Hotus Potus

The 20th century cliché was that POTUS was the most powerful man in the world. We’ve since realized that that’s a load of hocus pocus, but, before that revelation, Mark Young committed his life to carrying around a heavy tape recorder in order to document for posterity the utterances of the forty-four Presidents of the United States. Now he has sifted through the more than 200 years of those recordings in order to bring to the reader the cream of the cream, HOTUS POTUS, presidential insights from an assembled cast that includes slave owners & supporters of emancipation; governors, generals, & those who never saw war but still won one for the gipper; rough riders & builders of smooth highways. Liars & truthtellers. So far there are no women. Let’s hope that changes soon.