This volume contains over 700 pages of time-tested teaching tools, including biographies and inaugural addresses of every American president from Rutherford B. Hayes to Barack Obama. As the only elected office representative of all Americans, the presidency serves as a national voice concerning America's ongoing quest to establish both order and liberty. Although America's presidents have differed from one another and from their contemporaries as to the proper mix that would foster a lasting ordered liberty, all of them have interacted sufficiently with people of alternative persuasions to ensure that a focused study of their lives also will be revealing of a broad diversity of American experience. Primary source texts, time lines, and explanatory tables have been interspersed among the presidential biographies and organized into five distinct periods of American history: America in the Gilded Age, 1877-1901; Progressive Reform and Human Nature, 1901-1929; the Emergence of the American Superpower, 1929-1953; the Cold War and Civil Rights, 1953-1981; and, the Triumph and the Vulnerability of the World's Only Superpower, 1981-Present. Hundreds of study questions bring distinct historical episodes into sharper focus. The result is full coverage of the most fundamental content essential to any advanced placement (AP) high school or introductory college survey course.