Because the American presidency is the most powerful position in the most powerful nation on the planet, it’s not surprising that a number of our chief executives have actually consorted with literary lights:
Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of such American classics as “The Scarlet Letter,” died on a canoe trip in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, accompanied by President Franklin Pierce, our 14th president. Hawthorne had been Pierce’s classmate at Bowdoin College, along with the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
James A. Garfield, our 20th president, adored the work of Gen. Lew Wallace, the author of “Ben-Hur.” The president appointed Wallace as an ambassador to Constantinople, hoping that the novelist might be inspired to write another exciting book about biblical times. When Charles Dickens toured the United States, Garfield attended his lectures and enjoyed them thoroughly.
Theodore Roosevelt, 26th in the parade of presidents, was without doubt one of our most ebullient leaders. The wildly popular British adventure writer Rudyard Kipling spent some time with the president and reported: “I curled up in the seat opposite, and listened and wondered, until the universe seemed to be spinning around, and Theodore was the spinner.”
During the administration of Dwight Eisenhower, our 34th president, James Michener, author of “Hawaii,” “The Source,” and other megasellers, was invited to a celebrity dinner at the White House. Michener declined to attend and explained: “Dear Mr. President: I received your invitation three days after I had agreed to speak a few words at a dinner honoring the wonderful high school teacher who taught me how to write. I know you will not miss me at your dinner, but she might at hers.”
Michener received a handwritten reply from the understanding Ike: “In his lifetime a man lives under fifteen or sixteen presidents, but a really fine teacher comes into his life but rarely. Go and speak at your teacher’s dinner.”
A number of our chief executives have also been writers themselves:
Ulysses S. Grant, our 18th president, claimed to smoke seven to 10 cigars a day. When word got out of the president’s love of stogies, people sent him more than 10,000 boxes of cigars. Grant finished his 200,000-word “Memoirs” only a few days before his death from throat cancer, so he never saw the work published. Grant’s cancer and the forfeiture of his military pension when he became president bankrupted his family, but his popular autobiography ultimately brought in $450,000 for his family.
“Personal Memoirs: Ulysses S. Grant” remains one of the finest accounts of the Civil War ever written. Grant’s book was published with the help of his friend Mark Twain in 1885, the same year that Twain came out with “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”
Herbert Hoover, our 31st chief executive, wrote approximately 16 books, including one called “Fishing for Fun and to Wash Your Soul.” John F. Kennedy is the only president to receive the Pulitzer Prize — for his book “Profiles in Courage.”
But it is Jimmy Carter who is our most writerly president, having authored about 20 books, many of which have been best sellers. Carter, our 39th president, wrote most of his works after his presidency and some with his wife, Rosalynn, as co-author. In 2003, Carter authored a novel, “The Hornet’s Nest,” a fictional story of the Revolutionary War in the South. He is the only president to have published a novel.
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