Smith, Elbert (1975). The Presidency of James Buchanan. University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-0132-5.
Stampp, Kenneth M. (1990). America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-507481-9.
Strauss, Robert (2016). Worst. President. Ever.: James Buchanan, the POTUS Rating Game, and the Legacy of the Least of the Lesser Presidents. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4930-2484-1.
Tucker, Spencer C., ed. (2009). The Encyclopedia of the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars: A Political, Social, and Military History: A Political, Social, and Military History. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-85109-952-8.
Watson, Robert P. (2012). Affairs of State: The Untold History of Presidential Love, Sex, and Scandal, 1789–1900. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4422-1836-9.

Further reading

Secondary sources
Balcerski, Thomas J. Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King Oxford University Press, 2019. online review
Balcerski, Thomas J. "Harriet Rebecca Lane Johnston."in A Companion to First Ladies (2016): 197–213.
Binder, Frederick Moore (1992). "James Buchanan: Jacksonian Expansionist". Historian. 55 (1): 69–84. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6563.1992.tb00886.x. ISSN 0018-2370.
Binder, Frederick Moore (1994). James Buchanan and the American Empire. Susquehanna University Press. ISBN 978-0-945636-64-9.
Birkner, Michael J., ed. (1996). James Buchanan and the Political Crisis of the 1850s. Susquehanna University Press. ISBN 978-0-945636-89-2.
