Defining Americans: The Presidency and National Identity. By Mary E. Stuckey. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004. 404p. $35.00.

This is a powerful, ambitious book on the connection between American presidents and American identity. Mary Stuckey argues that through their rhetoric, American presidents reduce an often contradictory and always complex set of national identities into a single overarching one. Presidents present this idealized universal in attempts to unify and preserve existing political structures and beliefs and to minimize differences in the national debate. They offer this national identity while also attempting to maintain their political coalitions and address certain pressing policy problems.