Former President George W. Bush's much-anticipated memoir will be released this November.

If it follows the pattern of past presidents' books, "Decision Points" will make the bestseller list, but still be dogged by literary critics and political science professors.

Book reviewers and scholars have long disparaged presidential memoirs as unreliable sources of information, lacking in self-criticism and depth.

"Most of those books are actually one-sided. They're readable, they're accessible, but they're superficial," said Stephen Wayne, a professor of government at Georgetown University. "It's not what you would call a deep analysis of their presidency."

Robert Norton Smith, presidential historian and author of "Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation," agrees.

"The presidential memoir is a genre that suffers from what I call 'presidentitis,'" he said. "Unfortunately they think they're carving into marble, not writing a story for the average reader ... they tend to be monumental and defensive."

Still, there are exceptions.

From memoirs to political analysis to historical accounts, a number of books written by former and future U.S. presidents have actually turned out to be quite good.

Below, we took a look at the top ten books deemed by scholars as interesting and substantive.