Just before dawn one summer day in Washington, the president of the United States stripped naked on a rock by the river, plunged in and saw a dead man float to the surface.
We know this about John Quincy Adams because he kept a diary for the ages. So have many presidents, from George Washington to Joe Biden. In these journals — a collection of notebooks in Biden’s case — they confide to themselves, express raw opinions, trace even the humdrum habits of their day and offer seat-of-the-pants insight on monumental decisions of their time.
