Nancy
Gibbs and Michael Duffy, The Presidents
Club – Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity (Simon and Schuster:
New York, 2012) 641 Pages.
Also
available for Kindle and Nook and on CD.
(NON-FICTION)
Reviewed
by Sue Dayton.
The Presidents Club is a book about the
fraternity of former presidents of the United States and their relationships
with the sitting president. It begins with Harry Truman’s presidency and his
relationship with Herbert Hoover and continues up until the presidency of
Barack Obama. The format of the book is that each chapter looks at a particular
president and former president i.e., Johnson and Eisenhower, Reagan and Nixon,
Bush and Clinton. An idea is presented that former presidents are bound
together by their experience in the Oval office. The book relates many examples
of former presidents as confidants and mentors to the current president, in many
cases crossing party lines. Also, there are times when former presidents have
stepped up to serve, such as Hoover after WW 2, and, more recently, Bush and
Clinton in Haiti. For me, this book served as a great review of the presidency
from the 1940’s until the present time.
Chuck
and I were fortunate to attend the Chautauqua Institution in western New York this past
summer. The topic for the week was titled “The Presidents Club”. Two of the
speakers for the week were the authors of this book, Nancy Gibbs and Michael
Duffy who are both editors at Time Magazine. They spoke three times during the
week: once on the content of the book, once on the writing of the book, and
once about the current presidential campaign. We found them both to be well
informed, engaging and articulate.
I
recommend this book for those with an interest in American history,
particularly the presidency.
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