Hail to the Chiefs

John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) is among the most overlooked presidents in U.S. history even though his progressive values helped shape the course of the nation. In a discussion of his new book, John Quincy Adams: American Visionary, Fred Kaplan sheds light on a leading...

Due to a quirk in the calendar in the year 1849, one school of thought contends that Missourian David Rice Atchison deserves to be considered the 12th president of the United States. His “term of office” lasted just 24 hours — most of which he slept through — and took place 165 years ago...

If George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are the saints in America’s civil religion, then the 29th president, Warren G. Harding, is our sinner, consistently judged a failure and ranked dead last among his peers.

A century after his inauguration, President Woodrow Wilson remains among the most influential figures of the 20th century—and one of the most enigmatic. Now, after more than a decade of research and writing, A. Scott Berg discusses his definitive biography Wilson, which...

Jeffrey Frank discusses his new book Ike and Dick, which examines the 20-year political and private relationship of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon to reveal hurtful slights and tense misunderstandings. The two men brought out the best and worst in each other, and th...

Author Robert W. Merry wraps up the presidential election – and the Hail to the Chiefs series – with a fresh, playful, and challenging way of rating our presidents. He is the author of Where They Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians. Mer...

With his thick spectacles, big teeth, and boundless energy, President Theodore Roosevelt was a cartoonist’s dream subject. Rick Marschall, author of Bully! The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt: Illustrated with More than 200 Vintage Political Cartoons discusses this most d...

For all his accomplishments and advanced thinking, Thomas Jefferson could not get beyond his own limited perspective in matters of race. Drawing from new archaeological work and previously overlooked evidence, historian Henry Wiencek examines the factors that led Jefferson, once an emancipationist, to...

Taking the White House requires a team, and America had never seen anything like the husband-and-wife team of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Historian William H. Chafe, a pioneer in the study of American politics through the personal lives of politicians, reveals the core complexity of the Clintons as in...

No president since the founders has done more to shape American government than Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Alan Brinkley argues that Roosevelt’s presidency forever changed the face of international diplomacy, the American party system, and the government’s role in global and domestic policy....