MixedThe Wall Street JournalPresidential biographers, themselves paternalists, tend to shield readers from their subjects’ most unflattering moments. First Dads holds the reader because Mr. Kendall himself does not hold back, especially not in detailing the generational misery of the Adams clan ... Still, some of the Kendall portraits deteriorate to stereotype, and though ostensibly apolitical, First Dads slants left via omission and anecdote ... Also questionable is Mr. Kendall’s guiding assumption that presidents not only are, but ought to be, perceived as national fathers.
