On Wednesday, April 29, at 6:30 p.m. at the Central Library, 14 W. 10th St., Gene Healy presents his book The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power.

Healy, a senior editor at the Cato Institute and author of a number of studies criticizing executive power abuses by presidents of both parties, examines how Americans have expanded presidential power over recent decades by expecting chief executives to find solutions for all national problems. He concludes by calling for the president’s role to return to its properly defined constitutional limits.

Interweaving historical scholarship, legal analysis, and trenchant cultural commentary, The Cult of the Presidency traces America’s decades-long drift from the framers’ vision for the presidency: a constitutionally constrained chief magistrate charged with faithful execution of the laws.