Star-Spangled Men: America's Ten Worst PresidentsSimon and Schuster, 2008 M06 30 - 272 pages Picking America's best presidents is easy. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt usually lead the list, But choosing the nation's worst presidents requires more thought. In Star-Spangled Men, respected presidential biographer Nathan Miller puts on display those leaders who were abject failures as chief executive. With pointed humor and a deft hand, he presents a rogues' gallery of the men who dropped the presidential ball, and sometimes their pants as well. Miller includes Richard M. Nixon, who was forced to resign to escape impeachment; Jimmy Carter, who proved that the White House is not the place for on-the-job training; and Warren G. Harding, who gave "being in the closet" new meaning as he carried on extramarital interludes in one near the Oval Office. This current edition also includes a new assessment of Bill Clinton -- who has admitted lying to his family, his aides, his cabinet, and the American people. |
Contents
| 11 | |
| 19 | |
WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT who was so fat he got stuck | 45 |
BENJAMIN HARRISON who looked like a medieval gnome | 67 |
CALVIN COOLIDGE who was a living embodiment of Woody Allens | 98 |
FRANKLIN PIERCE who said Theres nothing left but to | 151 |
JAMES BUCHANAN who was on the government payroll | 173 |
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING who gave being in the closet | 192 |
RICHARD MILHOUS NIXON who maintained I am not a crook | 211 |
EPILOGUE | 239 |
NOTES | 249 |
BIBLIOGRAPHY | 257 |
INDEX | 263 |
ULYSSES S GRANT who proves that old soldiers should fade away | 266 |
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Popular passages
Page 98 - There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.
Page 254 - They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
Page 77 - Divide the floaters into blocks of five and put a trusted man with the necessary funds in charge of these five, and make him responsible that none get away, and that all vote our ticket.
Page 109 - ... thousand years after Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, a man like Grant should be called —and should actually and truly be— the highest product of the most advanced evolution, made evolution ludicrous.
Page 127 - Senator , how say you? Is the respondent, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, guilty or not guilty of a high misdemeanor, as charged in this article...
Page 55 - He may be a brother of Big Bill Taft, But he ain't no brother of mine!
Page 140 - I have known Andy Johnson for many years ; he made a bad slip the other day, but you need not be scared ; Andy ain'ta drunkard.
Page 69 - Conkling succinctly and vividly stated his political philosophy with the assertion that reformers "forget that parties are not built up by deportment, or by ladies
Page 32 - the sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.