American Presidents

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Some time ago I decided I was going to learn more about all the presidents of the United States. We study them in our history classes here in the USA. I’d read biographies of several, but some I knew little about. I started at the beginning with the founding fathers. I skipped Washington, Adams, and Jefferson because I’d read biographies of each and studied about them in school. I began with James Madison, another of our founding fathers. I was very impressed with his role in establishing our democracy and he became one of my favorite founding father figure. His scholarship, his keen intellect, and leadership in writing the constitution and setting up our democracy was immense. His ability as a president was not as impressive. I was also impressed with the Presidency of James Monroe. He was the one in the group of our founding fathers that I knew least about. He was not as influential in setting up our democracy, but he was quite impressive as a president. I read biographies up through the presidency of Zachary Taylor and then my sister-in-law, knowing I was in the middle of this project, gave me a biography of Herbert Hoover as a gift. It’s a lovely, leather bound book. But it’s very, very boring. I’m having a hard time getting through it. I think Hoover was an interesting man and significant president, though not a successful one. The book, though beautiful, is just not very well written and very, very boring. I think I’ll put it aside and get back to reading through the list. The next president after Zachary Taylor was Millard Filmore. I know very little about him. I’ll get back to Hoover later. I don’t think his presidency is as boring as the book.