About This Book
What does it actually take to hold the most consequential job in the world—and what does it cost?
David M. Rubenstein—bestselling author of The American Story and How to Lead, host of PBS's History with David Rubenstein and a veteran of the Carter administration—brings together original conversations with most of the living U.S. presidents alongside leading historians including Annette Gordon-Reed, Ron Chernow and Candice Millard. The Highest Calling blends firsthand anecdote with historical analysis to trace how recent presidents have shaped America's present, staked claims on its future and left their mark on the world stage.
For anyone trying to understand the presidency beyond the headlines, Rubenstein's access is unmatched—Biden, Obama and George W. Bush among them. What emerges is less a political argument than a portrait of the office itself: its demands, its paradoxes and the particular kind of wisdom it either forges or reveals.