Presidential Doodles: Two Centuries of Scribbles, Scratches, Squiggles, and Scrawls from the Oval Office squiggles & scrawls from the Oval Office
by Cabinet Magazine, David Greenberg
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Book Summary Information
Author: Cabinet Magazine, David GreenbergEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-09-25
ISBN: 0465032664
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Basic Books
Book Reviews of Presidential Doodles: Two Centuries of Scribbles, Scratches, Squiggles, and Scrawls from the Oval Office squiggles & scrawls from the Oval Office
Book Review: Scratching the surface and more
Summary: 4 Stars
This delightful little book take us into the offices and to some degree into the minds of that most exclusive of sets -- the American Presidents, from George Washington to George W. Bush. The book does this via the most innocuous of means: by examining the doodles and random notations that presidents have made while in presumably weighty meetings. The book's introduction describes the interest in presidential doodling and its meaning, if any. Starting in to the early 20th century of course, doodling became a major fascination of a nation wrapped up in pseudo-Freudian analysis. A doodle, like a dream or a slip of the tongue, was supposed to provide a glimpse of the soul. No wonder that some presidents chose not to provide samples for the book. Would a tossed-off scribble be seen as an indicator of fitness for office? How about the lack of doodles?
Through tedious searching through archives and presidential libraries, sometimes with the assistance of archivists, the authors have managed to obtain doodles -- or some other form of non-alphabetic expression -- from about half of the US presidents. Some, like Washington, either did not doodle, or found little time for it. His samples were taken from the inked boxes in his schoolboy exercise books that may have been a way to while away a dull lesson. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the relative cheapness of writing materials available to them, the most prolific doodlers were in the 20th century. FDR's doodles included ideas for stamps and government liquor labels, while JFK liked repeating words ad drawing his sloop Victura. Hoover (like his admirer Richard Nixon) preferred harsh geometric patterns. Johnson's doodles switched from disturbed and childish to hyper-controlled. Seemingly only Ronald Reagan doodled self-consciously, passing his signed doodles to admirers.
Though some of our most recent presidents -- Carter, Ford, Clinton and GW Bush -- did not provide samples, the book is fascinating. The doodles helped me imagine myself sitting in the Cabinet Room or Oval Office, watching as the President listened distractedly to presentations of import great and small. Whether to relax, focus or distract themselves (or even to stay awake) they inked notations onto whatever paper was available. Whether these doodles have any great significance is less relevant than their ability to transport us into the minds of leaders long gone.
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