The Presidential election is still a year away but one can’t escape the entertainment known as campaign season. Have you tried imagining any of the candidates as President yet? Why not measure your expectations against some former Presidents? Here are a dozen books – both non-fiction and fiction – in which real former Presidents play a featured role:

Non-Fiction
Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power – John Meacham
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln – Doris Kearns Goodwin
Grant and Twain: The Story of a Friendship that Changed America – Mark Perry
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt – Edmund Morris
Eleanor and Franklin – Joseph P. Lash
Truman – David McCullough
A Thousand Days – Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

Fiction
Lincoln – Gore Vidal
The Alienist – Caleb Carr
The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
Primary Colors – Anonymous (Joe Klein)
The President’s Shadow – Brad Meltzer