If you were ever interested in finding out what might have been going on inside the minds of some of the most powerful people in the world, the book Presidential Doodles may be just the thing for you.

Presidential Doodles is a collection of scribbles, scratches and doodles done by presidents of the United States over the past 200 years. It was compiled by the creators of the Cabinet magazine and features such bigwigs as Abraham Lincoln (1861-65), Dwight Eisenhower (1953-61), John F. Kennedy (1961-63) and even current President George W. Bush, whose written request for a bathroom break in 2005 made headlines in the U.S.

The book also contains funny stories about the different doodles and gives explanations of what the Presidents were doing at the times they made them.

Where James Garfield and Theodore Roosevelt drew bubbly, child-centric doodles, Ronald Reagan wrote adoring love notes to his wife, Nancy. At times playful and juvenile, affecting and cloying, they seem like the mash notes of a teenager in the throes of puppy love. The figure at the bottom in the centre is probably Nancy Reagan. The First Lady had this page framed and kept it on her desk.

Theodore Roosevelt's boisterous brood of six children, to whom he often wrote 'picture letters', included Ethel (10 in 1901), Archie (seven, once described by Roosevelt as "a most warm-hearted, loving, cunning little goose"), and the runt of the Roosevelt litter, Quentin. Over the years, the boys developed a reputation for mischief.

Reflecting the rampant doodling in the Lyndon B. Johnson White House, this drawing appears to be a hybrid of two different scribblers' work. The frieze drawn around 'The White House' on the stationery may very well be the President's handiwork, but the cartoon creature below is drawn in a different style.