![]() ![]() In this eye-opener of a read, Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote, Craig Fehrman resurrects many such presidential pages, along with a plethora of facts and foibles about their writers-and ghostwriters. (Try as he might, John Adams didn’t fare so well in his attempts, and even Washington’s Farewell Address and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address had their partisan cynics and critics.) This is not to say they stayed silent: Through “anonymously” written biographies, pamphlets and authoritative histories like Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, they made themselves known and helped themselves become, for the most part, exalted. Asserting oneself through the written word was considered vain, undignified and beneath the status of a public figure. ![]() ![]() It may be hard to believe in these days of seemingly endless political campaigns, but once upon a time, presidential candidates disdained personally stumping for political office. ![]()
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