Thank you, Simon & Schuster, for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I just finished The Highest Calling: Conversations on the American Presidency, by David M. Rubenstein.

This book consists of 19 interviews the author did with historians, talking about individual presidents, or in the case of Gordon Wood, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. The other four chapters were interviews that the author conducted with Bill and Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

The strongest parts of the book were the chapters on Jefferson (interview with Annette Gordon-Reed) and Grant (Ron Chernow).

21 of the 45 different presidents were included in the book, but there were four big omissions—Theodore Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Andrew Jackson and Ronald Reagan. Even these presidents’ critics acknowledge how influential they were on the presidency and country, which makes their omissions seem rather strange editorial choices.

The book was written in a way that would frustrate those of us with a lot of background on the presidents. As someone with an extremely strong of history and the presidency, I found a lot of the questions to be obvious. The real substance of the book came from the interviewee’s responses. I think this book would have worked better if the chapters were written by the interviewees or if the author had crafted their responses into a narrative while eliminating his questions. I didn’t find the author to be a good interviewer and the questions could have been better worded and still elicited the same responses.

I give this book a B. Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, a B equates to 3 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, Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews

I finished reading this on September 6, 2024.

Great look into the lives of the presidents from those who have studied them. Rubenstein is a great interviewer and these interviews are very insightful. For those who don't read much history, this book provides glimpses into each of these lives. Certainly not a capstone course on any of the presidents but a great introduction on each that could whet the appetite for further study.