Download Star-Spangled Men: America's Ten Worst Presidents Formulated By Nathan Miller Provided As EPub

are some interesting stories in the book, but there is also some truly bad history, There is no doubt that the presidents highlighted here
were bad, The corruption and inability to make decisions or set a vision are rightly condemned, However, a number of presidents were faulted for not knowing things that would only be understood or known decades later.
It is easy see the slide to the Civil War or the long term ramifications of the first protests in Iran from the distance ofyears.
The author should have left omniscience off of his requirements for the presidency, This book is a fast read and well worth the time, Great to read on lunch hour while reading other books, It is great because little is written about these presidents as opposed to Lincoln, Washington, Kennedy etc, . . I rather suspect if this book were written today rather than in thes, the lineup would look a little different.
Whether one agrees with the author's selection or not and quite frankly I can't be bothered to sufficiently acquaint myself with the records of allUS presidents before my lifetime to have much of an opinion on the matter, the book provides some interesting anecdotes about some lesser known presidents that make for entertaining enough reading.
This is an interesting book by Nathan Miller, who claims impartiality by indicating that he has voted Democrattimes, Republicantimes, and minor party twice.
I don't know if I agree with his choices or notI'm certainly no historian, But it was very interesting for the historical and biographical information, I also learned that I never want to be presidentwhat a job! I actually already knew that, though.
I'll list hisworst presidents in reverse order with brief comment:

, Jimmy Carter. Many of the presidents on his list were basically good, successful men who were not well suited to be president of the United States.
Carter's one of them.

. William Howard Taft. Taft is another one of them, It seems that he didn't really want to be president, but his wife wanted it and he could get elected easily because he was a good pal of Teddy Roosevelt.
Later on he became chief justice, though,

. Benjamin Harrison. I actually don't remember much of what I read about him and I'm not interested enough to go back and look.


. Calvin Coolidge. I enjoyed reading about Coolidge, He was noted as a man of few words, A white house guest pleaded with him to talk to her because she had made a bet that she could get more than two words out of him.
Coolidge replied, "You lose. "

. Ulysses S. Grant. Say what you will about the man, he has quite a remarkable success story, He was completely broke and going nowhere in thes and then somehow became a Civil War hero and then a twoterm president.
And if he was so bad, then how did he get on thebill

, Andrew Johnson. Raleigh's own. He was interesting because he was a stalwart proUnion guy, but was also by all accounts a racist, which led to him botching postCivil War reconstruction.


. Franklin Pierce. Also interesting is how some of these men became president, You imagine them as the best America has to offer and their election is the culmination of a great political career.
The reality is that Pierce was nominated as a lowest common denominator candidatehe had no enemies,

. James Buchanan. The whole thing with Buchanan sending an Army out to Utah earned a paragraph in the book as one of his great blunders because he would stand up to Momons but not to the Southerners.


. Warren G.

Harding. The most entertaining chapter of the book is Harding's, A few of the highlights of his brief presidency: the secretary of the interior turns the nation's petroleum reserves over to the oil companies for personal gain, the head of the Veterans bureau loots government warehouses for personal gain, Harding is discovered choking the head of the Veterans Bureau because of it, Harding himself carries on an affair with a married woman for a decade, the RNC gives her money and sends her on a boat to Japan before the election, Harding has a child with a womanyears younger, the mistress frequently "visits" him in a White House closet, and it has been suggested that Harding was poisoned by his own wife to spare him from public disgrace once the details of his corrupt administration started to come out.
Whew!

. Richard Nixon. I wrote a history fair paper in junior high school on Richard Nixon, I think that my basic conclusion was that even considering the Watergate scandal, Nixon was still a pretty good president.
You know, because he was the first president in office to visit China, I may have been a little off base, Reading about Nixon was actually probably the most depressing chapter in the book,

As a side note, one of my favorite Growing Pains moments is when Mike Seaver wins student body president with Boner as his running mate.
Upon hearing the news, Boner announces, "Me, vicepresident, Richard Milhous Stabone!" And then he says, "They ain't gonna have Boner to kick around no more!" Then he's immediately knocked down by students rushing into the room.
I learned from reading this book that the "kick around" quote is a real Nixon quote after he lost the governor race in California in.
Cool.

In the last part of the book, the author also lights up John F, Kennedy and Thomas Jefferson as the country's two most overrated presidents, This is getting long, so I'll spare you the details, but if you don't like JFK, reading it will make you feel justified.


The most interesting part of the ranking is that the presidents on the worst list were sort of grouped together in their times of service.
Harding and Coolidge presided over most of thes, right before America went off the cliff, Nixon and Carter presided over most of thes, which as far as I understand was sort of a depressing time.


But what about theworst list including the two presidents who immediately preceded Abraham Lincoln Pierce, Buchanan as well as the two who immediately followed him Johnson, Grant That pretty much confirms that Lincoln was America's greatest president.
I also learned that America was messed up during this time, For all the tensions about the Iraq now, it must have beentimes worse during the Civil War.
People had some major hostilities going on, . .

I really enjoyed this book, It showed the history behind the names we all know by rote and the blemishes forgotten by most history books.
I particularly enjoyed learning more about Coolidge, Buchanan, and Harding, Warren G is my new fave prez, I also really enjoyed the epilogue where the author related who he thought were themost overrated POTUS, Jefferson and Kennedy.
I could have read a whole book just on that, All in all, I think this is a good read for those wanting to know more about the hits and misses of the office.
It would also enlighten those who keep bitching ignorantly about our current administration, Calvin Coolidge is the best, I kind of want to marry him just because the chapter on him made me laugh so much.
I mostly agree with his assessment, His criteria is similar to mine, I don't think I would have put Grant on the list, I would probably replace him with Andrew Jackson, I thinkwould have topped his list based on his criteria, Contains some interesting anecdotes about ten of our presidents, A different tact from the usual "greatest presidents" angle, The funniest book on the presidency I have ever read, Enlightening book about this author's list of the worst presidents, Even if you disagree, you'll learn something, and he makes good arguments for his inclusions of the worst, and adds two whom he considers overrated.
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