Doris Kearns Goodwin is a brilliant woman and an engaging writer who has spent considerable time researching these four men. Her first book was Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. After that, she published the Pulitzer Prize–winning No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Homefront in World War II. She earned the Lincoln Prize for Team of Rivals, which became the basis for Steven Spielberg’s film Lincoln, and the Carnegie Medal for The Bully Pulpit, about the friendship between Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. Goodwin looked at all four men in her bestselling book Leadership: In Turbulent Times, which she went on to produce when it became a History Channel docuseries on Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt. There is no question that she is well qualified to introduce these four famous men to younger readers. She knows these men intimately, including all the small stories that make them human and understandable.
The subtitle of this books is How Four Kids Became President, and I think this book would have been more satisfying for its intended audience if Goodwin had stopped right there. However, Goodwin continues on through each presidency, and the result is a book that is rather lengthy for middle grade readers. At 360 pages, it’d be quite a slog for most kids ages 8-12. To me, this is more a good overview for high school libraries or middle schools who do biography projects about political figures, or for adults who want an easy-to-read overview.
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