In 2000, Uncle Ted and I went on a trek to Alaska. One of our stops was Mt. Rushmore. I expected to appreciate the grandeur of the monument much as I had also appreciated the technical skill and spectacle of Stone Mountain in GA. I also expected to view smugly the patriotic hype of the gift shops that would inevitably be there. I was not prepared to be deeply moved or to feel a renewed interest in my native country.
Yes, I was awed by the technical skill and accomplishment. But I was also inspired to learn more about the four presidents memorialized on this mountain. I set for myself a goal of reading a biography of each of the Rushmore presidents. As I read about Roosevelt and Washington, I realized that there was much that I had either never known or had forgotten about American history, and I thought that it might be interesting and enlightening to read American history through biographies of its presidents.
Phase I of the project is to read biographies of the four Rushmore presidents. Phase II will be to read biographies of the rest of our presidents.
Phase I: The Rushmore Presidents
- George Washington: His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph Ellis, 2005
- Thomas Jefferson: American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson by Joseph Ellis, 1998
- Abraham Lincoln: Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years by Carl Sandburg, one volume edition, orig. 1926/1939.
- Theodore Roosevelt: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, 1979.
Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris, 2001
Phase II: The Other Presidents
- John Adams: John Adams by David McCullough, 2008.
- James Madison
- James Monroe
- John Quincy Adams
- Andrew Jackson
- Martin VanBuren
- William Henry Harrison
- John Tyler
- James Knox Polk
- Zachary Taylor
- Millard Fillmore
- Franklin Pierce
- James Buchanan
- Andrew Johnson
- Ulysses Simpson Grant
- Rutherford Birchard Hayes
- James Abram Garfield
- Chester Alan Arthur
- Grover Cleveland
- Benjamin Harrison
- Grover Cleveland
- William McKinley
- William Howard Taft
- Woodrow Wilson
- Warren Gamaliel Harding
- Calvin Coolidge
- Herbert Clark Hoover
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
- Harry S Truman
- Dwight David Eisenhower
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
- Lyndon Baines Johnson
- Richard Milhous Nixon
- Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr
- James Earl Carter
- Ronald Wilson Reagan
- George Herbert Walker Bush
- William Jefferson Clinton
- George W. Bush
- Barack Obama
