The craft of presidential biographers and how they influence our perceptions of history

Our impressions of US presidents are based largely on the work of biographers who, we assume, are simply documenting history. But these authors are craft-conscious practitioners of what is a literary genre at least as much as a public record, and the narratives they create play an enormous role in forming how we view our presidents and their legacies.

In Making the American Presidency, Carl Rollyson provides the first in-depth look at presidential biography, revealing its fascinating origins and development. He examines some of the great masters of the craft, including Robert Caro and Nigel Hamilton, to illuminate how biographers operate almost like novelists, cultivating their own visions of their subjects’ personalities and policies, and how their work glorifies the office itself in ways that influence not only readers but the presidents about whom they write.

Rollyson shows how biography helped create the legend of George Washington, including its many mythical qualities, and how similar treatments evolved over generations, affecting profoundly our perceptions of succeeding presidents, from Adams, Jefferson, and Jackson to Lincoln, FDR, and Barack Obama. He also considers the two Trump administrations and both how they seem immune to the traditions of presidential biography and how they could potentially refigure the entire practice and its influence.