Contributor
Cotlar, Seth, editor.
ImprintCharlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2019.
Imprint2019
Descriptionviii, 283 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Note:George Washington: his own historian / Edward Countryman -- Slavery, voice, and loyalty: John Quincy Adams as the first revisionist / David Waldstreicher -- Martin Van Buren, the democratic party, and the Jacksonian reinvention of the constitution / Elvin T. Lim -- Abraham Lincoln goes to the archives: slavery, the Cooper Union Address, and the election of 1860 / Jonathan Earle -- Theodore Roosevelt's historical consciousness and Lincoln's generous nationalism / Kathleen Dalton -- A scholar and his ghosts: Woodrow Wilson as historian in the White House / John Milton Cooper Jr. -- The ordeal of Paris: Herbert Hoover, Woodrow Wilson, and the search for peace / Charlie Laderman -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the problem of historical time / David Sehat -- Profiles in triangulation: John F. Kennedy's neoliberal history of American politics / Jeffrey L. Pasley -- Ronald Reagan's allegories of history / Rick Perlstein -- Barack Obama's use of American history / James T. Kloppenberg.
Bibliography Note:Includes bibliographical references and index.
Note:"Presidents shape not only the course of history but also how Americans remember and retell that history. From the Oval Office they instruct us what to respect and what to reject in our past. They regale us with stories about who we are as a people, and tell us whom in the pantheon of greats we should revere and whom we should revile. The president of the United States, in short, is not just the nation's chief legislator, the head of a political party, or the commander in chief of the armed forces, but also, crucially, the nation's historian in chief. In this engaging and insightful volume, Seth Cotlar and Richard Ellis bring together top historians and political scientists to explore how eleven American presidents deployed their power to shape the nation's collective memory and its political future. Contending that the nation's historians in chief should be evaluated not only on the basis of how effective they are in persuading others, Historian in Chief argues they should also be judged on the veracity of the history they tell."
