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The Presidents: Noted Historians Rank America's Best--and Worst--Chief Executives
The complete rankings of our best -- and worst -- presidents, based on C-SPAN's much-cited Historians Surveys of Presidential Leadership.
Over a period of decades, C-SPAN has surveyed leading historians on the best and worst of America's presidents across a variety of categories -- their ability to persuade the public, their leadership skills, their moral authority, and more. The crucible of the presidency has forged some of the very best and very worst leaders in our national history, along with everyone in between.
Based on interviews conducted over the years with a variety of presidential biographers, this book provides not just a complete ranking of our presidents, but stories and analyses that capture the character of the men who held the office. From Abraham Lincoln's political savvy and rhetorical gifts to James Buchanan's indecisiveness, this book teaches much about what makes a great leader -- and what does not.
As America looks ahead to our next election, this book offers perspective and criteria to help us choose our next leader wisely.
Over a period of decades, C-SPAN has surveyed leading historians on the best and worst of America's presidents across a variety of categories -- their ability to persuade the public, their leadership skills, their moral authority, and more. The crucible of the presidency has forged some of the very best and very worst leaders in our national history, along with everyone in between.
Based on interviews conducted over the years with a variety of presidential biographers, this book provides not just a complete ranking of our presidents, but stories and analyses that capture the character of the men who held the office. From Abraham Lincoln's political savvy and rhetorical gifts to James Buchanan's indecisiveness, this book teaches much about what makes a great leader -- and what does not.
As America looks ahead to our next election, this book offers perspective and criteria to help us choose our next leader wisely.
- GenresHistory
560 pages, Paperback
Published April 28, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 1, 2020
This what the reader learns as he opens this very interesting book:
"C-SPAN is directing any royalties from the sale of this book to the nonprofit C-SPAN Education Foundation, which supports the creation of history and civics teaching materials for middle and high school teachers and their students."
Style: The chapters are each based on a single transcribed C-SPAN interview with a nationally recognized presidential historian or biographer. To achieve readability, questions and unimportant portions were removed from the transcript, and sequence of comments were reordered.
Presidential rankings: These were based upon C-SPAN’s 2017 survey of 91 presidential historians and professional observers, who rated our leaders on ten equally-weighted leadership qualities: Public persuasion, Crisis leadership, Economic management, Moral authority, International relations, Administrative skills, Relations with Congress, Vision/setting an agenda, Pursued equal justice for all, Performance within the context of the times. (Wikipedia comment about C-SPAN’s surveys: 3-4 presidents’ ratings are bound to be low because of relatively short tenures; Nixon’s is complicated: brilliant on some aspects, amoral on others; recent-effect on many, pushing some up, others down).
Information is then provided in the form of an introduction, comments about special contributors (who provided comments on Trump and either an essay or one of the chapters — The Top Ten; The Men in the Middle (23), the first of whom is Woodrow Wilson, whose next rating is likely sure to suffer due to recently increased awareness of his racism; and All the Rest (10, not including Trump). For those confused as to why there are only 44 mentioned, it’s because Grover Cleveland served twice, once as the 22 and then 24th president. The essay by special contributor Douglas Brinkley provides a brief history of presidential rankings. Personal note here: as a former marketer familiar with questionnaires, the book doesn’t make clear how the C-SPAN questionnaire was administered. Yes, there’s equal weight given on each leadership characteristic. However, is each historian prevented from going back and changing their individual characteristic scores to promote/demote certain presidents higher or lower with a revised total score? Perhaps only The Shadow and his Clairol hairdresser know for sure!
The chapters then begin with one on Lincoln. As other reviewers have commented, these chapters do not necessarily give clear rationale for why each president holds his ranking in the book. The chapters, in many ways, are observations taken from the research these contributors have done which is included in their cited books. So, I was quite intrigued by the unusual commentary on Lincoln, which focused on his time as president-elect. I’ll take the liberty of citing one interesting paragraph in particular:
“Washington legend is that this [Willard Hotel in DC] was the very hotel lobby where the term ‘Lobbyist’ was born, and maybe it happened on the night of February 23 [1861]. Lincoln got here early in the morning. He went right out with William Seward to visit President James Buchanan down the way at the White House, to pay an unexpected call on the president. He made a couple of other stops, and when he got home at night, the hotel was filled with cigar-smoking, gin-and bourbon-drinking people who had things on their mind and things to expect. They wanted jobs. They had things on their mind and things to expect. They wanted jobs. They wanted favors. They wanted diplomatic positions. They wanted postmasterships. Lincoln was told that the crowd was so thick and so angry and so demanding that one aspirant for a job had threatened to challenge another aspirant for the same job to a duel. Lincoln said, ‘That’s probably not a bad idea – we would lubricate ht process a little bit.’ He was eager for the aspirants to winnow down.”
Given that I’ve written one and writing more books about George Washington, I was especially interested in the second chapter, Ron Chernow’s on Washington, which was excellent. One small point, however, needs to be made about a common spurious quote on page 40: “Benjamin West, a portrait artist, told King George III that General Washington was planning on resigning his commission and going back to Mount Vernon. And George III says, 'If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.'” Actually, as reported by Rufus King in 1797 about what George III allegedly told Benjamin West: "that act closing and finishing what had gone before and viewed in connection with it, placed him in a light the most distinguished of any man living, and that he thought him the greatest character [emphasis, character] of the age.”
Again, royalties from the book are going to C-SPAN, an American cable and satellite television network that was created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises many proceedings of the United States federal government, as well as other public affairs programming. If you’d like to support C-SPAN while enjoying a great read, as a fellow author, I’d highly recommend this book!
"C-SPAN is directing any royalties from the sale of this book to the nonprofit C-SPAN Education Foundation, which supports the creation of history and civics teaching materials for middle and high school teachers and their students."
Style: The chapters are each based on a single transcribed C-SPAN interview with a nationally recognized presidential historian or biographer. To achieve readability, questions and unimportant portions were removed from the transcript, and sequence of comments were reordered.
Presidential rankings: These were based upon C-SPAN’s 2017 survey of 91 presidential historians and professional observers, who rated our leaders on ten equally-weighted leadership qualities: Public persuasion, Crisis leadership, Economic management, Moral authority, International relations, Administrative skills, Relations with Congress, Vision/setting an agenda, Pursued equal justice for all, Performance within the context of the times. (Wikipedia comment about C-SPAN’s surveys: 3-4 presidents’ ratings are bound to be low because of relatively short tenures; Nixon’s is complicated: brilliant on some aspects, amoral on others; recent-effect on many, pushing some up, others down).
Information is then provided in the form of an introduction, comments about special contributors (who provided comments on Trump and either an essay or one of the chapters — The Top Ten; The Men in the Middle (23), the first of whom is Woodrow Wilson, whose next rating is likely sure to suffer due to recently increased awareness of his racism; and All the Rest (10, not including Trump). For those confused as to why there are only 44 mentioned, it’s because Grover Cleveland served twice, once as the 22 and then 24th president. The essay by special contributor Douglas Brinkley provides a brief history of presidential rankings. Personal note here: as a former marketer familiar with questionnaires, the book doesn’t make clear how the C-SPAN questionnaire was administered. Yes, there’s equal weight given on each leadership characteristic. However, is each historian prevented from going back and changing their individual characteristic scores to promote/demote certain presidents higher or lower with a revised total score? Perhaps only The Shadow and his Clairol hairdresser know for sure!
The chapters then begin with one on Lincoln. As other reviewers have commented, these chapters do not necessarily give clear rationale for why each president holds his ranking in the book. The chapters, in many ways, are observations taken from the research these contributors have done which is included in their cited books. So, I was quite intrigued by the unusual commentary on Lincoln, which focused on his time as president-elect. I’ll take the liberty of citing one interesting paragraph in particular:
“Washington legend is that this [Willard Hotel in DC] was the very hotel lobby where the term ‘Lobbyist’ was born, and maybe it happened on the night of February 23 [1861]. Lincoln got here early in the morning. He went right out with William Seward to visit President James Buchanan down the way at the White House, to pay an unexpected call on the president. He made a couple of other stops, and when he got home at night, the hotel was filled with cigar-smoking, gin-and bourbon-drinking people who had things on their mind and things to expect. They wanted jobs. They had things on their mind and things to expect. They wanted jobs. They wanted favors. They wanted diplomatic positions. They wanted postmasterships. Lincoln was told that the crowd was so thick and so angry and so demanding that one aspirant for a job had threatened to challenge another aspirant for the same job to a duel. Lincoln said, ‘That’s probably not a bad idea – we would lubricate ht process a little bit.’ He was eager for the aspirants to winnow down.”
Given that I’ve written one and writing more books about George Washington, I was especially interested in the second chapter, Ron Chernow’s on Washington, which was excellent. One small point, however, needs to be made about a common spurious quote on page 40: “Benjamin West, a portrait artist, told King George III that General Washington was planning on resigning his commission and going back to Mount Vernon. And George III says, 'If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.'” Actually, as reported by Rufus King in 1797 about what George III allegedly told Benjamin West: "that act closing and finishing what had gone before and viewed in connection with it, placed him in a light the most distinguished of any man living, and that he thought him the greatest character [emphasis, character] of the age.”
Again, royalties from the book are going to C-SPAN, an American cable and satellite television network that was created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises many proceedings of the United States federal government, as well as other public affairs programming. If you’d like to support C-SPAN while enjoying a great read, as a fellow author, I’d highly recommend this book!
July 10, 2020
Part of the C-SPAN tradition of ranking the Presidents (and indeed in the American vein of ranking anything including or gifted, and not so gifted leaders) The Presidents is a holistic view of all 44 Presidents in American history (the 45th ans current President won’t be ranked until one year after his exit from office).
Written under the purview of C-SPAN and a team of diverse historians and political journalists, the book provides chapters taken from authors and their discussions of their studies of the 44 Presidents.
Reading the book, particularly at a time of great unrest in the country, and when the institution of the Presidency and its powers are being questioned, along with the morality of the occupants of the office, it is fascinating to see how historians (some fair, some biased) view their charges.
The biggest surprise for me was President Grant. His story, his abolitionist family, his wife’s slave family and slaves, his brief anti-Semitic behavior, and subsequent fighting against segregation were a surprise - given how the Commonwealth of Virginia portrays Grant in history (another case of revisionist history in favor of the Confederate South).
Though at times lacking criticism, and for allowing some
Political bias, the book does a fascinating job outlining the ranking categories, the remakes and more importantly, the analysis of the legacies of the President in both the good and the bad.
Written under the purview of C-SPAN and a team of diverse historians and political journalists, the book provides chapters taken from authors and their discussions of their studies of the 44 Presidents.
Reading the book, particularly at a time of great unrest in the country, and when the institution of the Presidency and its powers are being questioned, along with the morality of the occupants of the office, it is fascinating to see how historians (some fair, some biased) view their charges.
The biggest surprise for me was President Grant. His story, his abolitionist family, his wife’s slave family and slaves, his brief anti-Semitic behavior, and subsequent fighting against segregation were a surprise - given how the Commonwealth of Virginia portrays Grant in history (another case of revisionist history in favor of the Confederate South).
Though at times lacking criticism, and for allowing some
Political bias, the book does a fascinating job outlining the ranking categories, the remakes and more importantly, the analysis of the legacies of the President in both the good and the bad.
April 29, 2023
"The Presidents: Noted Historians Rank America's Best--and Worst--Chief Executives" is a well-researched and thought-provoking book. It's a must-read for anyone interested in American history and politics, and provides valuable insights into the accomplishments and failures of our nation's leaders.
June 8, 2025
Chipping away at my presidential history. Interesting, with transcript excerpts of interviews about each president. I was hoping for a quick debrief on what each president accomplished but this was often broader, sometimes focusing on presidents’ personal scandals instead of policy (so still interesting!)
December 16, 2020
92/100
5 stars - 90/100
4 stars - 80/100
3 stars - 70/100
2 stars - 60/100
1 star - 50/100
5 stars - 90/100
4 stars - 80/100
3 stars - 70/100
2 stars - 60/100
1 star - 50/100
December 28, 2023
Solid primer on the presidents
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews