Many presidents of the United States have written autobiographies about their presidencies and/or (some periods of) their life before their time in office. Some 19th-century U.S. presidents who wrote autobiographies are James Buchanan and Ulysses S. Grant, though Grant's autobiography is about his time as general during the U.S. Civil War and not about his presidency. Presidential memoir has proved to be a lasting and popular genre — every president who survived to the end of their term from Calvin Coolidge to Barack Obama has published one after leaving office, and more recent entries have earned their authors tens of millions of dollars in royalties.[1]
Note: Only publication information for the first edition is given.
| Title | President | Publisher | Date | class=unsortable | ISBN | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1920 | Posthumously compiled and edited from Van Buren's manuscript materials by John C. Fitzpatrick. Volume II | |||||
| Mr. Buchanan's Administration on the Eve of Rebellion | 1866 | Link | ||||
| Macmillan | 1913 | Link | ||||
| Cosmopolitan Book Corporation | 1929 | Previously published serially in the periodical Cosmopolitan. | ||||
| Macmillan | 1951 | Published in three volumes: Volume 1: Years of Adventure 1874-1920; Volume 2: The Cabinet and the Presidency 1920-1933; Volume 3: The Great Depression 1929-1941. | ||||
| Memoirs: Year of Decisions | 1955 | |||||
| Memoirs: Years of Trial and Hope | Doubleday | 1956 | ||||
| 1980 | Posthumously compiled and edited from Truman's manuscript materials by historian Robert Ferrell. | |||||
| White House Years: Mandate for Change | Doubleday | 1963 | ||||
| White House Years: Waging Peace | Doubleday | 1965 | ||||
| At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends | Doubleday | 1969 | ||||
| 1971 | ||||||
| RN - The Memoirs of Richard Nixon | Grosset & Dunlap | 1978 | ||||
| In the Arena: A Memoir of Victory, Defeat, and Renewal | Simon & Schuster | 1990 | ||||
| A Time to Heal | Harper & Row | 1979 | ||||
| Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President | Bantam Books | 1982 | ||||
| Simon & Schuster | 2015 | |||||
| An American Life | Simon & Schuster | 1990 | ||||
| A World Transformed | Knopf Publishing Group | 1998 | ||||
| My Life | Knopf Publishing Group | 2004 | ||||
| Decision Points | Crown Publishers | 2010 | ||||
| A Promised Land | Crown Publishers | 2020 |
| Title | President | Publisher | Date | class=unsortable | ISBN |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1821 | |||||
| Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant | Charles L. Webster & Company | 1885–86 | |||
| 1899 | |||||
| Mr. Citizen | 1960 | ||||
| Crusade in Europe | 1948 | ||||
| Six Crises | 1962 | ||||
| Where's the Rest of Me? | 1965 | ||||
| Why Not the Best?: The First Fifty Years | 1975 | ||||
| Turning Point: A Candidate, a State, and a Nation Come of Age | 1993 | ||||
| An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood | 2001 | ||||
| Looking Forward | 1987 | ||||
| A Charge to Keep | 1999 | ||||
| Dreams from My Father | 1995 | ||||
| 2006 | |||||
| 1987 | |||||
| 1990 | |||||
| 1997 | |||||
| Promises to Keep | 2007 | ||||
| Promise Me, Dad | 2017 |