Many presidents of the United States have written autobiographies about their presidencies and/or (some periods of) their life before their time in office. Some 19th-century U.S. presidents who wrote autobiographies are James Buchanan and Ulysses S. Grant, though Grant's autobiography is about his time as general during the U.S. Civil War and not about his presidency. Presidential memoir has proved to be a lasting and popular genre — every president who survived to the end of their term from Calvin Coolidge to Barack Obama has published one after leaving office, and more recent entries have earned their authors tens of millions of dollars in royalties. [1]
Title | President | Editor | Publisher | Date | ISBN |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
The Diary of James K. Polk | James K. Polk | ||||
The Diary of James A. Garfield | James A. Garfield | ||||
The Eisenhower Diaries | Dwight D. Eisenhower | Robert Ferrell | W W Norton & Co Inc | 1976 | ISBN 978-0-393-33180-6 |
Prelude to Leadership: The European Diary of John F. Kennedy: Summer 1945 | John F. Kennedy | Regnery Publishing | 1995 | ISBN 978-0-89526-459-6 | |
The Letters of John F. Kennedy | John F. Kennedy | Martin W. Sandler | Bloomsbury Press | 2013 | ISBN 978-1-60819-271-7 |
Richard Nixon: Speeches, Writings, Documents | Richard Nixon | Rick Perlstein | Princeton University Press | 2010 | ISBN 978-1-4008-3568-3 |
White House Diary | Jimmy Carter | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 2010 | ISBN 978-0-374-28099-4 | |
The Reagan Diaries | Ronald Reagan | Douglas Brinkley | HarperCollins | 2007 | ISBN 978-0-06-087600-5 |
All the Best | George H. W. Bush | Scribner | 1999 | ISBN 978-0-684-83958-5 |
Free-access presidential autobiographical works
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Calvin Coolidge was the 30th president of the United States, serving from 1923 to 1929. A Republican lawyer from Massachusetts, he previously served as the 29th vice president from 1921 to 1923 under President Warren G. Harding, and as the 48th governor of Massachusetts from 1919 to 1921. Coolidge gained a reputation as a small-government conservative with a taciturn personality and dry sense of humor that earned him the nickname "Silent Cal".
Religious affiliations can affect the electability of the presidents of the United States and shape their stances on policy matters and their visions of society and also how they want to lead it. While no president has ever openly identified as an atheist, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and William Howard Taft were speculated to be atheists by their opponents during political campaigns; in addition, a survey during the presidency of Donald Trump showed that 63% of Americans did not believe he was religious, despite his professed Christian affiliation. Conspiracy theorists also falsely circulated rumors that Barack Obama was a Muslim during his 2004 Senate campaign and later time as President. Conversely, other presidents, such as Jimmy Carter, have used their faith as a defining aspect of their campaigns and tenure in office.
In the United States, the presidential library system is a nationwide network of 16 libraries administered by the Office of Presidential Libraries, which is part of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). These are repositories for preserving and making available the papers, records, collections and other historical materials of every president of the United States since Herbert Hoover, the 31st president from 1929–1933. In addition to the library services, museum exhibitions concerning the presidency are displayed.
In political studies, surveys have been conducted in order to construct historical rankings of the success of the presidents of the United States. Ranking systems are usually based on surveys of academic historians and political scientists or popular opinion. The scholarly rankings focus on presidential achievements, leadership qualities, failures, and faults. Popular-opinion polls typically focus on recent or well-known presidents.
The 1932 Republican National Convention was held at Chicago Stadium in Chicago, Illinois, from June 14 to June 16, 1932. It nominated President Herbert Hoover and Vice President Charles Curtis for reelection.
Robert Hugh Ferrell was an American historian. He authored more than 60 books on topics including the U.S. presidency, World War I, and U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy. One of the country's leading historians, Ferrell was widely considered the preeminent authority on the administration of Harry S. Truman, and also wrote books about half a dozen other 20th-century presidents. He was thought by many in the field to be the "dean of American diplomatic historians", a title he disavowed.
Beginning with painter Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington, it has been tradition for the president of the United States to have an official portrait taken during their time in office, most commonly an oil painting. This tradition has continued to modern times, although since the adoption of photography as a widely used and reliable technology, the official portrait may also be a photograph.
The first inauguration of Calvin Coolidge as the 30th president of the United States was held on Friday, August 3, 1923, at the Coolidge Homestead in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, following the death of President Warren G. Harding the previous evening. The inauguration – the sixth non-scheduled, extraordinary inauguration to ever take place – marked the commencement of the first term of Calvin Coolidge as president. The presidential oath of office was administered to the new president by his father, John Calvin Coolidge Sr., who was a Vermont notary public and justice of the peace. On Tuesday, August 21, 1923, President Coolidge repeated the oath before Justice Adolph A. Hoehling Jr. of the Court of the District of Columbia at the Willard Hotel, Washington, D.C.
The second inauguration of Calvin Coolidge as president of the United States, was held on Wednesday, March 4, 1925, at the East Portico of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. This was the 35th presidential inauguration and marked the commencement of the second and only full term of Calvin Coolidge as president and the only term of Charles G. Dawes as vice president. Chief Justice William Howard Taft, who had served as president from 1909 to 1913, administered the oath of office. This was the first inauguration on which a former U.S. president administered the Oath and the first to be broadcast nationally on radio.
The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge is an autobiography written by former United States President Calvin Coolidge. Shortly after Coolidge left office, it was serialized in Cosmopolitan magazine in nine parts, from April through December, 1929. It was published as a book in November 1929 by the Cosmopolitan Book Corporation. It was also serialized through newspaper syndication.
Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th president of the United States (1869–1877) following his success as military commander in the American Civil War. Under Grant, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and secession, the war ending with the surrender of Robert E. Lee's army at Appomattox Court House. As president, Grant led the Radical Republicans in their effort to eliminate vestiges of Confederate nationalism and slavery, protect African American citizenship, and pursued Reconstruction in the former Confederate states. In foreign policy, Grant sought to increase American trade and influence, while remaining at peace with the world. Although his Republican Party split in 1872 as reformers denounced him, Grant was easily reelected. During his second term the country's economy was devastated by the Panic of 1873, while investigations exposed corruption scandals in the administration. Although still below average, his reputation among scholars has significantly improved in recent years because of greater appreciation for his commitment to civil rights, moral courage in his prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan, and enforcement of voting rights.
Calvin Coolidge's tenure as the 30th president of the United States began on August 2, 1923, when Coolidge became president upon Warren G. Harding's death, and ended on March 4, 1929. A Republican from Massachusetts, Coolidge had been vice president for 2 years, 151 days when he succeeded to the presidency upon the sudden death of Harding. Elected to a full four–year term in 1924, Coolidge gained a reputation as a small-government conservative. Coolidge was succeeded by former Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover after the 1928 presidential election.
The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant is a book by Julia Grant, the first lady of the United States and wife of Ulysses S. Grant. Though the book's initial manuscript was written in the 1890s, it was not published until 1975, nearly 73 years after Grant's death. Upon publication, the book received mixed reviews from critics, with some appreciating its description of the author's life and insight into life in the Victorian era. Others criticized the book as un-revealing and "not very insightful".