Library of Congress Book of Presidents

Review

I had a lot of fun looking through Martin W. Sandler's Library of Congress Book of Presidents. Here are photographs, campaign posters and artists' renderings of great and not so great moments in the lives and fortunes of our presidents. The text offers fascinating bits of information. Did you know Andrew Johnson was illiterate until he was eighteen and his sixteen year old bride taught him how to read? Fillmore was the first president to have a stove but no one including the White House cook knew how to use it. Benjamin Harrison had electric lights installed in the White House but both he and his wife were afraid to turn them on. These are not the earthshaking events that altered history, but the trivia that make it interesting.

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