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Shortly after the publication forty years ago of Presidential Power, the most influential book on the presidency, Richard E. Neustadt was asked by then-senator John F. Kennedy to write a series of memos to plan for the transition into office. He obliged the request and later penned transition memos for Reagan, Dukakis, and Clinton, too. Preparing to Be President presents the previously unpublished memos of the man Arthur J. Schlesinger Jr., calls "our most brilliant commentator on the Presidency" along with new essays by Neustadt and volume editor Charles O. Jones.

Neustadt's historically important memos provide new information about the workings of several presidential campaigns and administrations. Neustadt addresses questions such as how to organize a transition team, how to staff the president-elect and then the White House, whether there is value in cabinet government, and what the roles of the vice president and first lady should be.

In addition to the memos, Preparing to Be President features substantial original scholarship by Neustadt. He reveals for the first time how he came to advise the various presidents-elect and candidates and the thinking behind the recommendations he made in the memos. He also offers some reflections on how the role of transition adviser has changed over the years and what is relevant for transitions today. Jones contributes to the volume an analysis of the memos and a bibliographical essay looking at the relationship between the Neustadt memos and transition memos written by others.

Preparing to be President provides interesting historical accounts and critical insights for anyone who wants to understand how a new administration takes shape--and what happens behind the scenes between election day and the inauguration.

Richard E. Neustadt is Douglas Dillon Professor of Government Emeritus at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. For four decades an adviser to presidents, their aides, and members of the cabinet, he is also the author of Presidential Power (John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1960), the most widely studied and influential book on the theory and practice of presidential leadership, now available in the expanded edition, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents (The Free Press, 1990). Charles O. Jones is Hawkins Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. He is the author of numerous books, including Passages to the Presidency: From Campaigning to Governing (Brookings, 1998), the most current book-length study of presidential transitions.