From the Book - First edition.
A note to readers on style --
Our special contributors --
Introduction / Susan Swain --
The magnificent lion / Richard Norton Smith --
A brief history of presidential rankings / Douglas Brinkley --
The top ten. Abraham Lincoln / Harold Holzer --
George Washington / Ron Chernow --
Franklin D. Roosevelt / Doris Kearns Goodwin --
Dwight D Eisenhower / William I. Hitchcock --
Harry S. Truman / Aida D. Donald --
Thomas Jefferson / Willard Sterne Randall --
John F. Kennedy / Robert Dallek --
Ronald Reagan / Lou Cannon --
Lyndon B. Johnson / Robert A. Caro --
The men in the middle. Woodrow Wilson / A. Scott Berg --
Barack Obama / David J. Garrow --
James Monroe / John Ferling --
James K. Polk / John Seigenthaler --
William McKinley / Robert W. Merry --
James Madison / Noah Feldman --
Andrew Jackson / Mark R. Cheathem --
John Adams / Gordon S. Wood --
George H.W. Bush / Jeffrey A. Engel --
John Quincy Adams / James Traub --
Ulysses S. Grant / Ronald C. White --
Grover Cleveland / H. Paul Jeffers --
William Howard Taft / Jeffrey Rosen --
Gerald R. Ford / James Cannon --
Jimmy Carter / Michael J. Gerhardt --
Calvin Coolidge / Amity Shlaes --
Richard M. Nixon / Evan Thomas --
James A. Garfield / Kenneth D. Ackerman --
Benjamin Harrison / Charles W. Calhoun --
Zachary Taylor / Elbert B. Smith --
Rutherford B. Hayes / Ari Hoogenbom --
George W. Bush / James Mann --
And all the rest. Martin Van Buren / Michael Douglas Henderson --
Chester A. Arthur / Scott S. Greenberger --
Herbert Hoover / Richard Norton Smith --
Millard Fillmore / Edna Greene Medford --
William Henry Harrison / Ronald G. Shafer --
John Tyler / Edward P. Grapol --
Warren G Harding / John W. Dean --
Franklin Pierce / Peter A. Wallner --
Andrew Johnson / David O. Stewart --
James Buchanan / Robert Strauss --
Historians' perspectives on president Donald J. Trump / Douglas Brinkley, Edna Greene Medford, and Richard Norton Smith --
Postscript: The presidency, national identity, and the pursuit of equal justice / Edna Greene Medford --
Appendix I: Historians' survey on presidential leadership, total scores and overall rankings --
Appendix II: US presidents in chronological order.
