Robert Chesshyre
Fathers of the Nation
American Caesars: Lives of the US Presidents – from Franklin D Roosevelt to George W Bush
By Nigel Hamilton
The Bodley Head 566pp £25 order from our bookshop
Just after I first moved to XXXXX report about the United States for The Observer, the Washington Post ran a piece about the various people who had tried to break into the White House. One might have supposed that they were all intent on harming the president. In fact it was quite the contrary: they mainly had grievances – a wrongfully jailed son; a wife dying of untreated cancer; a disputed sacking – and they felt that, if only they could explain their woes to the president himself, all their troubles would melt away.
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