The Presidents and the People

Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It

By: Corey Brettschneider

Narrated by: Stephen Bel Davies

Imagine an American president who imprisoned critics, spread a culture of white supremacy, and tried to upend the law so that he could commit crimes with impunity.

In this propulsive history, constitutional law and political science professor Corey Brettschneider provides a thoroughly researched account of assaults on democracy by not one such president, but five.

John Adams waged war on the national press of the early republic. In the lead-up to the Civil War, James Buchanan colluded with the Supreme Court to deny constitutional personhood to African Americans. A decade later, Andrew Johnson urged violence against his political opponents after the Civil War. In the 1910s, Woodrow Wilson modernized, popularized, and nationalized Jim Crow laws. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon committed criminal acts that flowed from his corrupt ideas about presidential power.

Corey Brettschneider shows that these presidents didn't have the last word; citizen movements brought the United States back from the precipice by appealing to a democratic understanding of the Constitution and pressuring subsequent reform-minded presidents to realize the promise of "We the People." This is a book about citizens who fought back against presidential abuses of power. Their examples give us hope about the possibilities of restoring a fragile democracy.

©2024 Corey Brettschneider (P)2024 Tantor

Outstanding

Important and revealing… a warning and a promise from our history … a call to all from those citizens of our democracy from its inception to now

Historical Context

It was refreshing to learn a little more about the current state of our nation with historical context and much less political bias than other media sources. I learned a lot from this book an ls would recommend it to anyone.

So relevant in 2025

So much relevant background to previous attacks on our Constitutional Democratic Republic that we all need to understand as we now must fight again to save it. I see that we the people alone are the real force that can keep this dream of a nation Of the People, By the People, and For the People alive!!!

Similar Presidencies to the Trump Era

History repeats. We can learn from prior history so as not to allow for the repeat and to act more quickly when we see the signs.

There is light at the end of the tunnel.

I was surprised that President John Adam’s was in this list of white supremacists, criminals, and simply bad Presidents but he was!