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WORK TITLE: Worst. President. Ever.
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 7/6/1951
WEBSITE:
CITY: Haddonfield
STATE: NJ
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.lyonspress.com/book/9781493024834 * https://www.english.upenn.edu/people/robert-strauss * http://www.npr.org/2016/10/15/498056608/-worst-president-ever-one-author-says-this-title-goes-to-james-buchanan
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.:
no2011114843
LCCN Permalink:
https://lccn.loc.gov/no2011114843
HEADING:
Strauss, Robert, 1951-
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__ |a Strauss, R. Daddy’s little goalie, c2011: |b t.p. (Robert Strauss) jacket (adjunct professor of writing in the English department, University of Pennsylvania; has been a reporter for Sports illustrated)
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__ |a Email from Robert Strauss, July 24, 2011 |b (Robert Seth Strauss; b. July 6, 1951, Philadelphia; BA in philosophy, 1973, Carleton College)
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__ |a Worst. President. Ever, 2016: |b ECIP t.p. (Robert Strauss) data view (b. July 6, 1951)
PERSONAL
Born July 6, 1951; married Susan Warner; children: Sylvia, Ella.
EDUCATION:Carleton College, B.A., 1973; attended University of California.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist, producer, educator, writer. Sports Illustrated, reporter; NBC, sports and news producer; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, adjunct writing professor.
AVOCATIONS:Softball, ’60s rock music.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to Fortune, Philadelphia Daily News, New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Asbury Park Press, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Philadelphia Inquirer.
SIDELIGHTS
Robert Strauss has spent the majority of his professional years working as a journalist. His work has appeared in a wide array of publications, including Sports Illustrated and the Washington Post. He has also worked in television, having been affiliated with NBC as a producer for their sports and news coverage. In addition to his work as a journalist, he has published creative nonfiction books, his first being Daddy’s Little Goalie: A Father, His Daughters, and Sports. He also has some experience in academia. Having attended Carleton College, where he earned his bachelor’s degree, he has served as an adjunct English professor for the University of Pennsylvania. One of Strauss’s other special interests, however, is history. This interest forms the influence for his second published book, Worst. President. Ever: James Buchanan, the POTUS Rating Game, and the Legacy of the Least of the Lesser Presidents.
Worst. President. Ever deals specifically with the term of the fifteenth U.S. head of state, James Buchanan. The main argument of the book, as implied by the title, is that Buchanan’s presidential efforts were some of the worst endured by Americans—so terrible, in fact, that no other president tops Buchanan in terms of abhorrent acts. Strauss makes his point by analyzing a number of noteworthy events from Buchanan’s presidency. He argues through these examples that, despite his presidential status, Buchanan failed to have the country’s best interests in mind. In demonstrating his assertion, Strauss depicts Buchanan as wishy-washy about many different, important issues of the time. His ineptitudes were further exacerbated by his lack of a strong cabinet, his advisors instead being a group of people who did nothing but agree with his flawed judgment. Some of the most notable of Buchanan’s failings include several forms of instigation, many of which roused the ire of the South and helped set off the sparks that eventually erupted into the Civil War. Strauss covers the events surrounding Bloody Kansas, the Panic of 1857, and the case of Dred Scott, a black slave who went to court to try and win liberation. According to Strauss, many of Buchanan’s poor decisions became messes for future presidents to clean up.
A writer in Kirkus Reviews called Worst. President. Ever “an oddly entertaining study of ‘the first plodding-to-the-top president,’ a man mercifully forgotten by history.” The reviewer added: “Strauss makes a firm argument for the essential doofusness of the 15th president.” In Publishers Weekly, a reviewer expressed that “Strauss maintains a light tone, but doesn’t sacrifice substance.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Strauss, Robert, Daddy’s Little Goalie: A Father, His Daughters, and Sports, Andrews McMeel Publishing (Kansas City, MO), 2011.
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2016, review of Worst. President. Ever: James Buchanan, the POTUS Rating Game, and the Legacy of the Least of the Lesser Presidents.
Publishers Weekly, August 15, 2016, review of Worst. President. Ever, p. 61.
ONLINE
NPR Web site, http://www.npr.org/ (October 15, 2016), “‘Worst President Ever’: One Author Says This Title Goes to James Buchanan,” author interview.
Slate, http://www.slate.com/ (September 22, 2016), Mike Pesca, “A How-Not-To Manual for Presidents,” author interview.
University of Chicago Web site, https://arts.uchicago.edu/ (November 16, 2016), author profile.
University of Pennsylvania Web site, https://www.english.upenn.edu/ (May 31, 2017), author profile.
Worst. President. Ever.
James Buchanan, the POTUS Rating Game, and the Legacy of the Least of the Lesser Presidents
Buy $26.95
£17.95
Book Description
Worst. President. Ever. flips the great presidential biography on its head, offering an enlightening—and highly entertaining!—account of poor James Buchanan’s presidency to prove once and for all that, well, few leaders could have done worse.
But author Robert Strauss does much more, leading readers out of Buchanan’s terrible term in office—meddling in the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, exacerbating the Panic of 1857, helping foment the John Brown uprisings and “Bloody Kansas,” virtually inviting a half-dozen states to secede from the Union as a lame duck, and on and on—to explore with insight and humor his own obsession with presidents, and ultimately the entire notion of ranking our presidents. He guides us through the POTUS rating game of historians and others who have made their own Mount Rushmores—or Marianas Trenches!—of presidential achievement, showing why Buchanan easily loses to any of the others, but also offering insights into presidential history buffs like himself, the forgotten "lesser" presidential sites, sex and the presidency, the presidency itself, and how and why it can often take the best measures out of even the most dedicated men.
About Strauss, Robert
Journalist, educator, historian and author Robert Strauss has been a reporter for Sports Illustrated, a feature writer for the Philadelphia Daily News, a news and sports producer for an NBC affiliate, and a TV critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Asbury Park Press. He has more than 1000 bylines in the New York Times, and also writes for the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia newspapers, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, and more. He is the author of Daddy’s Little Goalie. A father of two daughters, he lives in Haddonfield, New Jersey, with his wife Susan Warner.
Robert Strauss
rsethstrauss@verizon.net
Robert Strauss is a freelance journalist whose work appears in such places as the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer. He has worked as a reporter at Sports Illustrated, a feature writer for the Philadelphia Daily News, a news and features producer at KYW-TV in Philadelphia and a TV critic for the Asbury Park Press. He graduated with a BA in Philosophy from Carleton College, where he was the last man off the bench on the freshman basketball team. He also attended the University of California Graduate School of Journalism.
An inveterate traveler, Strauss has now been to 83 countries, if you count Greenland. He owned Jerry's, which won a Philadelphia Magazine best restaurant award in 1988.
Though he has won numerous awards for his writing, his most significant creations are his daughters, Ella, 15, and Sylvia, 12, whom he has maniacally taught to switch-hit in softball and memorize 1960s rock hits. His wife, Susan Warner, a former business reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer, puts up with him.
'Worst President Ever': One Author Says This Title Goes To James Buchanan
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October 15, 20167:49 AM ET
Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday
NPR's Scott Simon speaks with writer Robert Strauss about his new book, "Worst. President. Ever." Strauss looks at James Buchanan's time in office and argues he led the country to demise.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Polls suggest that many Americans are discouraged by the choices they have for president in 2016 and make dire predictions about what kind of president any of the candidates could be.
The writer Robert Strauss suggests that any new president would have to sink pretty low to meet the level set by the man the title of his book calls "Worst. President. Ever: James Buchanan, The POTUS Rating Game, And The Legacy Of The Least Of The Lesser Presidents." Robert Strauss joins us now from member station WHYY in Philadelphia. Thanks so much for being with us.
ROBERT STRAUSS: Thank you very much, Scott.
SIMON: Fill in some biographical blanks for us. James Buchanan was a Pennsylvanian, a bachelor and a Democrat.
STRAUSS: That's all true. He had the greatest resume - at least, the greatest governmental resume - of anybody who's ever run for president. He was a state representative. He was a U.S. congressman of both houses. He was the ambassador to Great Britain, ambassador to Russia and secretary of state.
SIMON: Well, let's get into the matter of his administration, if we can, and how he how he earned that title from you. A lot of it seems to center around the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision of 1857, which, I think, most historians considered, perhaps, even the most obscene decision in judicial history because it reaffirmed slavery across the entire United States.
And there's this singularly repellent phrase that blacks had, quote, "no rights which the white man must respect." But how do you wind up blaming President Buchanan for this decision or his role in it when he'd just been inaugurated?
STRAUSS: He decided early on that his legacy was going to be - or his mandate was going to be to settle the slavery question. And so he saw this case, the Dred Scott case, winding around the courts. Dred Scott was a slave to a military man who went to Minnesota, where it was free territory.
He came back to Missouri, where he was from. He eventually died. And Dred Scott sued in Supreme - well, in the courts. But Buchanan got his fellow Dickinson College graduate Robert Story (ph) to go along with what was going to be the majority decision. Another justice from New York was writing a concurring opinion. He got him to do that.
This is all behind the scenes before he was inaugurated. And two days after his inauguration, the decision came down as you have it. It sort of caused - more than sort of - caused a lot of chaos in the country. We had had a 20-year expansion in the United States. At that point, let's just say you're in - well, you're from Chicago, right? Let's say you had a tin cup factory in Chicago. You're doing pretty well. And maybe you're going to go out to Elgin and build another one.
But oh, wait a second. Some guy from Tennessee could come up and bring slaves there. Commerce stopped in the United States. People stop moving. Railroads failed. Other businesses failed. It became what was called the Panic of 1857, the most precipitous drop in the American economy in history - even worse than the Great Depression. So that sort of devastated the country within months of his administration starting.
SIMON: I'm trying to rally somehow to come to Buchanan's defense with you. And my reading is based upon your book. It's difficult. But let me suggest this to you. Don't all U.S. presidents suffer in comparison to Lincoln, whom he proceeded? I mean, Andrew Johnson was on the other side of Lincoln. And he's also considered one of the lesser presidents.
STRAUSS: Correct. Well, you know, I have to say that when I go out and give talks, I say that Buchanan is the second-most consequential American - Washington being the first. Washington started everything or led the start to everything. And Buchanan led us into demise.
Plus, he didn't support Stephen Douglas as his successor. And the Democratic Party split into three, allowing Lincoln to win. Perhaps if he had supported Douglas, his rival, maybe Douglas would've won the next election. And Lincoln would've been - I don't know - an afterthought. But he might not have ever become president.
SIMON: Just a very - wildly successful corporate attorney in Illinois.
STRAUSS: Perhaps so.
SIMON: And, of course, it's irresistible to point out Franklin Roosevelt, who, as you rightly point out, is considered one of our greatest presidents, still put Japanese-American citizens in internment camps. Lincoln, our greatest president by universal acclamation, crushed civil liberties in many areas to prosecute the war. Are you just focusing on what Buchanan did wrong?
STRAUSS: Look, nobody's perfect, of course. And, of course, one of the things I like to point out in the book is that Buchanan had some good traits, too. He wasn't just some evil jerk. He was the greatest party giver in mid-19th century America. He - even though he hated Douglas, there's nothing I could find in any of his papers where he bad-mouthed anybody.
He was a very civil guy. And so people liked him. So that's a plus, I would say. But his negatives was he had no knowledge of how to lead in any case. He waffled when we really needed him - the lead-up to the Civil War. And this was a really crucial time. And he really blew it.
SIMON: Robert Strauss - his book, "Worst. President. Ever." Thanks so much for being with us.
STRAUSS: Thanks a lot.
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Robert Strauss - "Worst President Ever" - Richard Babcock
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"Robert Strauss is perhaps The Funniest. Presidential Biographer. Ever. But it is no joke that he has turned the story of James Buchanan—indisputably the Worst. President. Ever—into a fascinating tale on the triumph of mediocrity. It would be hilarious—except that Buchanan ushered in a bloody Civil War. Unfortunately for all of us, Strauss also makes a good case that some contemporary seekers of high office are eerily reminiscent of Buchanan’s 19th century Know-Nothing comrades." — Kai Bird, author of "The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames"
Robert Strauss discusses "Worst. President. Ever. James Buchanan, the POTUS Rating Game, and the Legacy of the Least of the Lesser Presidents." He will be joined in conversation by Richard Babcock.
At 57th Street Books
About the book: "Worst. President. Ever." flips the great presidential biography on its head, offering an enlightening—and highly entertaining!—account of poor James Buchanan’s presidency to prove once and for all that, well, few leaders could have done worse.
But author Robert Strauss does much more, leading readers out of Buchanan’s terrible term in office—meddling in the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, exacerbating the Panic of 1857, helping foment the John Brown uprisings and “Bloody Kansas,” virtually inviting a half-dozen states to secede from the Union as a lame duck, and on and on—to explore with insight and humor his own obsession with presidents, and ultimately the entire notion of ranking our presidents. He guides us through the POTUS rating game of historians and others who have made their own Mount Rushmores—or Marianas Trenches!—of presidential achievement, showing why Buchanan easily loses to any of the others, but also offering insights into presidential history buffs like himself, the forgotten "lesser" presidential sites, sex and the presidency, the presidency itself, and how and why it can often take the best measures out of even the most dedicated men.
About the author: Journalist, educator, historian and author Robert Strauss has been a reporter for Sports Illustrated, a feature writer for the Philadelphia Daily News, a news and sports producer for an NBC affiliate, and a TV critic for thePhiladelphia Inquirer and the Asbury Park Press. He has more than 1000 bylines in the New York Times, and also writes for the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia newspapers, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, and more. He is the author of "Daddy’s Little Goalie." A father of two daughters, he lives in Haddonfield, New Jersey, with his wife Susan Warner.
About the interlocutor: Until stepping down in 2011, Richard Babcock was the longtime editor in chief of Chicago magazine. Under his direction, Chicago won many awards, including a National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2004. Before that, he spent more than a decade as a top editor at New York magazine. He is the author of three novels and two best-selling Kindle Singles.
5/9/17, 2)31 PM
Print Marked Items
Worst. President. Ever. James Buchanan, the
POTUS Rating Game, and the Legacy of the
Least of the Lesser Presidents
Publishers Weekly.
263.33 (Aug. 15, 2016): p61. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Worst. President. Ever. James Buchanan, the POTUS Rating Game, and the Legacy of the Least of the Lesser Presidents
Robert Strauss. Lyons, $26.95 (304p) ISBN 978-1-4930-2483-4 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Journalist Strauss (Daddy's Little Goalie) turns his lifelong interest in U.S. presidents into a biography of the 15th, mining the premise that Buchanan (1791-1868) is the worst of them all. Along the way, Strauss takes the opportunity to exercise his wit and knowledge to rate the candidates for the title. Before getting to Buchanan's presidency and the case for him as the worst, Strauss follows a career that included time as a congressman and senator from Pennsylvania, the U.S. minister to Russia in the Andrew Jackson administration (whom Strauss describes as the "Don Corleone of his day"), and as a perennially unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. Strauss frequently detours into examining the evidence supporting the possibility that lifelong bachelor Buchanan was gay, and takes an inventory of other U.S. Presidents who might have been gay. The process of nominating and then rejecting other contenders for the eponymous title is an entertaining exercise in which Franklin Pierce, Herbert Hoover, Warren Harding, and several others are examined and discarded in favor of Buchanan. Strauss maintains a light tone, but doesn't sacrifice substance in offering solid historic detail and insights into American politics as the country careened toward Civil War. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Worst. President. Ever. James Buchanan, the POTUS Rating Game, and the Legacy of the Least of the Lesser
about:blank Page 1 of 2
5/9/17, 2)31 PM
Presidents." Publishers Weekly, 15 Aug. 2016, p. 61. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA461444569&it=r&asid=5206a9422dc34da7b8d9c54859a07b65. Accessed 9 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A461444569
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WORST. PRESIDENT. EVER.
James Buchanan, the POTUS Rating Game, and the Legacy of the Least of the Lesser Presidents
by Robert Strauss
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KIRKUS REVIEW
An oddly entertaining study of “the first plodding-to-the-top president,” a man mercifully forgotten by history.
James Buchanan (1791-1868) was a Pennsylvanian, writes Strauss (Nonfiction Writing/Univ. of Pennsylvania; Daddy’s Little Goalie: A Father, His Daughters, and Sports, 2011), the log cabin of his birth now enshrined on a rural campus in Mercersburg. Yet, having survived the turmoil of the collapse of the Whig and Federalist factions, he cast his lot with the Southern Democrats. As president—a job for which he had prepared well if unimaginatively, plodding from one political post to another—he meddled in the Supreme Court decision in the matter of runaway slave Dred Scott, setting the Civil War in motion. Buchanan wasn’t on hand for the bloodletting, but he took time to write his successor, Abraham Lincoln, to ask for the return of some books he’d left behind at the White House. He may have had good intentions, but fueled by a diet of reading about Napoleon and exhibiting a combination of “hubris…arrogance, misaligned affections, indecisiveness, and misreading of current events,” Buchanan managed to trash pretty much whatever he touched. Does that make the self-styled “strict constructionist” the worst president in American history? Yes, by Strauss’ account; he was feckless and not interested in being guided toward doing a good job, he surrounded himself with yes men, and, lacking good counsel and left to his own devices, “he would often waffle on major issues, and could easily come up on the most ill-advised side of them.” Its juvenile title aside, and even allowing for a couple of positives for its subject, Strauss’ biography makes a convincing case for disdaining Buchanan, who, he writes in a concluding survey, has only two real rivals, both also forgotten: Warren G. Harding and Franklin Pierce.
Heavy-handed enough at times to make readers wish someone out there might step up to Buchanan’s defense; nonetheless, Strauss makes a firm argument for the essential doofusness of the 15th president.
Pub Date: Oct. 1st, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4930-2483-4
Page count: 304pp
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24th, 2016
A How-Not-To Manual for Presidents
184
30
America’s 15th president was a committed waffler: James Buchanan refused to take a stance on the country’s wide-open question of slavery and helped usher in the Civil War.
By Mike Pesca
James Buchanan
James Buchanan. Lithograph by Nathaniel Currier.
MPI/Getty Images
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Do you have great aspirations of being the best president the United States has ever known? On The Gist, journalist Robert Strauss says you’d be better off trying to learn from the mistakes of America’s duds. That’s why Strauss wrote Worst. President. Ever. about James Buchanan, who has the distinct dishonor of setting the national stage for the Civil War.
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