An engaging look at the 42 men who have served as president.

    Published in conjunction with the White House Historical Association.Ever since the White House was built over 200 years ago, its decor has been of great interest to visitors, historians, and anyone interested in our nation's history and how it was manifested in our country's most famous residence. Influenced not only by styles of the moment, the White House interiors are even more affected by the sensibilities of its occupants, our presidents and their first families.This updated edition features new photos and information from recent renovations of the Green Room, the Queens' Bedroom, Family Dining Room, Lincoln Bedroom and Lincoln Bed, Lincoln Sitting Room, and the Oval Office. Also highlighted will be china from the Clinton and Bush administrations and a fire screen acquired during the Obama administration.Author Betty Monkman shares historical facts and anecdotes revealing how the furnishings and artwork showcased in this book came to the White House, sometimes under controversial circumstances. She describes how Mary Todd Lincoln earned public criticism for indulging in excessive shopping expeditions and expenditures during the early days of the Civil War. Readers also learn how Jacqueline Kennedy took a vastly different approach to changes in the president's residence, by working to transform the White House into a place where visitors could learn about the history of the country.

    Drawing from the vast collections of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, it provides a revealing glimpse of the culture, particularly the material culture, of the presidency: the duties, responsibilities, rituals, representations, and personal effects of America's chief executive." "The American Presidency accompanies a permanent exhibition of the same name at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History."--BOOK JACKET.

    Featuring more than 150 valuable and historic items and a rare public display of the Jefferson library that is the nucleus of the Library's collections, both tine exhibition and its companion book will seek out the complex character, ideals, and motivations behind the mythic founding achievements of this brilliant son of the Enlightenment.The book's lively narrative, illuminated by Jefferson's own words, weaves back and forth between the public career -- delegate to the Continental Congress, author of the Declaration of Independence and other calls to liberty, governor of Virginia, two-term president -- and his life at his beloved plantation and house, Monticello. Commentaries on manuscripts explore the conflicts between his public ideals, political realities, and his private life, including the recent controversial evidence of a long liaison with his slave Sally Hemings. From his worldview to his family relationships, Thomas Jefferson provides a new and intimate sense of the man historians have only recently begun to extricate from thc lofty abstractions that have born his name.