Here is a book which is at once a brilliantly readable, succinct history of the American presidency, and a ground-breaking study of the role presidential courage--the willingness to confront, sometimes even to challenge big issues, and the daring, sometimes the eagerness, to make the big decisions that change and alter American destiny. "Born for the storm" was Andrew Jackson's way of describing the willingness of leaders to risk their popularity -- or even their lives -- for a larger cause. With Beschloss's book, this term will make its way into the American language as a synonym for political courage. It has been America's singular good fortune that every great crisis confronting her has produced, often in the nick of time, the man with the courage to deal with events, as Lincoln did in the Civil War, or Franklin Delano Roosevelt with the Depression and the Second World War. Not every country has been so fortunate. Indeed, one of the main claims to America's exceptionalism is the way in which, over more than two centuries, crises have inevitably produced leaders of courage. But of course nothing in history was inevitable, and Michael Beschloss's dazzling and unputdownable new book explores, with factual precision and an unrelenting sense of drama, the way in which presidents have suffered, have been vilified, opposed and sometimes ridiculed, as they struggled with what seemed to them the pressing issue of the day, and in the end overcame critics and the pressure of events to change the very fabric of American politics. For each courageous president not only makes his mark on American life--he also alters it, moves it forward, sometimes by a huge jump, sometimes by changes the importance of which are only clear to later generations. Here is George Washington facing his greatest challenge, not on the battlefield, but in the field of politics as he struggles to persuade the American people to accept Jay's Treaty, bringing at last peace with Great Britain, ri