Matters of State: A Political Excursion

Philip Hamburger, president-watcher and Reporter at Large for The New Yorker, at last collects his pieces on a beat he's made his own-Washington inaugurations, from FDR to Clinton.

This collection of essays, chosen by the author from his sixty years of writing for The New Yorker, chronicles not only the people of our nation's political life (Judge Learned Hand, Fiorello La Guardia, Dean Acheson, FDR, Eisenhower, Reagan, Clinton) but also the places and events, with special emphasis on presidential inaugurations (he has attended, he thinks, fourteen). Here is one man's view, both funny and serious, of the glorious diversity of American politics-and of the better angels of our nature.