Acting presidents
Subtitle: 100 years of plays about the presidency
By: Bruce E. Altschuler
Series: Evolving American presidency series
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 193
ISBN-13: 9780230110175
Description: Although films about the presidency have been a popular subject for analysis, there is no equivalent literature about plays that portray chief executives. This book fills that gap by examining in detail about 50 plays depicting historical, fictional and even musical presidents. It explains how, as the public's trust in government has declined, the heroic presidents of the first half of the twentieth century have been replaced on stage by such antiheroes as Nixon and Harding.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: Plays about Abraham Lincoln; title: Other heroic presidents; title: The president as anti-hero; title: Fictional presidents; title: Musical presidents; title: Conclusions.