President Barack Obama and his administration have been aggressive in prosecuting those who leak classified information to the press such as Edward Snowden and Private Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning). His administration has also seen a rapid expansion of state surveillance operations, such as with the NSA's current electronic surveillance program. For those who think future Presidents might forgo such power and end prosecution of leakers or restrict the NSA's spying capabilities, William Howell and David Brent argue that you are engaging in wishful thinking. Their new book Thinking about the Presidency explains how the “search for and defense of power, in one way or another, informs nearly everything the president says and does. Power is the president's North Star” (ix).

This brief and readable tome offers a clear explanation of how Presidents have accumulated and used power, with a focus on twentieth-century Presidents. Howell and Brent define power as the ability to impact outcomes. They argue that Presidents are driven for power largely because modern American society demands much more from the President than the President can constitutionally accomplish. Thus, Howell and Brent argue, “In today's politics, presidents can ill afford to repudiate any power that might enable them to address the onslaught of expectations put before them” (98). Thinking about the Presidency explains how Presidents achieve power by using national security directives, signing statements, directing executive-branch funding in ways they prefer, appointing Cabinet secretaries, and commanding the military as they see fit.

Howell and Brent explain that presidential power is constantly changing largely because the Constitution is vague about the extent of presidential power. Thus each President works on expanding their power in various areas, slowly expanding the power of the presidency. The secondary argument in this book, which this reviewer believes to be most important, is that Congress and the judiciary are rarely active in their pursuit of stopping Presidents from expanding their power. Congress might pass laws such as the War Powers Act, which is meant to restrict a President's ability to lead the US into war, and Congress might threaten to cut funding to the NSA because it is illegally spying on American citizens, but ultimately those maneuvers have little impact on presidential power. Instead, Congress rarely enforces the few laws it passes which might restrict presidential power; conversely, Presidents typically will aggressively interpret laws, such as the War Powers Act, in ways that benefit the executive branch. As an example, Congress sat idly by while Obama appeared to violate the War Powers Act by sending the American military into the Libyan civil war in 2011 without Congressional permission.

If there are critiques of this work, they are more about what the authors could have added than about the quality of what they do write about. Admittedly, however, said critique might stem from the interdisciplinary aspect of this review; I am a trained historian while Howell is a trained political scientist and Brent is training to become a political scientist. As a historian, I would have liked to see more detailed case studies. I felt the book was strongest when it was evaluating things such as the national security directives or George W. Bush's failures post-Katrina. More of those case studies, with more detail, would have made the argument stronger. Additionally, I found chapter 4 off-putting. This chapter, which began on page 71 (of a 143-page book), was about how Plato, Cicero, Machiavelli, and the Founding Fathers envisioned executive power. No doubt this is relevant, but its location in the middle of the book was odd. I would have preferred it toward the beginning and thus have had them set up a clearer definition of how executive power has evolved. However, the location of a chapter is a relatively minor quibble and demonstrates that this was a strong book and a solid addition to an academic's bookshelf. It is also proof of the book's strengths that I wanted to see more of their argument.

Thinking about the Presidency is a relatively brief book which would do well in any survey-level course on executive leadership or the structure of American government. It can certainly make academics think more about how Presidents act, and it puts a unique twist on contemporary events such as Obama's struggle with Congress about the debt ceiling in 2011. By looking at the presidency through the lens of expanding presidential power, Howell and Brent left this reader asking for more: such as why government works this way or why Congress reacts as it does. That it leaves open those questions indicates that this book is a valuable addition to any graduate-level course about American politics.