Lots of fun facts about the presidents. ( )

Some may find this book misleading, as it doesn't really explore the presidential rankings beyond surface-level explanations as to why Lincoln is the best and Buchanan is the worst. Even still, this works as a bite-sized look at every US president, their major accomplishments, their biggest faults, and their overall legacy. ( )

This is a book where all the United States Presidents were rated and ranked from the best and the worst. President Trump is not rated does have an afterward article. This was a massive undertaking by C-SPAN and is endlessly inviting to dip into. Lincoln, Washington, FDR and Teddy Roosevelt come out at the top; and James Buchanan (43rd), Andrew Johnson, (42nd), Franklin Pierce (41), Warren G. Harding (40) came out at the bottom. Interesting there is a short table at the end of the book where the 2017 rankings were compared with those from 2009 and 2000. Fromm 2000 to 2017, the two presidents who seemed to gain rank were Ulysses Grant (33 to 22) and Bill Clinton (21 to 15). Slippmg were Andrew Jackson (from 13 to 18), Grover Cleveland (17 to 23) and Rutherford Hayes (26-32). ( )

An interesting review of all 44 of the American Presidents, ranking them in order of first to last (Trump has not been in office long enough to be given a rating).
Each president is given a chapter, and the information compiled by C-SPAN. The ratings were given by a team of 91 presidential historians. The ratings were based on a set of ten qualities of presidential leadership. They were: public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, international relations, administrative skills, relations with Congress, vision/setting an agenda, pursued equal justice for all, and performance within the context of the times.
I was not surprised by the "top ten" presidents. I mean, how can you go wrong in selecting giants such as Lincoln, Washington, or the Roosevelts? Nor was I shocked to see the bottom of the barrel, including James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, or Millard Fillmore. What was interesting were those presidents in the middle, and why they were ranked there.
Each chapter has great tidbits about the presidents, items on their early years, their beliefs, their quirks, and the people they selected to help them run the country.
I believe that this book would be a great one for anybody interested in our history. Rather than read 44 books on each one of the presidents, one could read this and get a good background on each one. I especially could see this book being used in a upper year high school civics class, or an introductory college level class. The high school teacher could assign a chapter to each student, and have them give a report to the rest of the class. So much better than they could get from Wikipedia!
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and will be referring to it in the future. ( )