Book Review Of Failure Of The Presidents By Thomas Craughwell

When looking at the cover of this book, one may think that the rest of the book will only get better from there. They will be greatly disappointed when they finish the whole book and realize that when they looked at the cover, they encountered the most interesting part of the whole book. Failures of the Presidents does not exceed or even fulfill the expectations the reader has for this book. If someone wrote a book called “Failures of the History Books”, this book would get its deserving spot on the top of the list. Failures of the Presidents by Thomas Craughwell is a nonfiction history book. If there were a category of nonfiction snore, that’s what it would be under. Craughwell’s thesis states that although the presidents’ decisions in times of crisis are meant to better the country, sometimes these decisions have the opposite outcome. He focuses the book around the wrongdoings of the presidents rather than their positive contributions from their presidency. Therefore, his bias would be against the presidents’ successful decisions

Craughwell writes a very brief and concise chapter for each president, which leads him to try to jam all of these facts, which panned out over 4 to 8 years, into a short 10-15 pages. He also adds an abundance of names of people who contributed to the president’s decision. While reading some of the chapters he mentions the president’s cabinet members more than he mentions the president he’s supposed to be talking about. With how many names he adds, this book should be called “Failures of the Presidents and their Cabinet Members”.

After reading a chapter, the reader is left a little empty with the effects that resulted in the decisions made by the presidents. Craughwell doesn’t add a little epilogue of the effect that the president’s decision had on the nation and its’ people. He just says what they did then stops dead in his tracks and moves on to the next