Harry Truman was not a wealthy man before becoming President, and his economic fortunes did not improve much while in elected office. Before holding any elected office, Truman had earned little money, and was in debt from the failure of his haberdashery business. Even though he made more money while holding elected office, the need to maintain two ( Read more... )

Herbert Hoover had gone from hero to goat. Once considered the most brilliant man in America, once elected President in a landslide, Hoover now found himself on the other side of that landslide. He had lost his bid for re-election to Franklin Roosevelt in a bitter contest and many Americans blamed Hoover for the Great Depression that they were in ( Read more... )

Calvin Coolidge completed the presidential term of Warren Harding, after Harding's death in 1923, and then won a full term in office at the top of the ticket in 1924. He could have run for another term in office in 1928, but opted not to. The unexpected death of his son Calvin Jr. in 1924 saddened him deeply. In his memoirs, Coolidge explained his ( Read more... )

William Howard Taft suffered the indignity of not only losing his bid for re-election, but of finishing third in the contest, behind the victor Woodrow Wilson and also behind third party candidate Theodore Roosevelt, who had once been Taft's friend, and who was now his biggest critic.


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Three presidents died on the 4th of July, but only one has a birthday today. John Calvin Coolidge Jr., the 30th President of the United States, was born on July 4, 1872 (152 years ago today).


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In 1932 the United States was in the grip of the Great Depression. It began in the summer of 1929, when the United States economy first went into an economic recession. The country spent two months with a declining GDP, before the Wall Street Crash of October 1929 hit, followed by a major worldwide economic downturn. The market crash was followed ( Read more... )

In 2022, the movie Amsterdam opened in movie theaters. It was loosely based on an alleged plot that is said to have occurred in 1933, which became known as the Business Plot. The hero of the story of the real life plot was also a military hero and an interesting historical figure with the unusual name of General Smedley Darlington Butler. (Robert ( Read more... )

For the past month and a half we've been examining some of the better books written about each of the Presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama. The Presidency of Joe Biden is not over yet, and it's possible that his predecessor Donald Trump may have a second Presidency coming and therefore their stories are still unfinished, hence no ( Read more... )

Like John Quincy Adams or Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter is one of those Presidents who wasn't so popular while in office, but one for whom admiration grew in the post-presidency. Known for his humanitarian pursuits, including his work with Habitat for Humanity, Carter is also admired for the fact that, God willing, this October he may become the ( Read more... )

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is definitely one of the most biographied presidents, and it is understandable why. He served as President longer than anyone has (or will unless there is a Constitutional Amendment allowing a President to hold the office for longer than two full terms.) He held the office through a Great Depression and then a World War, ( Read more... )