This book tells not only the stories of all presidents of the United States of America but also ranks them by multiple criteria. I have been trying to increase my knowledge about American history and learn more about the Presidents that existed before my lifetime. I learned all about several Presidents who I literally only knew their names and nothing about their accomplishments before reading this book. I found it interesting that they didn't include current President Trump however they did not as his term is still ongoing and his ranking would likely change. Thanks to the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

This book offers an interesting and readable assessment of the nation's Chief Executives. Rankings change over time; this volume is representative of this particular moment in time. Rankings are broken into several categories ranging from leadership to congressional interaction to public persona. The brief biographies of each President are engaging and easy to digest, appealing to the general reader. My only caution with this is, again, that perspectives change over time; it is perhaps easier to rank the leaders from a century or two ago than the more recent personalities. All in all, I'd recommend this to readers who have an interest in Presidential history and as an introduction to those who want to learning more about what has made some (or all) of these individuals tick.
I received an advance reader copy of this title from NetGalley and the publisher; this is my honest opinion.

An interesting review of all 44 of the American Presidents, ranking them in order of first to last (Trump has not been in office long enough to be given a rating).
Each president is given a chapter, and the information compiled by C-SPAN. The ratings were given by a team of 91 presidential historians. The ratings were based on a set of ten qualities of presidential leadership. They were: public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, international relations, administrative skills, relations with Congress, vision/setting an agenda, pursued equal justice for all, and performance within the context of the times.
I was not surprised by the "top ten" presidents. I mean, how can you go wrong in selecting giants such as Lincoln, Washington, or the Roosevelts? Nor was I shocked to see the bottom of the barrel, including James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, or Millard Fillmore. What was interesting were those presidents in the middle, and why they were ranked there.
Each chapter has great tidbits about the presidents, items on their early years, their beliefs, their quirks, and the people they selected to help them run the country.
I believe that this book would be a great one for anybody interested in our history. Rather than read 44 books on each one of the presidents, one could read this and get a good background on each one. I especially could see this book being used in a upper year high school civics class, or an introductory college level class. The high school teacher could assign a chapter to each student, and have them give a report to the rest of the class. So much better than they could get from Wikipedia!
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and will be referring to it in the future.

Historians were asked to rank US presidents in several different categories, among them crisis leadership, public persuasion, relations with Congress, and equal justice for all. The short biographies accompanying each man’s ranking are written in a chatty, informal style, which makes them very accessible to all readers. There were two things that bothered me about this book, however. Noted historian Aida Donald, who wrote a biography of Harry S. Truman, was listed as “spouse of the noted Lincoln historian,” in addition to her personal qualifications. The other was the biography of Barack Obama, which seemed almost as if it had been written by Fox News with help from the National Enquirer. The author told us more than we wanted to know about women Obama had dated (and their race), youthful drug use, and offered the disturbing insinuation that “for a black man to aspire to represent black Chicago, it is necessary to have a black spouse." He brought in personal value judgments instead of just concentrating on the administration like most of the other biographers in the book. Other than these criticisms, I think anyone with even a small interest in US history would find this book enjoyable and engaging.

I really enjoyed this synthesis of the interviews done with various presidential historians. Tying them together with the past presidential ratings done by CSPAN was wonderful food for thought and discussion.

This book is an interesting read. It is based on a series that was on C-Span that ranked the presidents based on leadership from best to last. Each chapter is written by a noted historian who participated in the series. I found the rankings interesting as this is strictly an opinion based book. Is James Buchanan really the worst president we have had? Personally, I think not.

I recommend this book to anyone who had an interest in american history and particularly an overview of the leadership capablities of the presidents.

I received a free Kindle copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my fiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook and Twitter pages.

A great read for the history/president buff that wants to dig even deeper than the C SPAN presidential rankings. There is great insight into the presidency of each man that has completed their time in office.