A fascinating adventure in political science.  Using psychology, history, politics, sociology and other diverse disciplines, the author examines what it takes to be the President of the United States, the sorts of people who can hold that office and, most interestingly, how their behavior before obtaining office can be used to anticipate the quality of their tenure in that unique office.

It covers US presidents from Taft to Clinton.

On the one hand, there's a lot of interesting history in it. Its especially interesting to hear about the ealry 20th century presidents nobody talks about any more, Taft, and Harding, for example. I knew almost nothing about them, but, in their ways, they were pivotal in defining the modern presidency.

On the other hand, the purpose of the book was to develop a theory of how to predict the quality of a presidency based on a candidate's biography. Perhaps he succeeded, but its hard to tell given that all of theorizing was based on post goc fittings to retrospective analyses of anecdotal evidence. This is often persuasive and always plausible, but its hard to get away from the impression that it might be nothing more than adept selective attention to the record.

Another thing is that it doesn't take into account the substantive changes in how the public image of public figures is deliberately manipulated. For example, although Bush the Second was a slacker, he was portrayed as an active president, and large parts of his personal history were deliberately hidden or faked. Given this ability to manage a public persona today, one wonders if its even possible to use a candidate's history to predict anything other than their ability to manage their public image.