Hail to the Chiefs

As chief of staff to former President George H.W. Bush for 25 years, Jean Becker oversaw everything from the opening of his presidential library to the commissioning of the Navy aircraft carrier named for him. Mainly, she tried to keep up. The 41st president was famous for his big ideas. Jumping...

In a discussion of his new book President McKinley: Architect of the American Century, acclaimed historian Robert Merry gives 25th president William McKinley his due as a consequential leader who led America’s transformation into a global power – only to be overshadowed by flamboyant s...

Was Abraham Lincoln the transcendent champion of African-American freedom that history books depict? Author Fred Kaplan tempers that image in a discussion of his book Lincoln and the Abolitionists: John Quincy Adams, Slavery, and the Civil War, casting Abe as a less fervent re...

Sidney Blumenthal, a senior advisor to President Bill Clinton and later an advisor to Hillary Clinton, continues to offer a fresh view of the great man who occupied the White House more than 130 years earlier. In a discussion of Wrestling with His Angel, 1849-1856 ...

Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy was three years into his incendiary search for Communists when Dwight Eisenhower assumed the presidency in 1953. Ike privately loathed McCarthy but never directly confronted him or so much as mentioned his name. Rather, he worked in typically understated fashion to bring the...

This year’s election stakes are high, as always. But perhaps no presidential vote in U.S. history was more consequential than that of 1860. The nation roiled over the issue of slavery. Abraham Lincoln captured the Republican nomination over New York Sen. William Seward, and then took on a divided Democratic P...

When The Washington Post asked 162 political science scholars earlier this year which American president should be added to Mount Rushmore, their overwhelming favorite was Franklin Roosevelt. But historian Alonzo Hamby makes a case that FDR’s record was more mixed than generally perce...

Lyndon Johnson had the misfortune of following the handsome, martyred John F. Kennedy into the White House and then miring his country in Vietnam. Driven, compulsive, occasionally crude, he was an easy target for his many critics. He also was the architect of a lasting economic and social revolution, pushi...

Short, balding, and soft-spoken, James Madison was overshadowed by many of America’s other, more dynamic Founding Fathers. His list of accomplishments ran long, however: outlining what became the Constitution, co-writing the Federalist Papers, creating the Bill of Rights, forming America’s first political party, sup...

Thrust into the nation’s highest office following Richard Nixon’s resignation, Gerald R. Ford faced the impossible task of achieving much in little time and in the face of great adversity. Historian John Robert Greene examines the 38th president’s struggle to restore the prestige of the offic...