Read an excerpt from "First Friends"

It’s probably not surprising that author Nathaniel Hawthorne knew Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau and was friends with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

But very few of us probably would guess that a president was among Hawthorne’s longtime friends — and perhaps the most influential one, no less.

Franklin Pierce, who served as president from 1853-1857, met Hawthorne at Bowdoin College decades before that.

And he appears to have been a more successful friend than president — at least according to this excerpt from First Friends: The Powerful, Unsung (And Unelected) People Who Shaped Our Presidents, which describes how Pierce repeatedly tried (and sometimes succeeded) in finding “day jobs” for Hawthorne.

You can read the excerpt from First Friends about Pierce and Hawthorne at Literary Hub.

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