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Title Historian in chief : how presidents interpret the past to shape the future / edited by Seth Cotlar and Richard J. Ellis
Published Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2019
©2019

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Description 1 online resource
Contents 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
Summary 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 volume, editors Cotlar and 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
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed February 18, 2019)
Subject Presidents -- United States -- Attitudes -- History
Collective memory -- United States -- History
Political culture -- United States -- History
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Public Policy -- Cultural Policy.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- Cultural.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Popular Culture.
LAW -- Legal History.
Collective memory
Historiography
Political culture
Presidents -- Attitudes
SUBJECT United States -- Historiography. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85140129
Subject United States
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
Author Cotlar, Seth, editor.
Ellis, Richard (Richard J.), editor.
ISBN 9780813942520
0813942527
0813942535
9780813942537