Reading About The Presidents
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Presidents Day, started in 1951, originally honoring George Washington, then including Lincoln and in many states other presidents as well. Schools and booksellers use the occasion to promote history.
Henry Holt & Co. publishes The American Presidents Series -- books that are compact and offer a good read.
While some have considered it too early to write about the Obama presidency, David Remnick's The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, referring to the bridge in Selma, Alabama, where civil rights demonstrators in a bloody clash with state troopers on March 7, 1965, roused the nation, leading to passage of the Voting Rights Act, has much to add to our knowledge.
Those 1960's events plus labor organizing in Chicago shaped Obama's political philosophy according to Remnick, who believes that "the black freedom struggle defines not just the African-American experience, but the American experience itself." To him, race is at the core of Obama's story.
Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, weaves history into each page keeping the reader waiting for the outcome, although he or she already may know the result.
Reported By Dr. Marciene Mattleman, KYW Newsradio
