Constructing Presidential Legacy: How We Remember the American President - Paperback

by Michael Patrick Cullinane (Editor), Sylvia Ellis (Editor)

What do we remember about US Presidents, and how do we come to commemorate their legacies?

Few personalities loom larger than the President of the United States. Their accomplishments and failures are forensically documented, and their personal lives are under constant scrutiny from the media. But how does a president's legacy emerge, and how to do we come to commemorate it?

In Constructing Presidential Legacy, world-leading experts take a multi-disciplinary approach to explore how presidents are remembered. They look at multiple presidents, including Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Eisenhower, Reagan, Obama and Trump. Discover how presidential legacies are constructed during and after a President's time in the Whitehouse, and how they are portrayed in media such as film, museums, public art, political invocations, pop culture, literature and evolving technological advancements.

Front Jacket

Remembering the enduring legacies of the American presidency What do we remember about Thomas Jefferson, the Roosevelts or Barack Obama - and how do we come to commemorate their legacies? Few personalities loom larger than the American president. Their accomplishments and failures are forensically documented, and their personal lives undergo pervasive examination by the mass media. Such interest does not end when the president leaves the White House and this volume takes a holistic view of the American presidency by examining the impressions we develop in the years after their retirement. A collection of world-leading experts on the presidency explain how American chief executives acquire legacies and how those legacies evolve through various modes of commemoration. Incorporating multiple presidencies, the ten chapters presented here investigate some of the most prominent former presidents, but, most importantly, they explore the way various types of tribute alter public memory. Be it anniversaries, farewell tours, museum exhibitions, public art, advertising, film, political invocation, pop culture or literature, the modes of memorialisation contribute to our perceptions. The result of this multi-disciplinary approach is an invaluable framework for observing how political legacies come to be. Michael Patrick Cullinane is a Professor of US History at the University of Roehampton. Sylvia Ellis is a Professor of American History at the University of Roehampton.

Author Biography

Michael Patrick Cullinane is Professor of U.S. History at the University of Roehampton. He is the author of The Open Door Era: U.S. Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), Theodore Roosevelt's Ghost: The History and Memory of an American Icon (Louisiana State University Press, 2017) and Liberty and American Anti-Imperialism: 1898-1909 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). With Sylvia Ellis, he is the series editor of New Perspectives on the American Presidency (Edinburgh University Press) and co-editor of Constructing Presidential Legacy: How we Remember the American President (Edinburgh University Press, 2018).

Sylvia Ellis is Professor of Modern History at University of Roehampton.