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Eight Men Who Changed America
by Jared Cohen
The strength and prestige of the American presidency has waxed and waned since George Washington. Accidental Presidents looks at eight men who came to the office without being elected to it. It demonstrates how the character of the man in that powerful seat affects the nation and world.
Eight men have succeeded to the presidency when the incumbent died in office. In one way or another they vastly changed our history. Only Theodore Roosevelt would have been elected in his own right. Only TR, Truman, Coolidge, and LBJ were re-elected.
John Tyler succeeded William Henry Harrison who died 30 days into his term. He was kicked out of his party and became the first president threatened with impeachment. Millard Fillmore succeeded esteemed General Zachary Taylor. He immediately sacked the entire cabinet and delayed an inevitable Civil War by standing with Henry Clay's compromise of 1850. Andrew Johnson, who succeeded our greatest president, sided with remnants of the Confederacy in Reconstruction. Chester Arthur, the embodiment of the spoils system, was so reviled as James Garfield's successor that he had to defend himself against plotting Garfield's assassination; but he reformed the civil service. Theodore Roosevelt broke up the trusts. Calvin Coolidge silently cooled down the Harding scandals and preserved the White House for the Republican Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression. Truman surprised everybody when he succeeded the great FDR and proved an able and accomplished president. Lyndon B. Johnson was named to deliver Texas electorally. He led the nation forward on Civil Rights but failed on Vietnam.
Accidental Presidents adds immeasurably to our understanding of the power and limits of the American presidency in critical times.
"Pleasant reading for politics junkies, especially those keen on reading the political winds." —Kirkus Reviews
"Illuminating…[a] genuinely interesting history on a topic that has never been addressed in this depth." —Booklist
Colorful…clear and engaging…confidently told." —Publishers Weekly
"One of the many insights to be found in Accidental Presidents is that history unfolds in death as well as in life." —The Wall Street Journal
"Thanks to Jared Cohen. The stories of eight accidental presidents are now all in one grand place. Cohen deserves a medal for performing this public service." —Patricia O'Toole, author of The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made
"History is the most contingent of enterprises, and little has proven more contingent than the nature of the American presidency. In this eloquent and often surprising book, Jared Cohen explores how fate has shaped the office--and all of us. In an age marked by widespread concerns about the character of the person who reaches the pinnacle (by whatever means), Cohen's study is illuminating and resonant." —Jon Meacham, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels
This information about Accidental Presidents was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jared Cohen is the president of global affairs and cohead of applied innovation at Goldman Sachs, where he joined as a partner and member of the firm's management committee in 2022. Before joining Goldman Sachs, he was CEO of Jigsaw, which he founded at Alphabet Inc. in 2016. Prior to that, he was Google's first director of ideas and chief advisor to Google's chief executive officer and executive chairman Eric Schmidt. From 2006 to 2010, he served as a member of the Secretary of State's policy planning staff and as a close advisor to both Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. He is a New York Times bestselling author of five books, most recently Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America. He has been named to the Time 100 list, Foreign Policy's "Top 100 Global Thinkers," and Fortune's "40 Under 40." He lives in New York City with his wife and three daughters.
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