PRESIDENTS

Just in time for Thanksgiving, we dug up some treasured holiday recipes from political eras past and present. Here are ten families’ rhetoric-free contributions to the holiday. © Louisa Gouliamaki/epa/Corbis 1. Mitt Romney’s favorite carrot soup. In 2

It seems like a good time to bring up one of my favorite websites, the Reagan Presidential Library—specifically the MEETING WITH V.I.P.s and CELEBRITIES section of the library's historical photo archives. It's a who's who of the 1980s, with shots of The G

When the national press descended on Plains, GA, during the 1976 presidential campaign, the journalists were looking for some insight into Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter’s character. They found something even better: Carter’s hard-drinking younger b

You know that John Tyler took over the presidency when William Henry Harrison died in 1841, but what else do you know about "Tyler Too?"

In Rutherford B. Hayes' hometown of Delaware, Ohio, there's a memorial to the late U.S. president; it's a plaque that marks his birthplace, which is now a gas station. In Paraguay, people might find this fact horribly offensive.

We're in the throes of summer vacation season, but at least one American is still on the job. While it's rumored that President Obama will follow in the footsteps of President Clinton and vacation on Martha's Vineyard, he hasn't had a chance to break out

Whether you love him or hate him, Richard Nixon is easily one of the most complex and fascinating characters we seem to tackle. In the magazine, we've talked about how he created the EPA, how he was responsible for a six-fold increase in the National Endo

Like all presidents, Barack Obama and his family will have to pay for their own food while they're living in the White House. But does someone actually send them a bill? How does this system work?

Fifty-six years ago yesterday, Republican VP candidate Richard Nixon went on TV to give what's known as the "Checkers Speech." Why does a speech named after a dog live on in our cultural subconscious more than half a century later?

Between 1841 and 1975, more than a third of U.S. presidencies ended abruptly because of death, resignation or disability. But even with the leader of the free world gone, the country never descended into anarchy. How'd we pull that off?

Upon taking up residency in the White House, a president also assumes a tidy salary of $400,000 a year, plus extra cash for expenses. That's certainly not the kind of change you'd find under most couch cushions, but it's not such a princely sum that the p

The Red Phone, also known as the Red Telephone, the Moscow-Washington hotline and the Hot Line, is a "confidence building measure" and communications system designed to decrease tensions and prevent accidental nuclear war by providing direct contact betw