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Failures of the Presidents: From the Whiskey Rebellion and War of 1812 to the Bay of Pigs and War in Iraq | 
 enlarge | Authors: Thomas J. Craughwell, M. William Phelps
Publisher: Fair Winds Press
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $9.00
You Save: $10.95 (55%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 78817
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 7.5 x 1.2
ISBN: 1592332994
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.099
EAN: 9781592332991
ASIN: 1592332994
Publication Date: September 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Stories of the disastrous blunders of American presidents will show readers the inner workings of the White House and how some of our greatest leaders could make decisions that were terribly wrong. The fascinating stories are recounted as narratives and are as entertaining as they are shocking. The 23 stories, each about 10 pages in length, retell the histories behind bad presidential decisions. They are told in a real time narrative style, bringing readers inside the White House, introducing them to the main characters, exposing why these decisions were made, and describing the ill-fated aftermaths.
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| Customer Reviews:
 All negative October 28, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I, for one, am very weary of all the negativity in America regarding our history. Dr. William Bennett's series "America: The Last Best Hope" is far more broad in its coverage and balanced between the gaffes and the successes. Color me an optimist.
 A Very Timely Exploration of Some Fascinating Presidents & Events! October 13, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Although I am a Canadian, I have to come clean; I have always been more intrigued with American history than my own. And as Americans go to the polls within the next few weeks, Thomas J. Craughwell and M.William Phelps' Failures Of The Presidents could not have been timelier.
Craughwell has authored more than a dozen books and has written many articles on history, religion, politics, and popular culture for the Wall Street Journal, American Spectator, and U.S. News & World Report.
Phelps is a journalist, lecturer, and young historian. He has authored over eleven books.
As mentioned in the introduction, "history will always have its say, but many years may pass before it speaks." Who is to say that George Bush will go down in history as the worst of the presidents? Remember Harry Truman who left the White House in 1953 with a horrendous approval rating of around twenty-two percent. Even Eisenhower snubbed poor Harry when he refused to invite him to the pre-inaugural luncheon at the White House, and then went onto refuse to make the usual courtesy call on the outgoing president and first lady. Amazingly, Ike sat on his derriere in his car outside the White House, waiting for Harry to come to him.
However, thanks to Merle Miller's 1974 popular tome, Plain Speaking An oral Biography of Harry S. Truman followed by the one-man show Give'em Hell, Harry was now considered to be a "feisty, straight-talking man of the people who fought for his principles, and perhaps was ahead of his time." In fact, it was Truman who urged Congress to pass a national health insurance program when he asserted: "The health of American children, like their education, should be recognized as a definite responsibility." Unfortunately, Truman's proposal had been rejected thanks to the lobby of the American Medical Association.
This is only one example of the many fascinating tales explored in the book pertaining to such Presidents as Washington and the Whiskey Rebellion, Adams and the Alien and Sedition Acts, Jefferson and the Embargo Acts, Jackson and the Trail of Tears, Pierce and the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise, Grant and the attempt to annex Santo Domingo, Cleveland and the Pullman Strike, McKinley and the Spanish-American War, Wilson and the Punitive Expedition into Mexico, Hoover and the Bonus Army, Roosevelt and the Internment of Japanese-Americans, Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Johnson and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, Nixon and the Bombing of Cambodia, Carter and the Iranian Hostage Crisis and the Energy Crisis, Regan and the Iran-Contra Affair and George W. Bush and the Iraq War.
Craughwell and Phelps' portraits of these Presidents are spellbinding and brilliantly organized, written in a nifty, appealing style that balances fact with amusement.
Their research is very well documented and far ranging with compelling studies and anecdotes to remind us how our perceptions are transformed when all of the hysteria and hyperbole settles down. Moreover, the authors steer clear of political preconceived notions or interpretations, presenting these historical figures and events with factual detail. And to wrap the book up in a way that is pleasing to the eye, the text is combined with some incredible images that have been borrowed from such collections as the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, the Library of Congress, Lydon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, New York Public Library, Ronald Regan Presidential Library, the U.S. National Archives as well as some others.
Norm Goldman, Publisher & Editor Bookpleasures
A Beautiful Book - Highly Recommended to All Readers September 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"Failures of the Presidents" is an extremely informative, entertaining, and beautifully illustrated book, almost handsome enough to be displayed as a coffee-table book. The work discusses and analyzes twenty incidences of failure by eighteen U.S. presidents, ranging from George Washington to George W. Bush. It is tempting to argue with the main author about the inclusion of some of the failures or the exclusion of others but, after all, he was not writing an encyclopedia of presidential failures; one has to be selective, some boundary has to be imposed.
However, as I first perused the table of contents, I noticed that President Bill Clinton's name did not appear and that raised a question with me since I consider his administration, despite some obvious political and economic successes, to be a fundamentally flawed one, a failure regarding moral turpitude and perjury because of the Monica Lewinsky matter and other incidences of moral laxity which dogged his presidency. Well, to his credit, Craughwell explains in his Introduction why Clinton is not included and I am satisfied with his decision and the reasons for it. Had I written the book, however, Clinton would have been in it!
This is a book which I think should be in the personal library of every serious reader of history and politics. The book is, however, obviously meant to be read by anyone and I applaud that since Americans definitely need to know more about their past presidents and the failures they engendered. We need to always recall to mind the philosopher Santayana's warning that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfill it.
A few of the presidential failures particularly resonated with me since I have studied them in some depth. For example, the so-called "Whiskey Rebellion" in the 1790s during Washington's administration has been of special interest to me but most texts in American history don't spend much time on the subject. This book does an excellent job of explaining the whys and wherefores and places the incident in context. By the way, when I taught American history many years ago, I always sympathized with the whiskey rebels and was and still am highly critical of Washington and particularly of Alexander Hamilton (Washington's secretary of the treasury). Similarly, I always sided with the strikers during the great Pullman Strike in 1894 and consider this incident and the way he handled it to be President Grover Cleveland's greatest failure. Certainly the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during President Franklin Roosevelt's administration has to be included in any work of this kind and it is. There are a few others I could mention but these few examples should suffice.
Now, I need to mention one unfortunate thing I discovered during my reading of this book. There is a very serious factual error which, for the sake of the general public who are not widely read in matters historical or regular readers of world history, needs to be corrected in any future printing. On page 163 the following statement appears: "On December 7, 1941, in what President Franklin D. Roosevelt described as 'a day which will live in infamy' in his address to Congress the following day, an attack force of Japanese emperor Tojo's warplanes blitzed the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii." The fact is that Hirohito (1926-1989) was the emperor of Japan at the time; Hideki Tojo was the Japanese minister of war and premier during World War II and hanged as a war criminal in 1948 -- Tojo was not the emperor.
For those readers who want to learn more about each of the subjects covered in "Failures of the Presidents," there is a very helpful list of suggested readings at the end of the book, as well as a comprehensive index of topics. I might also mention that the dozens of beautiful and informative illustrations included are a genuine plus (I wish more popular history books included such), as are the extra-wide margins and free space. The overall design of the book is among the best I've seen. I highly recommended this fine work to all readers.
What Your American History Textbooks Missed September 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
You've skimmed over some of these debacles back in your American History classes. Some of these are so recent, it seems like it just happened yesterday, and are still going on today. There are so many mistakes the American Presidents of the past and even the present have made, that it seems amazing that our country has survived them. Fear of the
Unknown and the uncontrollable can lead many good men and women into failure, even with the best of intentions. This reference/history book details the accounts of the people behind the scenes and before the press in everything from the Whiskey Rebellion in the backwoods of Western Pennsylvania in the 1780s to George W. Bush's failed attempt to find Al Qaeda operatives and WMDs in Iraq this very minute. Any person into American history needs to own this. It's full of details, and great material for college and high school reports, projects, and term papers. Some of these massive political mistakes merely get a mention in some textbooks. Here you will find the names of the allies and enemies of the State at the time. Learn who brought certain shady dealings to light and how they did it.
This is one reference book that can be used again and again when looking into the cause and effects of various administrations in our country's short two hundred thirty-two year-old lifespan. Skip around to any point in our history and see exactly why things happen they way they did. The best investigative minds of the day were out in the field digging up the truth, and it has all been condensed in this volume for you now.
Our federal government has always had a way of covering up the truth, even as far back as the days of John Adam's Alien and Sedition acts, when fear of the flood of new immigrants coming into the USA from France and Ireland were proving to show no respect to this new nation. You will learn here why things went down the way they did, and which unjust laws were brought into light to try and fix a problem, and how they just made even more problems. Some laws made martyrs out of political prisoners in our country's early days. Learn the brutality of how Andrew Jackson's Trail of Tears got its name when American landowners used our armed forces to relocate entire populations of Cherokee and other indigenous people to the western territories in order for huge plantations to be build on their lands. Some administrations have more than one chapter devoted to them, as in with Jimmy Carter's Energy Crisis and 'Malaise", and the Iran Hostage Crisis. Old Tricky Dick is even in there, too. His mistakes cross two continents with the Bombing of Cambodia and Watergate. Even the best of presidents can make some serious mistakes. FDR and John Kennedy get chapters, and so do some that we barely remember from our classes like Franklin Pierce and William McKinley and his little war with Spain.
This book covers all the blunders and should be a part of any reference or history collection. I hope to see a copy in my own public library soon, because the students of our local schools would most definitely have a great source for there term paper bibliographies with this one.
Goofs, Blunders and the Oval Office September 26, 2008
History is filled with "what ifs" and "what were you thinking?" episodes. Many Americans think of our Presidents as in some way more intelligent than the average person, and therefore immune to making the same mistakes as everyone else. We also tend to put them on pedestals and then step back to both admire and throw rocks at them.
Presidents and the Presidency are in many ways shaped by the occupant's personalities, the times they live in, as well as by events outside their control. Tom Craughwell has written a terrific book that looks at some of the biggest goofs, blunders, and horrific mistakes made by the men who've occupied the Oval Office. He begins with our first President, George Washington and the Whiskey Rebellion and covers the Presidency through George W. Bush and the War in Iraq.
Mr. Craughwell has done an excellent job in bring these "larger than life men" and their times back to life...warts and all. If you have an interest in history, politics, or human nature, I urge to you read this book.
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