Corey Brettschneider's The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It explores instances in U.S. history where presidents overstepped their constitutional limits, endangering democratic norms. The book details the actions of five presidents who jeopardized democratic values by suppressing dissent or infringing on civil rights. Each example is paired with stories of citizen-led movements that effectively resisted these abuses of power, demonstrating the critical role of public activism in defending democracy.

This book was a great review of the things that are not often taught in schools anymore. If you're someone like me that believes civic studies should be taught more, this book will give you more insights and delve into the topics. As a political science major, I would keep this book as a reference piece.

The basic premise of The Presidents and the People is that we cannot depend on a self-correcting system of government to overcome periods of presidential abuse of power. Ultimately, engaged citizenry and reformist presidents must come to the rescue, but this should not be viewed as inevitable.

The five presidents who precipitated the crises were John Adams(alien and sedition act), James Buchanan (expansion of slavery), Andrew Johnson (stymying reconstruction), Woodrow Wilson (establishing federal white-supremacism, already well in force in the states), and Richard Nixon (abuse of power against political enemies). In my take, the Buchanan-Johnson-Wilson story is one continuous tale of setbacks and triumphs from the 1850s to the 1960s. For American History enthusiasts, much of the ground will be familiar, but the framing of the stories is definitely original.

Among the most interesting things I learned were:

1. James Madison set an important precedent by allowing antiwar speech during wartime

2. Woodrow Wilson's white supremacist ideology was deeply embedded as evidenced by students' lecture notes in the Princeton library. (It's implied that the author's own research exposed these). During Wilson's campaign in 1912 he gave some indication that he could be a civil rights reformer and received a considerable share of the black vote. This just shows that it is worth digging into past statements and social media posts of our candidates to see what they really think.

3. The citizen grand jury convened for the Watergate break in was a vital tool for unearthing Nixon's crimes, and while this information was supposed to be secret a still untested legal theory was used to transfer this information to the House Impeachment Committee. The grand jury voted overwhelmingly to indict Nixon but was pressured by prosecutor Ron Jaworski not to do so, also setting a Department of Justice precedent. The grand jury definitely felt cheated by Ford's pardon of Nixon. The author gleaned much of this from interviews with surviving grand jury members.

The tone of this book is academic - few would say that it reads like a novel - but accessible to most readers, including those with little prior knowledge of these events. In this election year, it is most highly recommended, and it will be on the ballot for the nonfiction book club that I run.

i like that in the conclusion, the author acknowledges the role that the people in the presidents’ lives contributed to their mistakes. i wish he had done that during each sections. this book was very informative!! it did feel slow at some points, despite not being too long. also, i think its CRAZY to conflate john adams with buchanan, johnson, wilson, and nixon!!!! like, john adams seriously messed up, yes, but in my opinion, he is nowhere near as bad as those others. i dont mind that he included adams, but the fact that he made comparisons to adams in other sections didnt sit right with me.

Thank you W.W. Norton & Company for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own. No review was required in return for an advance reading copy and no review was promised.

I just finished Presidents And The People, by Corey Brettschneider.

The book is centered around five presidents and the dangers they presented to the nation. Those presidents were John Adams (Alien and Sedition Acts), James Buchanan (slavery/Dred Scott), Andrew Johnson and Woodrow Wilson (both white supremacy) and Richard Nixon (abuse of presidential power). Except for Adams (and his party), none of the other presidents were the sole culprits for their specific problems. But, they stood out as the most egregious examples.

The book then discusses how specific successors of those presidents (in some cases, more than one successor and it didn’t always have to be the immediate successor) tried to clean up the mess created. And, in each case, it wasn’t just the successors, it was also important activist allies who played important roles and are prominently discussed.

There is one notable exception to that. There was no chapter on the aftermath of dealing with Watergate. It could be said that, we really have never escaped the problem of abuse of presidential power. After Nixon, we get the corruption of Reagan and Iran-Contra, we get a perjurer in the White House, we get the abuse of power of George W. Bush’s administration (who I would liked to see a chapter on him too. If white supremacy gets two presidents, then abuse of presidential power should too) and of course we had Trump. But, on the other hand, we’ve never gotten rid of the white supremacy, either, and the aftermath of Johnson and Wilson was too discussed. So a chapter on Carter trying to clean up the mess, as futile as those reforms now look, was probably needed. Or, at least follow up on the Nixon chapter with the problems of these other administrations.

It’s hard to pick a single biggest strength in a book that was so strong throughout its entirety. But, if I had to, I would go the three chapter section on Wilson and his aftermath.

One of my favorite parts of history books like this is finding the little tidbits of great information that is always contained within them. One of my favorites from this book is the fact that, while Woodrow Wilson was a professor at Princeton, the notes from his lectures were preserved by his students in leather-bound notebooks. While Princeton’s archives still contain them, I find it very interested that they have “never been publicly described or examined.” I can only imagine what important insights on Wilson historians can provide us with if they were given access to them.

The lack of subsequent discussion after the Nixon chapter is what cost this book its chance at an A+. But, it clearly earned its A. NetGalley, Amazon and Goodreads require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at NetGalley and Goodreads. It will also be posted at Amazon, as soon as the book is released to the public on July 2. I will also be posting it at my new book review blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews, which I expect to have up and running later in the week

With the Supreme Court being what it is right now, this was a refreshing look at how past Americans fought the president and the Supreme Court when those institutions threatened democracy.