Hail to the chief! Book offers fascinating trivia about U.S. presidents

Taken as a group, the 42 men who have served as U.S. presidents are a remarkable assemblage.

Taken individually, they are even more captivating, says Ian Randal Strock, whose recent book, "The Presidential Book of Lists: From Most to Least, Elected to Rejected, Worst to Cursed, Fascinating Facts About our Chief Executives" (Villard, $12) looks at the men behind the title.

Strock has long been fascinated by the presidents, the presidency "and pretty much everything about our government," he writes.

"Created in the late 1700s, it was designed incredibly well: able to weather the vagaries of external and internal wars, good and bad Presidents, and happy and sad times in the country. Through it all, our government has survived and our Presidents have become legends."

As the country adds another name to that list today, with the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president (that's right, 42, now 43, men but 44 presidents, thanks to Grover Cleveland; but more about that later), it's a good time to look at the men who have held our country's highest office.

In some ways, you could hardly find a more diverse group, said Strock, in a telephone interview from his home in Brooklyn. Yet many of them share common traits and outlooks — and even genetics.

That was the thing that surprised him the most in doing research for the book, he said. More than half were related in some way to other holders of the office. "Sometimes it's a very distant relationship — like 23rd cousins — but still related," Strock says.

There are the obvious connections, the Adamses and the Bushes and the Harrisons and the Roosevelts, but did you know that James Madison and Zachary Taylor were second cousins? That William Henry Harrison and Abraham Lincoln were fourth cousins? That John Quincy Adams and George W. Bush are 20th cousins, three times removed?

And that through his mother's side, Barack Obama and James Madison are third cousins, nine times removed; Obama and Harry Truman are seventh cousins, three times removed; Obama and Lyndon Johnson are fourth cousins, three times removed; Obama and Gerald Ford are 10th cousins, once removed; and Obama and George W. Bush are 11th cousins?

However, Andrew Johnson and Lyndon Baines Johnson were not related at all.

That's just one of the fun categories that Strock examines. He can also tell you the most common presidential names, the states where the most presidents were born, how they compare to each other in terms of age, occupation, vote-getting, outliving predecessors and more.