan on Reagan. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.

About this title

From Library Journal:

When the issues are too complicated to comprehend or take too much time to sort out, voters can be expected to fall back on the personal qualities of the candidates when they go to the polls. Communications executive and producer Wilson sets out to find the qualities of character of the modern presidents from FDR to George Bush. To do so he brings together some of the most respected historians (Doris Kearns Goodwin, David McCullough, Robert Dallek, and Stephen Ambrose), journalistic heavyweights like James Cannon and Richard Reeves, Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan, and The New Yorker's Hendrick Hertzberg. While Wilson is seeking the relationship between character and leadership effectiveness, he fails to provide some unifying definition of the word character. It seems most of the articles deal with style and world view rather than ethical matters that "character" might imply. Nevertheless, this should be of interest to both academic and general readers.?Frank Kessler, Missouri Western State Coll., St. Joseph
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

The authors of these essays are all historians who have written impressive biographies of presidents. After Kearns on FDR, there's McCullough on Truman, Ambrose on Ike, Reeves on JFK, Dallek on LBJ, Wicker on RN, and on. Their assignment: to define their man's distinctive character in an original essay, and they all show the driving personal qualities that carry presidents to the top of the "greasy pole," followed by traits the nation projects onto the man once in office. Ike, for example, was a segregationist who took decisive steps toward integration; Nixon, elected as the fiscal conservative, put the welfare state on fiscal autopilot. The two writers who stray from balanced appraisal were, coincidentally, speechwriters to their presidents: Hendrick Hertzberg for Carter and Peggy Noonan for Reagan. Despite these two instances of partisanship, every essayist abounds with arch style and cogent insights. Expect interest from the MacNeil-Lehrer crowd. Gilbert Taylor

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0684827093
• ISBN 13: 9780684827094
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256