Accidental Presidents

Accidental Presidents profiles the eight vice presidents who ascended to the Oval Office after a sitting president's death — from John Tyler, who set the precedent after William Henry Harrison's early death, through Andrew Johnson's disastrous Reconstruction, Theodore Roosevelt's trust-busting, and Lyndon Johnson's fraught legacy on civil rights and Vietnam. Jared Cohen argues that these unelected transitions reveal as much about the presidency's fragility as any election.

Moving president by president, the book shows how each man's individual character, competence, and convictions shaped outcomes at pivotal moments the country never chose to put in their hands.