John Tyler was the Vice President to assume the Presidency because of the death of the elected President. Tyler never won the Presidency on his own, he was known as the Accidental President and both his Presidency and his life were overshadowed by the giants of his time; Andrew Jackson who was President while Tyler was in the Senate, Henry Clay, who dominated the Whig party and Congress, Daniel Webster who was Secretary of State when Tyler became President, John Calhoun and even Martin Van Buren and John Quincy Adams.

This biography echoes the historical view of John Tyler as being too tied to slavery and a misguided loyalty to his home state of Virginia to rise to a national view and meet the crisis of slavery dividing the country. Gary May, the author, does argue that John Tyler the man was stronger than given credit by history, that he stood up to Henry Clay and chartered his own course on the tariff and Texas annexation.

An interesting side to the book was the discussion of Tyler's personal life. His wife died while he was President. While still President he met, pursued and married a 23 year old woman who was more than 30 years his junior. People at the time predicted disaster for the marriage, she was considered one of the most attractive and sought after young women of her time and the predictions that once Tyler was no longer President the lack of glamor and the age difference would spell the end of the marriage. Instead, they moved back to his Virginia plantation where they had six additional children(the last was born when Tyler was close to 70) and by all accounts they remained a happy married couple until Tyler died at the advent of the Civil War--but not until after Tyler renounced the United States and pledged loyalty to the South's war to keep slavery