The Presidents of American Fiction brings together American literature, history, and political science to explore the most influential fictionalized accounts of the presidency from the early 19th century to the time of Trump. Of late, popular understandings of the presidency are being radically re-written-consider, for example, the distinctive myths that accompanied the ascent of the Obama and Trump administrations-and many readers of all stripes are radically reimagining the office and its holder. Placing these changes within a broader cultural context, Michael J. Blouin investigates narratives involving fictional presidents, from the supposedly factual to the outright fantastical, within their distinct literary and historical moments. The author considers representative texts including works penned by James Fenimore Cooper from the Jacksonian moment, Gore Vidal in the age of Nixon and Vietnam, and Philip Roth in the neoliberal period. Through detailed readings that question how American presidents function as characters within the popular imagination, this book examines the presidency as a complex, ever-evolving trope, and in so doing enhances our appreciation of American literature's inextricable link with American politics.

"Surveys the evolution of the Commander-in-Chief within the American imagination, studying the President as a figure that has long shaped-and been shaped by-literary movements"--

A remarkable achievement, this investigation into Presidentialism - both as an actual figure and idea - is a more than timely reminder of the schisms that persist at the heart of American democracy. This is an important study of some of the fictions that American presidents have both engendered and capitalized on throughout history; in other words, a must read for serious students of American cultural history, literature, and politics.