William Howard Taft, U.S. President
Sept. 15, 1857-Mar. 8, 1930
Lives of the Presidents: Fame, Shame (and What the Neighbors Thought) by Kathleen Krull, illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt (Harcourt, 1998)
Nicknamed Sleeping Beauty, this largest U.S. president learned to surf in Hawaii. Krull devotes one pithy page about number 27 in this collective biography.
Read his inaugural address, March 4, 1909 on The Avalon Project web site at Yale.
