Inevitably, there are going to be analytical opinions that I find disagreeable in some spots. A lot of that comes from the basic dynamic of my status as a rightwing nutjob. The "great" presidents as generally recognized are the ones who Did Big Things, like Lincoln and FDR. I'm generally opposed to politicians Doing Big Things, and would thus rate Abe and FDR as among our all time worst presidents. I would be more inclined to dig some of the ones who didn't that much want the job, and were thus not so ambitious to Do Something to make a big mark.

I most often would prefer a president who isn't trying to really run the whole country, staying out of the way of free people trying to do for themselves. "First, do no harm" is my political motto. William Howard Taft springs to mind here, God bless him.

But still, this series was created by serious historians with the intent of objectivity. Thus, I picked up a new juicy tidbit on Abe Lincoln, whose status as the supposed Great Emancipator I do not recognize. A new bit on that for me here was a General John Fremont. Early in the war, he went into Missouri and took it on his own authority to free Confederate slaves. Lincoln sacked him for this offense.

The DVD set also includes a bonus, full length, 90-ish minute documentary on First Ladies. On one hand, this part seemed to lack structure, cutting back and forth from ancient to modern to middle presidential wives without rhyme or reason. But there's a lot of very good stuff in there. First Ladies are really pretty important, not just obvious political interlopers like Eleanor Roosevelt or Hillary Clinton. Behind every great man is a great woman, and all that.

And behind every crazy dictator is liable to be a psycho woman. I'd heard just a bit about Mary Todd Lincoln, seemingly suffering from lifelong depression, but a couple of sentences in a high school history book doesn't really explain it. Thus, I had heard but didn't quite register previously what a poor, miserable thing she was. Abe's got a huge war going on with folks dying by the hundreds of thousands — and then he comes home to the White House where his wife is sponsoring seances to talk to their dead son. This seance business was apparently popular entertainment in those days for the upper crust. Still, it sure seems like John Wilkes Booth could have done her a big favor if he'd saved her a bullet.