Reading Every Presidential Biography

I’m trying to read a biography for every president of the United States. This is a directory of all my reviews.

I started this project in 2022 when I started my first full time job. I lived in Brookline and my work office was an hour away by green-line tram. At the time, I was wrestling with control.⁰ Sitting stuck in a metal box for two hours wouldn’t do. So I copied lots of other green line riders. I transported myself someplace else with books. Now I needed to pick a genre. I love long-form projects.¹ Inching that progress bar forward every day is intoxicating to me. I love the United States. Being born in Massachusetts, I grew up on public television.² That cultural influence still runs through my veins as hot-blooded patriotism. And so I came upon the idea of tracking our presidents.

(0) Something I only know now after reflection.

(1) Like … running every street in my town.

(2) Watching Arthur every morning was formative.

I did the most important thing for any project. I started. I picked a thin book about George Washington with a cheeky title: You Never Forget Your First. I was more ambitious with the second president: McCullough’s John Adams biography. This was a heavy book that prompted me to get an ereader. EReaders are lightweight and don’t make you look like an egotist. In April of 2023 my coworker gifted me an old road bike. I cut my commute down to only 30 minutes³. That new hour of life enabled me to push harder in work and my personal life. The only loss was I started reading much less. Now I save reading for long commuter rail trips, and when I have trouble sleeping.

(3) Both an indictment of Boston’s green line and a credit to Boston’s bike infrastructure (which is only getting better!).

Still, at a conservative estimate of a book a year I’ll catch up in about 47 years⁴.

(4) 45 unique presidents as of 2025 and I’m assuming that rate can be treated constant (elimination of term limits and assassinations may happen again). I can model the expected number of presidents by year y as 45/(2025-1789) * (y - 1789) = p. The expected number of presidents books read can be modeled as

p = y
      - 2025 + 7

. These are expected to line up in

y =
      2071.95288 ≈ 2072

These mirror my goodreads profile. In the interest of time I don’t do heavy editing, instead I give off-the-cuff reactions.

Links^*

I've sorted these reviews chronologically by first time in office.

Links*

(*) I've made an RSS feed for this specific project here!