The former senator and presidential candidate offers a provocative new assessment of the first "national security president". James Monroe is remembered today primarily for two things: for being the last of the "Virginia Dynasty", following George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, and for issuing the Monroe Doctrine, his statement of principles in 1823 that the western hemisphere was to be considered closed to European intervention....

The plainspoken man from Missouri who never expected to be president yet rose to become one of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century, Harry S. Truman clashed with Southerners over civil rights, with organized labor over the right to strike, and with General Douglas MacArthur over the conduct of the Korean War. He personified Thomas Jefferson's observation that the presidency is a "splendid misery," but it was during his tenure that the United...

Renowned New Deal historian Leuchtenburg offers a frank, thoughtful portrait of the lifelong public servant, and shrewdly assesses Hoover's policies and legacy in the face of one of the darkest periods of American history--the Great Depression.