The eight Presidents who served between 1837 and 1861, writes Joel H. Silbey in his introduction to A Companion to the Antebellum Presidents, “were ordinary men, neither charismatic, nor larger than life, as many of their predecessors (Washington, Jefferson, and Jackson, for example) had been” (1). My own students, after much furrowing of brows, could only name seven; though the question of what precisely Franklin Pierce had done to deserve this special brand of historical ignominy went unanswered. The American public, it seems, are no more approving; “all eight are at the bottom of its evaluation of all those who have held the office,” Silbey informs us (2). The twenty contributors to this volume, whose collective reputation comfortably exceeds that of their subjects, do not attempt to rewrite history, but they do aim to make it better understood. As with other entries in Wiley Blackwell's Companions to American History series, their object is “to trace out the pathways of recent scholarship, delineating the general themes of the era, the critical problems faced … the explanations offered, and the syntheses that define the existing scholarly narrative and guide current scholarship” (4).

Part I consists of four overarching essays “setting out the larger elements that filled the political landscape in which the presidents acted” (4). From Silbey's “The Political World of the Antebellum Presidents,” through Michael A. Morrison on expansionism and Nicole Etcheson on sectional tension, to Jay Sexton's survey of foreign policy, these thematic treatments provide comprehensive coverage of the existing literature; Silbey alone lists 139 sources, plus further reading, for his twenty-seven-page essay.

Part II contains the remaining sixteen essays, apportioned unevenly amongst the Presidents themselves; Harrison, Tyler and Taylor fans, if such persons exist, will have to make do with only one apiece, while Polk claims four. M. Philip Lucas commences proceedings with a study of Martin Van Buren's pre-presidential career, and highlights the dichotomy between portrayals of the “Little Magician” as statesman-like hand on Andrew Jackson's shoulder and scheming voice in his ear. Jonathan M. Atkins, in contrast, finds substantial agreement on the Van Buren presidency: it was a failure, and the principal reason was the economic collapse which accompanied it, although how far “Martin Van Ruin” was actually responsible remains contested. There is relatively little scholarship on William Henry Harrison for William G. Shade to review, but he does remind us that, with four decades of public service on record, “Harrison was a more substantial candidate and the ‘Log Cabin and Hard Cider’ campaign was a lot more serious than people have been led to think” (156). After “Tippecanoe” comes “Tyler Too.” Edward P. Cropol's chapter twins John Tyler with Henry Clay, the most important politician of the period never to become President, and suggests that both men deserve a share of the blame for the Whig schism of 1841–42.

The next four essays contemplate the only antebellum President to consistently fare well in historical rankings. “Who is James K. Polk?” is the question posed by M. J. Heale, as it was by critics in the 1844 presidential campaign, and Heale answers that “if any president could be said to have personified the Democratic Party, it was James K. Polk” (195, 196). Paul Bergeron begins with precisely the same question, and covers much of the same ground, but his chapter portrays a President who, “like Janus, looked two different directions on the world: Old Republican and Young America – with a tilt to the former” (242). John C. Pinheiro laments the scarcity of studies of “Young Hickory” as a war President; in his view, Polk's “Jacksonian ideology, Democratic partisanship, suspicious temperament, self-discipline, and penchant to micro-manage” all contributed to his success (265). Pinheiro also takes his responsibilities as a reviewer seriously, dismissing one biographer's attempt to psychoanalyze Polk as “just plain silly” (258). Michael Todd Landis is even more blunt in some of his appraisals, though interestingly he cites that same biographer as worthy of emulation in his essay on “Polk as a Southern Sectionalist,” which urges scholars to consider the President “as a flesh-and-blood politician driven by more than just a grandiose dream of the United States’ ‘Manifest Destiny’” (288).

A Whig interlude follows. Michael J. Birkner's chapter on Zachary Taylor is dominated, as Taylor's presidency was, by the Compromise of 1850, and he concludes that the General's death in office “contributed to a greater good” by postponing sectional conflict for a decade (306). The next two essays showcase different sides to Taylor's successor. Damon R. Eubank considers Fillmore as “Whig Politician and Leader of His Party,” and claims that the New Yorker deserves to be remembered as more than “a punchline to a comedian's joke or an answer to a trivial pursuit question” (309). Elizabeth R. Varon, who focusses on Fillmore's role in facilitating sectional compromise, is more critical, judging that “in the end, Fillmore lacked the wisdom to see that true leaders must do more than sound warnings” (342).

The Civil War inevitably looms large in assessments of the presidencies of the 1850s. Yonatan Eyal surveys Franklin Pierce's career up to the Kansas–Nebraska Act, and while acknowledging that historians are correct to pronounce his presidency a failure, he makes the case for recognizing “some positive aspects of the Democratic program of the 1850s” (348). John C. Kirn Jr. explores the political transformation that followed Stephen Douglas's ill-fated legislation in depth, though he relegates Pierce's role to a single paragraph; “it is not clear what he could have done differently” is the author's conclusion (392). Jean H. Baker details James Buchanan's extensive public service prior to his election to the White House, and presents the “Old Public Functionary” as “a representative man in the new republic's transformed party system that emerged during his lifetime” (398). James L. Huston argues that scholars are mistaken in labelling Buchanan a “tool of the Slave Power,” though he admits the Pennsylvanian “failed miserably” in finding his own solution to conflict over slavery (439). The final essay, on Buchanan's last months in office following the election of Abraham Lincoln, reaches a similar verdict; the President undoubtedly blundered, writes John Ashworth, but “the crisis posed problems that went far beyond the capacity of statesmen on all sides, whether they were Democrats or Republicans, secessionists or unionists, to manage” (447).

A Companion to the Antebellum Presidents is aimed at, and would be accessible (barring, perhaps, the price) to, academics, students, and general readers. It will be of great assistance to anyone writing a syllabus or planning a research project in this area.