History Buff's Guide to the Presidents Read Online Free PDF Page A

him thousands, which may have led to his eventual bout with terminal throat cancer. William McKinley almost never exercised, unless walking while smoking counts. Calvin Coolidge liked gargantuan Fonseca Coronas Fines de Luxe. Millionaire Herbert Hoover demanded large black Juan Alones Havanas, which he consumed at the rate of a hundred a week. Legendary is Kennedy’s acquisition of more than a thousand Upmann Petit Coronas before he signed a total embargo against Cuba. Nixon, like Adams, smoked when he was nervous or celebrating. Bill Clinton’s fondness for stogies became famous during the L EWINSKY A FFAIR , but he may not have lit up. Like most businesses and public buildings at the time, the Clintons followed the trend of an increasingly antitobacco nation and banned smoking throughout the White House. 14
From the FDR administration through LBJ’s, formal White House dinners often concluded with retirement into adjacent rooms, where the refreshments were coffee and cigarettes for women, brandy and cigars for men.
    2 . READING
    Before his eyesight failed him, George Washington liked to recite from newspapers to his wife before bedtime. But he made it a point never to read in the presence of company, as he thought it the pinnacle of rudeness.
    John Adams read quickly, and in French, neither of which Washington could do. He was partial to science and mathematics, while Jefferson read almost everything he could find, though he found law to be uninspiring. James Madison enjoyed the purity of Greek and Latin rather than relying on English translations. All three amassed personal libraries numbering several thousand volumes, an expensive undertaking at the time. Jefferson’s collection eventually became the core of the Library of Congress, while Madison donated the bulk of his collection to the University of Virginia. 15
    The White House would not have a library of its own until the 1850s, built by a couple who had met when she was a teacher and he was her student. Their lifelong pursuit of learning inspired Millard and Abigail Fillmore to ask Congress to fund a permanent executive library. Aided by a five-thousand-dollar grant, the Fillmores packed the second floor oval room with works on law, history, engineering, and the classics. 16
    Lincoln preferred Byron, Poe, and Shakespeare, especially Macbeth . Nothing enthralled him more than heavy satire, which often made him chuckle while reading. Not one to laugh alone, he would often recite long passages to anyone within earshot, which sometimes proved uncomfortable for those who were busy with more pressing matters. Certainly more refined than Lincoln, the well-read James Garfield enjoyed Jane Austen’s subtle critiques of class-bound England. He also read ancient Greek and Latin.
    For some, reading was a physical challenge. James Buchanan was farsighted in one eye and nearsighted in the other, which made him unconsciously cock his head to the side. Theodore Roosevelt plowed through history, politics, biographies, Dickens, Poe, Shelly, and Tennyson. He read at night, the only time he was sitting still, but poor eyesight required him to read inches from the page. A boxing injury while president also damaged his left retina, which eventually rendered the eye blind. Cerebral Woodrow Wilson read nearly as much as TR, but far slower, because he struggled with dyslexia. 17
    Reflecting their culture, the later presidents either read quickly or not at all. Reagan and the Bushes rarely found time, whereas Truman and Nixon concentrated on biographies. Suitably, Nixon viewed tragic heroes as the most intriguing. For Kennedy it was newspapers, piles of them, and he could read fifteen hundred words a minute, nearly as fast as Jimmy Carter at two thousand words and more than 90 percent retention. One of Bill Clinton’s favorite classics was Tolstoy’s War and Peace , but he perused a wide variety of fiction and nonfiction, and he often had several books going at once. Barack Obama