Presidential bio recs?

I tend to like mostly fiction, but this being a presidential election year, I feel like reading a good presidential biography. I've heard that the John Adams bio by David McCullough is well-written, although perhaps too sentimental in its appraisal of the man. I'm also interested in learning more about FDR, but there seems to be such a mass of books about him that it's hard to know where to begin. Likewise with LBJ. I'd love to get some recommendations for my reading list from the eminently well-informed membership here. I'm open to reading about modern-era Republican presidents as well, but only if the biography is superbly written.

•  adams and lbj

  just read the adams bio - it is a sympathetic portrait but is really well done.  likewise for Truman

  the caro series on lbj is fantastic and has quite relevant info about the rise of brown and root (halliburton subsidiary now) and texas politics...really, really good.

  i found edmund morris's bio of teddy roosevelt to be a bit of a hagiography.

  by delphis on Thu Jan 29, 2004 at 07:32:10 PM PDT

  •  have some mojo

    You deserve a 4 just for using hagiography in a sentence.

    Kerry is doable. Do him.

    by justinb on Thu Jan 29, 2004 at 07:35:52 PM PDT

•  Some favorites

  The Caro series on LBJ (three volumes with a concluding fourth volume yet to come) is amazing. If you can't wait to read about LBJ's presidency, the most complete account is Robert Dallek's "Flawed Giant."

  For FDR's early life, I heartily recommend Geoffrey C. Ward's two books: "Before the Trumpet" and "A First-Class Temperament." They will take you up to 1928, when he is elected governor of New York.

  To get the rest of the FDR story, I would read not a biography, but David Kennedy's history of the United States from 1929 through 1945, titled "Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945." Kennedy, a Stanford professor, shows how a blunt, patrician northeastern ex-governor saved democracy from economic catastrophe and Nazi-fascism.

  I agree that McCullough tends to romanticize his subject, but he writes beautifully, so "John Adams" is a nice read. I think his other presidential bios, "Mornings on Horseback," about the early life of Theodore Roosevelt, and "Truman," are better.

  by MichaelR on Thu Jan 29, 2004 at 07:53:22 PM PDT

  •  Hrmm

    A blunt, patrician northeastern ex-governor (who) saved democracy from economic catastrophe and Nazi-fascism? Who might that be in this race?
    

    by Flakcatcher on Thu Jan 29, 2004 at 08:12:43 PM PDT

    •  Yep

      You got it.

      by MichaelR on Thu Jan 29, 2004 at 11:46:48 PM PDT