The presidents we imagine: two centuries of White House fictions on the page, on the stage, onscreen, and online

In Such Popular Television Series As The West Wing And 24, In Thrillers Like Tom Clancy's Novels, And In Recent Films, Plays, Graphic Novels, And Internet Cartoons, America Has Been Led By An Amazing Variety Of Chief Executives. Some Of These Are Real Presidents Who Have Been Fictionally Reimagined. Others Are Might-have-beens Like Philip Roth's President Charles Lindbergh. Many More Have Never Existed Except In Some Storyteller's Mind. In The Presidents We Imagine, Jeff Smith Examines The Presidency's Ever-changing Place In The American Imagination. Ranging Across Different Media And Analyzing Works Of Many Kinds, Some Familiar And Some Never Before Studied, He Explores The Evolution Of Presidential Fictions, Their Central Themes, The Impact On Them Of New And Emerging Media, And Their Largely Unexamined Role In The Nation's Real Politics. Smith Traces Fictions Of The Presidency From The Plays And Polemics Of The Eighteenth Century When The New Office Was Born In What Alexander Hamilton Called The Regions Of Fiction To The Digital Products Of The Twenty-first Century, With Their Seemingly Limitless User-defined Ways Of Imagining The World's Most Important Political Figure. Students Of American Culture And Politics, As Well As Readers Interested In Political Fiction And Film, Will Find Here A Colorful, Indispensable Guide To The Many Surprising Ways Americans Have Been Representing Presidents Even As Those Presidents Have Represented Them.--jacket. Imagining A President: George Washington And His Fictional Predecessors -- Seeing Double: Clowns, Carnival, And Satire In The Antebellum Years -- Deep, Yet Transparent: Myth, Mystery, And Common Sense In Post-civil War Presidential Fictions -- A Simple, Honest Man: Presidential Character In The Fictions Of The 1930s And 1940s -- The Human Element: Presidential Strength, Weakness, And Difference In The 1960s And 1970s -- Who Am I? Presidents And Their Issues In Fictions Of The 1990s -- Fictitious Times: Imagining Presidents At The Turn Of The Millennium. Jeff Smith. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 349-376) And Index.