Book Review: Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents (Cormac O’Brien)

Presidents of the United States

Simultaneously one of the most revered and the most reviled position or figurehead on the face of the planet. Often demonized or lauded for no reason, the President of the United States is a position of immense power, responsibility…. and folly.

And boy oh boy has there been lots of follies in the White House.

I remember reading the first version of this book back in High School, at the time it came out Bush Jr., had only been in office about a year, so it briefly covered about the first three or so months of his tenure. This edition runs up to about the first year of Obama’s year in office. I can only imagine a new edition now, covering Trump’s term, as well as Biden’s term so far.

So far as I know, there’s been no changes to the past segments, the only new changes from the edition I read in High School to the edition I read here is that it added a full account of Bush’s time in office, as well as Obama’s first year. (I could be wrong, since I don’t have the original copy to cross check.)

Book Review

The back of the book blurb:

Your high school history teachers never gave you a book like this one! Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents features outrageous and uncensored profiles of the men in the White House – complete with hundreds of little-known, politically incorrect, and downright wacko facts. You’ll discover
– George Washington spent a whopping 7% of his salary on booze
– John Quincy Adams loved to skinny-dip in the Potomac River
– Warren G. Harding gambled with White House china when he ran low on cash
– Jimmy Carter reported a UFO sighting in Georgia
– And Richard Nixon . . . sheesh, don’t get us started on Nixon!
With chapters on everyone from George Washington to G. W. Bush, Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents tackles all the tough questions that other history books are afraid to Are there really secret tunnels underneath the White House? How many presidential daughters have bared their all for Playboy ? And what was Nancy Reagan thinking when she appeared on Diff’rent Strokes ? American history was never this much fun in school!

Secret Lives of the US Presidents (GoodReads)

The book is pretty straight forward. Each chapter is about 3 – to – 4 pages and covers each preisdent in sequential order. Some are a little bit more interesting than others, and some are a bit more ‘known’ than others (in the sense that its not bizarre weird trivia about the person).

(I can only imagine if they make an edition of this when it gets to Donald Trump.) For the most part, a lot of the chapters are typical histories of their time in office and their greatest scandals / offenses, with bits of esoteric knowledge of each president thrown in.

It is interesting to see what level of scandals different presidents have, and how thats impacted their political careers and how well their time in office went. It certainly seems like the scandals have ramped up over time. What “passed” for scandals in the 1800s and early 1900s are just mere blips on most Presidential tenures these days.

In the Presidents of the past there isn’t much political bias that creeps in – in the way of authorial voice – but in the more modern Presidents… a little bit creeps in. (In my opinion.) On the whole, I don’t think its bad, and certainly not off putting to the point that it makes it unreadable (either pro or con your side).

Its relatively fair through and through.

Overall I enjoyed the book, its a fun, relatively quick and easy read. Not crazy informative, but does provide some ‘fun reader entertainment level information’. If your a fan of history and not a super academic historian, this is a fun little read.

My GoodReads Rating: ***
Global Average GoodReads Rating: 3.71 (as of 4.26.23)
My LibraryThing Rating: ***

Other Book Reviews

Interested in more book reviews? Then check these out:

• Book Review: The Philosophy of Snoopy (Charles M. Schulz)
• Book Review: On Bullshit (Harry G. Frankfurt)
• Book Review: Free Will (Sam Harris)
• Book Review: Free Will Explained (Dan Barker)
• Book Review: The Art of Stillness – Adventures in Going Nowhere (Pico Iyer)
• Book Review: The Physics of Baseball (Robert K. Adair)
• Book Review: Machiavelli – The Art of Teaching People What to Fear (Patrick Boucheron)
• Book Review: Wit’s End (James Geary)
• Book Review: The Greatest Beer Run Ever (John Chick Donohue and J.T. Molloy)
• Book Review: A Woman’s Place is in the Brewhouse – A Forgotten History of Alewives, Brewsters, Witches, and CEOs (Tara Nurin)
• Book Review: The Essential Salvador Dalí (Robert Goff)
• Book Review: Beer and Society: How We Make Beer and Beer Makes Us (Eli Revelle Yano Wilson and Asa B. Stone)
• Book Review: Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck)
• Book Review: An Atlas of Tolkien (David Day)
• Book Review: The Wit and Wisdom of Tyrion Lannister (George R.R. Martin)
• Book Review: The World According to Mister Rogers (Fred Rogers)
• Book Review: Life’s Journey According to Mister Rogers: Things To Remember Along the Way (Fred Rogers)
• Book Review: Curb Your Enthusiasm and Philosophy (Edited by Mark Ralkowski)
• Book Review: You Don’t Look 35, Charlie Brown! (Charles M. Schulz)
• Book Review: Pulisic – My Journey So Far (Christian Pulisic)

Thank You For Reading

Hope you liked this book review. From time to time, I enjoy doing book reviews on the site. Combining my different interests. Sometimes they wll be beer related book reviews, and sometimes not. Either way, let me know in the comments if you like them. Thanks!

Cheers.

-B. Kline

Thanks again for reading everyone. Take some time to check out the site, we greatly appreciate it. We have affiliates and sponsors with Pretzels.com and Beer Drop.com, which can save you money on their products if you are interested. Check out our articles on them. Make sure to check out our beer reviews, brewery reviews, Amy’s weekly column, book reviews, hike reviews, and so much more.

As always, thank you everyone for reading! Leave your likes, comments, suggestions, questions, etc, in the comments section. Or use the Feedback – Contact Us – page, and we’ll get right back to you! You can also reach out to us at our direct e-mail address: thebeerthrillers@gmail.com

Thank you for visiting our blog. Please make sure to follow, bookmark, subscribe, and make sure to comment and leave feedback and like the blog posts you read. It will help us to better tailor the blog to you, the readers, likes and make this a better blog for everyone.

You can check out our different directories here: Beer Reviews, Hike Reviews, Book Reviews, Brewery News, Brewery Openings, Brewer Interviews, and Travelogues.

Please be sure to follow us on our social media accounts – Facebook, Facebook Group, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Influence. As well as our brand new Tumblr page. Please be sure to also follow, like, subscribe to the blog here itself to keep updated. We love to hear from you guys, so be sure to leave a comment and let us know what you think!

You can now find us on our Discord Server here: The Beer Thrillers (Discord Server). We’ve also joined LinkTree to keep track of all of our social media pages, as well as hot new articles we’ve written.

The Beer Thrillers on LinkTree can be found here: The Beer Thrillers LinkTree.

We have partnered with an affiliateship with Beer Drop.com. You can check out that partnership and receive great discounts, coupons, and more here: Beer Drop. Going here and logging in and ordering will help you receive your discounts and coupons as well as help support our page. Thank you for helping to support The Beer Thrillers and to help us maintain the site and blog and to keep it running.

The Beer Thrillers are a blog that prides itself on writing beer reviews, brewery reviews, travelogues, news (especially local to the Central PA brewery scene), as well as covering other topics of our interests – such as hiking, literature and books, board games, and video games which we sometimes stream with our friends over at Knights of Nostalgia. We are currently listed as #7 on FeedSpot’s “Top 100 Beer Blogs” and #8 on FeedSpot’s “Top 40 Pennsylvania Blogs”. (As of January 2023.) Thank you for reading our site today, please subscribe, follow, and bookmark. Please reach out to us if you are interested in working together. If you would like to donate to the blog you can here: Donate to The Beer Thrillers. Thank you!

You can also check out our partnership and affiliation with Pretzels.com, where ordering pretzels and using our affiliate code – AFFILIATE CODE IS THEBEERTHRILLERS20 – will help you get wonderful pretzels and help us maintain and keep this blog running. Thank you!

If you would like to reach out to us for product reviews, beer reviews, press release writing, and other media – please contact us at thebeerthrillers@gmail.com. Thank you.