Execute the Office: Essays with Presidents

by Colin Rafferty

Colin Rafferty's Execute the Office uses lyric prose and formal invention to explore the humanity, or lack thereof, that thrived in each of the forty-five American presidents. Whether these powerful individuals were celebrated for infamous deeds and heroism, or forgotten as placeholders in the annals of American history, too often presidents are commemorated by the sterility of simple fact. Execute the Office builds upon factual accuracy with essays that are equally invested in lyricism and experimental forms. To balance these factions, Execute the Office uses constraint, metaphor, allusion, and epiphany to explore not just the facts and artifacts of history, but describe the connections between those facts and human nature. These essays discuss the modes in which we remember through death songs, footnotes, infinite rooms, evacuation routes, and nomenclatures, to name a few examples, engaging with history from fresh perspectives. Execute the Office contains histories in and of unusual objects. While unfamiliar at first, they soon become distinct, unforgettable, profound, human.

125 pages, Paperback

Published February 9, 2021

Reviews

[Erin Lyndal Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew of this book because I know Colin, but Baobab is also a really great press and I usually trust their work anyway.

These short essays aren't just names and dates and binary morality opinions. I really loved the way Colin finds something in each president's story to set him apart, whether it was Andrew Johnson being a tailor or Reagan's acting career that helped provide focus.

I found myself most compelled by stories of presidents I didn't like or had never cared about, or just really touched by certain details. Colin put just enough of himself in the essays to establish himself as author but also as seeker, as someone collecting all this knowledge and trying to make sense of a massive collective history by focusing on a few dozen men.

And also as someone of my generation whose experiences of voting and of recent elections are so like my own. (Sidebar: In 2020, I early voted in a poll set up in the "science center" area of a shopping mall. I remember wearing a The Cure face mask. The polling place felt so informal i worried it wasn't official.)

I read this book slowly because I didn't want to get the information confused, and i think that's the way to do it. If I ever go to a cocktail party again and someone brings up this or that president, I might actually have something to say.

I had a terrible American history teacher. If you did too, this book might help you catch up.