Presidential Pages...

Today is Super Tuesday, meaning there are presidential caucuses or primaries in 24 states, more than on any other day. Billions of words have been written about the candidates in newspapers, magazines, even books.

Of the remaining candidates, which have WRITTEN books themselves?


A quick search on Amazon reveals about a half-dozen titles penned at least in part by Hillary Clinton and as well by Barack Obama. On the Republican side, John McCain has about a half-dozen too, as does Mike Huckabee. Mitt Romney only has one.

Which presidents are published authors?

This was no quick search, but thanks to my Favorite Librarian Leslie and her team of interns, I can tell you 29 of our 43 presidents are/were published authors. While most published letters, diaries and autobiographies, others published books on history, politics, and foreign affairs. Jimmy Carter wrote a novel and Gerald Ford wrote humor. The most prolific presidential author to date is our 26th president Theodore Roosevelt. He wrote more than 40 books on variety of topics, including Rough Riders, his 1899 memoir on the Spanish-American War.

How many of these presidential books are still available?

Again turning to Amazon, I found books by nearly all the presidential authors of the 20th including Bill Clinton, George H W Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, John F Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman and Herbert Hoover. Most of the titles only appeared as used, but a few were, like Kennedy's Profiles in Courage, new editions.

On Alibris, a used and out-of-print books website, I found titles by Martin Van Buren, Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt and even a couple by Thomas Jefferson. None of these books were the original editions but isn't it amazing they are still available to us?