Now available in paperback, Robert F. Cross’ Sailor in the White House remains one of the most interesting and intimate books about Franklin D. Roosevelt. Secret Service agents, family, and old sailing pals share stories about their days on the water with America’s greatest seafaring president. The author argues that the skills required to be a good sailor are the same skills that made FDR a successful politician: the ability to alter courses, make compromises, and shift positions as the situation warrants. This perspective on Roosevelt shows how his love of the sea shaped his presidency, and its unique look remains refreshing even today.
Sailor in the White House, first published in 1962 as White House Sailor, is author William Rigdon’s fascinating account of his 11 years of personal service to Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower. As Rigdon states “with two of the three Presidents under whom I served, I was to make at least forty trips away from Washington working as their secretary, mess officer, mailman, baggageman, banker, storekeeper, photographer, custodian of secret files, and keeper of official logs. I went with Roosevelt to Cairo, Teheran, Great Bitter Lake, Yalta, both Quebec conferences, Honolulu, and the Aleutians. I was with him, too, on his inspection and political trips within the United States, on his mysterious fishing vacation to Georgian Bay in Canada, at Bernard Baruch’s place in South Carolina where the President went to recuperate after Teheran. And there were many weekends at Hyde Park and trips to Shangri-La, the President’s mountain hideaway in the Maryland mountains. On these and other occasions I saw close-up such famous figures as Prime Minister Churchill, Generalissimo Stalin, King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, Prime Minister Jan Christian Smuts of South Africa, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Generals Eisenhower and MacArthur, and many others. Also, on these trips away from Washington I served Harry Hopkins as secretary, when my duties with the President allowed. When President Truman took over I served him exactly as I had served President Roosevelt, going in his party to the Berlin Conference, where he met with Generalissimo Stalin, Prime Minister Churchill, and his successor Prime Minister Clement Attlee. I was with him en route home when he received King George VI in the cruiser Augusta, and in mid-Atlantic when he announced the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.” Included are 8 pages of photographs.
President Bill Clinton led one of the most influential and consequential White House tenures in recent memory. However, because of the office's traditional climate of confidentiality, many details of his behind-the-scenes activities have remained absent from the written record. How did the administration manage the horrific conflicts in Haiti, Somalia, and the Balkans that came to a head shortly after the President took the oath? What motivated the President to place First Lady Hillary Clinton at the helm of the ill-fated Health Security Act of 1993? And how did the President's closest confidantes and aides respond to the outbreak of the devastating scandal that nearly ended his presidency? Inside the Clinton White House offers an intimate perspective on these questions and many more, granting readers unprecedented access to the sensitive Oval Office banter that changed the course of history. Bringing together material from 400 hours of candid conversations with over sixty individuals, respected oral historian Russell L. Riley weaves this illuminating testimony with important contextual information to form an irresistible narrative, taking the reader from Clinton's first potential White House bid in 1988 to the final days of his remarkable and controversial career. Extended sections of the book are devoted to important domestic and foreign policy campaigns, the complicated politics of the President's two terms and impeachment, and portraits of important personalities in the administration, including Vice President Al Gore and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. These forthright and often surprising accounts add a layer of nuance to an iconic figure in America's recent history, as told in the words of the people who knew him best.
Long years have passed since an American president, taking his cue from the customs of the diplomatic community, abandoned the White House for most of the summer to go home and take care of his personal business--then nearly always a farm, such as Jefferson's Monticello or Adams's Peacefield. Today the presidency is year-around. Time away from the White House must be fitted into the great puzzle of his overall responsibilities, and is inevitably shorter than in the distant past. Some of his work goes with him, as do several key advisors, a large detachment of Secret Service agents, and all the others essential to the well being of a president. Still, on vacation he is officially on his own and he chips away a little time for leisure. Away from the White House: Presidential Escapes, Retreats, and Vacations presents a lively and interesting slice of the presidency that most of us know little about: How the president relaxes away from the White House.-- Inside cover.
In this nautical update on the familiar childhood rhyme "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly," an old sailor swallows a krill, which makes him ill, so he swallows a jellyfish to catch the krill, and a feeding frenzy begins! Young readers will love the cumulative rhyme, and grown-ups will appreciate the fresh take on an old favorite.
PRESIDENT NIXON shows a man alone in a White House ruled by secrets and lies, trying to impose old values at home and new balances of power everywhere in the world. Reeves proves that the Watergate scandal was no abberation in an administration foreshadowed by a series of successful uses of 'national security' to cover coups, burglaries, lies, the abandonment of America's allies - and even murder. Reeves portrays a man of vision and iron will who created, used and was used by a small cast of hard, ambitious men who formed a poisonous circle around their insecure leader. Alone, Nixon challenged and changed the world's political and military balance while also plotting to destroy both the Democratic and Republican parties in an attempt to create secretly a new party of the centre. This account of Nixon's stewardship will stand as the balanced, authoratative portrait of an astonishng president and his ruined presidency.
A former FBI agent discusses his time in the Clinton White House including the absence of security checks, Vince Foster's suicide, Travelgate, corrupt staffers, and more.
Grelet's solitary sailor is a radical theoretical figure, herald angel of an existential rebellion against the world and against philosophy's world-thought. Over a decade ago, Gilles Grelet left the city to live permanently on the sea, in silence and solitude, with no plans to return to land, rarely leaving his boat Théorème. An act of radical refusal, a process of undoing one by one the ties that attach humans to the world, for Grelet this departure was also inseparable from an ongoing campaign of anti-philosophy. Like François Laruelle's "ordinary man" or Rousseau's "solitary walker," Grelet's solitary sailor is a radical theoretical figure, herald angel of an existential rebellion against the world and against philosophy's world-thought, point zero of an anti-philosophy as rigorous gnosis, and apprentice in the herethics of navigation. More than a set of scattered reflections, less than a system of thought, Theory of the Solitary Sailor is a gnostic device. It answers the supposed necessity of realizing the world-thought that is philosophy (or whatever takes its place) with a steadfast and melancholeric refusal. As indifferently serene and implacably violent as the ocean itself, devastating for the sufficiency of the world and the reign of semblance, this is a lived anti-philosophy, a perpetual assault waged from the waters off the coast of Brittany, amid sea and wind.
