Star-Spangled Men
America's Ten Worst Presidents
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- 13,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
Picking America's best presidents is easy. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt usually lead the list, But choosing the nation's worst presidents requires more thought. In Star-Spangled Men, respected presidential biographer Nathan Miller puts on display those leaders who were abject failures as chief executive. With pointed humor and a deft hand, he presents a rogues' gallery of the men who dropped the presidential ball, and sometimes their pants as well.
Miller includes Richard M. Nixon, who was forced to resign to escape impeachment; Jimmy Carter, who proved that the White House is not the place for on-the-job training; and Warren G. Harding, who gave "being in the closet" new meaning as he carried on extramarital interludes in one near the Oval Office. This current edition also includes a new assessment of Bill Clinton -- who has admitted lying to his family, his aides, his cabinet, and the American people.
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Combining brief biographical profiles with scathing critiques, this one-man's rogues' gallery offers up Miller's (The Roosevelt Chronicles) opinions on who he considers to be the least successful American presidents. The trenchant though often superficial nature of this account is first revealed in the table of contents, where Miller lambastes William Howard Taft for being so fat he got stuck in a White House bathtub and characterizes Benjamin Harrison as looking like a "medieval gnome" with a handshake like a "wilted petunia," as if these qualities affected leadership. In an epilogue, he deflates two more presidents as the "most overrated"--John F. Kennedy, whom he calls a "confirmed cold warrior" (wasn't virtually everyone in those days?), and Thomas Jefferson, whom he accuses of wrecking the nation's economy and leading the country to war with Britain through the Embargo Act of 1807. Miller writes with passion in this irreverent broadside, where opinion tends to overstep analysis.
