"Many in the book world agree that commercial publishers like presidential biographies largely because they personalize history for readers who might otherwise find it abstruse.
"'Publishers are constantly looking for ways to hold "big ideas" hostage to narratives that can drive those stories,' said literary agent Steve Wasserman, former editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review. 'It's not dissimilar to the way Hollywood proceeds.'
"Yet it is precisely the tendency to accentuate the personal that ignites controversy among historians. Newspaper book review sections and scholarly journals alike feature debates on whether the new generation of popular biographers illuminates or distorts the role of presidents in U.S. history."
The Los Angeles Times explores the popularity of presidential biographies.
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