Pathways to the Presidency

Gerald and Patricia Gutek (coauthors, Experiencing America's Past: A Travel Guide to Museum Villages) attempt the ambitious goal of combining presidential biography with historical travel guide. In the interest of space, each President's history and accomplishments are condensed into two or three pages. While understandable, the result is a lack of depth or detail beyond the expected. The information about each presidential home and museum is thorough (each entry includes address, telephone number, web address, general location in relation to the area, hours of operation, admission price and availability of tours, gift shop, etc.), but there isn't a clear narrative connection between the presidential write-ups and the sites themselves. Readers would benefit from more insight into how the Presidents were influenced by these places and how their achievements informed the places originally and now as museums. Instead, readers are left with dry accounts of the physical layouts of each location, along with much repetition of facts.