In our rich land of immigrants, sources and traces of American values are more clearly seen within the context of a framework to discern progress or decline. The long, mostly positive journey that Americans have made with values over time now seems to have reached a dangerous negative inflection point in the nation's conduct.

To help understand why American values and the public discourse have dipped into negative territory, Jim Hoffman developed a simple American Value System that is directly applicable to leaders in the United States, although the focus in this book is American presidents.

A central thesis of this book frames the question: Do United States presidents who possess and demonstrate superior principles and values deliver the best results during their terms in office?