PositiveThe Wall Street JournalIn The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation, the historian Brenda Wineapple does not once mention current political debates about impeaching the president. But the timing of the book’s publication seems to offer a lesson: Before taking sides on whether Congress should impeach Donald Trump, consider what that process meant at another significant moment in our history ... This book’s strongest feature, Ms. Wineapple’s gift for portraiture, is on display as she sets out her cast of characters ... There is much to recommend Ms. Wineapple’s argument. \'The impeachers,\' she writes, \'had reduced the seventeenth President to a shadow—a shadow President; that is, a President who did not cast a long shadow.\' Scholars of Reconstruction might feel differently about the length of Johnson’s shadow, but his case does suggest that it is possible to constrain a president through impeachment without removing him.
