Worst. President. Ever., Robert Strauss
Worst. President. Ever., Robert Strauss
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Worst. President. Ever.
James Buchanan, the POTUS Rating Game, and the Legacy of the Least of the Lesser Presidents

Author: Robert Strauss

Narrator: Tom Perkins

Unabridged: 8 hr 51 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/27/2016


Synopsis

Worst. President. Ever. flips the great presidential biography on its head, offering an enlightening—and highly entertaining—account of poor James Buchanan's presidency to prove once and for all that, well, few leaders could have done worse. But author Robert Strauss does much more, leading listeners out of Buchanan's terrible term in office—meddling in the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, exacerbating the Panic of 1857, helping foment the John Brown uprisings and "Bloody Kansas," virtually inviting a half-dozen states to secede from the Union as a lame duck, and on and on—to explore with insight and humor his own obsession with presidents, and ultimately the entire notion of ranking our presidents. He guides us through the POTUS rating game of historians and others who have made their own Mount Rushmores—or Marianas Trenches—of presidential achievement, showing why Buchanan easily loses to any of the others, but also offering insights into presidential history buffs like himself, the forgotten "lesser" presidential sites, sex and the presidency, the presidency itself, and how and why it can often take the best measures out of even the most dedicated men.

Author Bio

Robert Strauss has been a staffer at Sports Illustrated and the Philadelphia Daily News and has written extensively for the New York Times. He is an adjunct professor of writing in the English department at the University of Pennsylvania; he also managed to play, just barely, Division III freshman basketball and rugby at Carleton College. He lives with his wife, Susan, and daughters, Ella and Sylvia, in Haddonfield, New Jersey.

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