A thorough look at an unjustly forgotten prez
James Buchanan is a perfect example of why I am reading a bio of every president (in order, to see where we went wrong, a project I clearly started during the Dubya Bush administration). James Buchanan comes right before Lincoln, so he mostly just gets blamed for not being Lincoln. However, James Buchanan was actually a very successsful lawyer, networker, and politician. He also enacted some ideas and policies and even wrote some thoughts and speeches that Lincoln continued and got some credit for. Buchanan tried strenuously to preserve peace and the union. Reading about 1820s to 1850s history is fascinating and this book does a great job of being informative and providing information about the goings-on around him that affected him and that he affected.
