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| One member's unintentionally assembled collection of signed presidential books |
Getting an early start on the Fourth of July
festivities, the July 2025 meeting paid respect to US Presidents. Nonfiction books by and about US presidents,
the presidency, and related issues were shown.
Several works of fiction with US presidents as central characters were
also shown.
The nonfiction books are organized here in the
order of the subject's presidency, and the works of fiction are listed in order
of publication.
Nonfiction
 |
| The Life of George Washington |
Marshall, John. The Life of George Washington, Commander
in Chief of the American Forces, During the War which Established the
Independence of His Country, and First President of the United States. Philadelphia: C. P. Wayne, 1804. Five volumes in the original
full leather including the map atlas with the maps folded to match the size of
the five volumes. First edition of the
first major biography of George Washington by the first Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court.
 |
| Monticello in Measured Drawings |
Beiswanger, William L. Monticello in Measured Drawings. Charlottesville, VA: The Thomas Jefferson
Memorial Foundation, 1998. Monticello was the home of Thomas Jefferson
in Virginia. This volume offers a set of
elevations, sections and details of the house (line drawings) as it was
actually built for Jefferson. Monticello
was begun in 1768, when Jefferson was 25 years old, and he continued to alter
it until his death in 1826, at the age of 83.
William Beiswanger, the Director of Restoration at Monticello, provides
architectural commentary on the drawings in the book. This copy is signed by Beiswanger on the half
title page.
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| Handwritten Autobiography for The Chicago Press and Tribune: Abraham Lincoln, June 1860 |
Lincoln, Abraham. Handwritten Autobiography for The Chicago
Press and Tribune: Abraham Lincoln, June 1860. Norwalk, CT: Easton Press and the Library of
Congress, 1995.
This is a facsimile of Lincoln's autobiography, handwritten for the Chicago
newspaper during his presidential campaign.
The original document is housed in the Library of Congress Rare Book and
Special Collections Division and is reproduced here in its entirety for the first
time. The 16-page facsimile is housed in
a moiré silk tri-fold portfolio within a full leather clamshell box.
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| Our National Government |
Logan, Mrs. John A. (Mary Simmerson
Cunningham Logan). Our National
Government, or Life and Scenes in Our National Capital. Minneapolis, MN: H. L. Baldwin Company, 1908. In this portrait of American government,
the wife of a former US senator includes a section with a collection of
"sketches of the presidents and their wives and of all the famous women
who have reigned in the White House from Washington's to Taft's
administration." She also includes
a chapter on Washington's Mount Vernon home and his daily life and fatal
illness in December 1799.
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| Mr. President |
Hillman, William. Mr. President: The First Publication from
the Personal Diaries, Private Letters, Papers and Revealing Interviews of Harry
S. Truman, Thirty-Second President of the United States of America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1952. Pictures by Alfred Wagg. Hillman, a journalist and news commentator, edited Mr. President from Truman's papers and archives; he later assisted Truman with Memoirs (1955-56) and Mr. Citizen (1960). This copy is warmly inscribed by Harry Truman
during a Testimonial Dinner on September 20, 1958.
 |
| Ike and Dick |
Frank, Jeffrey. Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange
Political Marriage. New York: Simon
& Schuster, 2013.
First edition. Jeffrey Frank, the
senior editor of The New Yorker magazine and deputy editor of The
Washington Post Outlook section, argues the political "mating" of
Eisenhower and Nixon was one of the strangest and most fateful in American
political history. Frank explains why
Eisenhower, ill during the late 1960s, supported Nixon in part because he was
greatly influenced by his grandson David's courtship of Nixon's daughter. This copy is inscribed by the author on the
title page.
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| The Imperial Presidency |
Schlesinger, Jr., Arthur M. The Imperial Presidency. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973. First edition. Schlesinger provides a history and analysis
of the gradual expansion of the executive powers of the presidency, especially
those of war powers, from those created by the Constitution to those given over
from Congress up through the Nixon administration. Schlesinger highlights the growing abuses of executive
power by presidents and offers remedies to return authority to Congress while
maintaining a strong executive branch.
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| Turning Point |
Carter, Jimmy. Turning Point: A Candidate, A State, and a
Nation Come of Age. New York: Times
Books, 1992.
First edition. In this memoir,
Carter recounts his first campaign for public office in 1962 and his entrance
into the political arena. He also
discusses the political climate of the time and how the Civil Rights Movement
and other social concerns shaped his vision of how people of faith could join
forces to right the wrongs of American society.
This copy is inscribed by President Carter on the first blank
preliminary page.
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| Keeping Faith |
Carter, Jimmy. Keeping Faith. New York: Bantam Books, 1982. Drawn
from the 5,000-page diary Carter kept during his presidency, Keeping Faith
is his candid evaluation of the accomplishments and disappointments of his time
in the White House. The memoir
reiterates his sustaining resolve of "keeping faith" in Americans in
the hope they would regain belief in themselves (a theme echoed from his other
memoir, Turning Points [above]). This
copy is number 1029 of a limited-edition of 2500 slip-cased, leather-bound copies.
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| The Nobel Prize Lecture |
Carter, Jimmy. The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. Carter’s remarks upon receiving
the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize. President
Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for his decades of untiring
effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance
democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social
development." This copy is signed
by President Carter on the title page.
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| Speaking My Mind |
Reagan, Ronald. Speaking My Mind: Selected Speeches. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989. First edition, first printing
bound in full Morocco leather, limited to 5000 copies, numbered, and signed by
the former president. Selected by Reagan
himself, this collection of speeches reflects his political philosophy and the
triumphs, challenges, and tragedies of his years in office.
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| My Life |
Clinton, Bill
(William Jefferson). My Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. Clinton's
autobiography, published three years after leaving the White House, is an
exhaustive chronological account of his life from his childhood through his
presidency. This copy is number 1400 in
a limited-edition of 1500 slip-cased, signed copies.
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| Portraits of Courage |
Bush, George W. Portraits of Courage: A Commander in
Chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors. New York: Crown Publishers, 2017. Portraits
of Courage is a collection of oil painting by the former president and stories
about the military veterans depicted in his artwork. This copy is one of an unnumbered, signed,
limited, slip-cased edition of 2000 copies.
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| Shade |
Souza, Pete. Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2018. Souza,
the official photographer of both presidents Reagan and Obama, released Shade
a year after Trump's inauguration. Souza
uses photographs he took to juxtapose the Obama and Trump administrations.
Fiction
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| Frost/Nixon |
Morgan, Peter. Frost/Nixon. London: Faber & Faber, 2006. First trade (non-acting)
edition. Morgan dramatizes the
controversial series of interviews by British journalist David Frost with former
US president Richard Nixon in 1977.
Frost's interviews drew out Nixon's now-famous reply, "Well, when
the president does it, that means that it is not illegal," as well as Nixon's
stunning admission that he participated in a cover-up and "let the
American people down."
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| Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter |
Grahame-Smith, Seth. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Killer. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2010. Grahame-Smith's fiction is a
mash-up novel—a genre-bending combination of biography, horror, and action—in which
the historic Abraham Lincoln has a secret identity as a hunter of evil
vampires.
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| The Jefferson Key |
Berry, Steve. The Jefferson Key. New York: Ballantine Books, 2011. This work of political fiction
speculates that the four presidents who have been assassinated—each murder
seemingly unrelated and separated by time—may have all been killed for the same
reason: a clause in the US Constitution, in Article 1, Section 8. This copy is signed by the author on the title page.
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| The Lincoln Myth |
Berry, Steve. The Lincoln Myth. New York: Ballantine Books, 2014. In this work of historical and
political fiction, a secret passed down from president to president presents
Abraham Lincoln with a conundrum. This
copy is signed by the author on the title page.
