The spotlight did not appeal to Bess Truman. "She would return home to Independence as often as possible, leaving the President feeling very alone, often desolate," says historian David McCullough. "It's hard for some people to understand what she was like, and why the President was so devoted to her."

In 1992, President HW Bush seemed increasingly out of touch. His critics panned actions such as spending $28 on presents for his grandchildren and not understanding the technology of a grocery store checkout counter.

In 1981, Reagan aided the Polish workers movement and in Afghanistan backed factions fighting a Soviet invasion.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. President Roosevelt was deeply shaken "knowing the navy was caught unawares."

The delegations of Communist leader Mikhail Gorbachev and President Reagan met in Geneva in 1985. "The President, from the very start, started to speak in a kind of lecturing tone, as though I was a suspect, or maybe a student," says Gorbachev.

Nancy Reagan made things difficult at times with her stubbornness. Nancy's importance to her husband "goes with the turf when you're dealing with the Reagans," says advisor Stuart K. Spencer.

Franklin Roosevelt used the power of the federal government to relieve the suffering caused by the Great Depression.

After WWII, Truman watched most of Eastern Europe fall to the Communist "Iron Curtain." "I do not think we should play compromise any longer," Truman wrote.

Despite his firm stand against dealing with terrorists, in November 1986 Reagan admitted that arms had been shipped to Iran but denied that the arms were a trade for hostages.

President Truman interpreted the North Korean attack upon South Korea as direct aggression from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union's support for the invasion, however, was limited and not driven by the Soviet leader Stalin. "What the United States got involved with in 1950 was not aggression from the Soviet Union," says historian Walter LaFeber, but "an incredibly bloody Civil War in Korea."

President Roosevelt did not tell Congress or the American people the truth behind the Greer incident that led to US involvement in World War II. "I am perfectly willing to mislead and tell untruths if it will help win the war," FDR told a friend.

President Roosevelt's attempt to reshape the Supreme Court landed short and drew criticism from both Republicans and Democrats. "It was a recognition on his part that he had lost some measure of power," says David Ginsburg, member of FDR's administration.

Captain Harry Truman's leadership during his first clash with the Germans made his men look at him in an entirely new light. "After a while they began to realize that this fellow with the eyeglasses and the bank clerk look about him was in fact a man of real determination," says David McCullough.

In 1954, with the Republicans in control of the White House, the Democrats gained control of the Senate, making Lyndon Johnson the youngest Majority Leader ever. He was 46 years old.

On March 30th, 1981, 70 days into his presidency, President Reagan was shot outside the Washington Hilton Hotel.

Eleanor Roosevelt traveled more than 40,000 miles during FDR's first year as president. "Never before had a first lady taken to the road," says biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin. "She became his legs," says journalist Chalmers Roberts.

President Nixon kept an "enemies list" of those who criticized him. He had these enemies targeted for tax audits or trailed by private detectives, and hired the "plumbers" to stop leaks.

In 1938, Roosevelt faced growing aggression from Hitler, and broadcast a personal appeal to the German leader, asking him to halt further assaults. In reply, Hitler ridiculed the president with withering sarcasm.

Johnson had proposed to Claudia Alta Taylor the day they met. Lady Bird became the "perfect political wife" for LBJ.

HW Bush acted to initiate a war in Iraq instead of imposing economic sanctions, drawing criticism from the American people and members of Congress.