• Location: Upsrairs on the comfy couch with Abby
• Mood: calm
• Music: Moxy Fruvous-"My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors"

Summer Reading for the Potus Geek

My summer plans are to take a break from reading Presidential biographies and switch to fiction while I'm on vacation. I have about 30 pages to finish off H. W. Brands' biography Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times and then it's lighter reading for the next few weeks. But if you did want to use the summer to read some fun Potus geekery, there are some good books out in this genre that might make passable beach reading. Let me make a few suggestions:

1. The President and the Assassin by Scott Miller: the story about President William McKinley, his assassin (the batshit crazy Leon Czolgosz) and how Theodore Roosevelt became President.



2. The President is a Sick Man by Matthew Algeo: the book's full title says it all - "Wherein the supposedly virtuous Grover Cleveland survives a secret surgery at sea and vilifies the courageous newspaperman who dared expose the truth."



3. Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure also by Matthew Algeo: the story of the road trip that Harry and Bess Truman took after Truman's presidency from Independence, Missouri to Washington. (Thanks to direcorrector for recommending this!)



4. A Secret Life: The Lies and Scandals of Grover Cleveland by Charles Lachman: Apparently 2011 must be the year to kick Grover Cleveland. Still, a chubby guy, sex scandals, it makes for a good recipe for a book these days.



5. Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan by Del Quentin Wilber: the story of John Hinkley's attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan including how the Secret Service reacted.



Those are just five recent books off the top of my head that might make good beach reading. Please comment with anything that you'd like to recommend. I'm also curious to know what's on your summer reading list, whether it's presidential or not.