It’s worth a nickel

… and I kind of love that headline, because it’s so provocative.

Perhaps needless to say, I don’t actually know any of the children of US Presidents. In fact, most of them died long before I was born, but even the contemporary ones don’t exactly run in the same social circles that I do, and so I’ve never even been given a chance to actually hate any of them.

Having said that, though, I do hate All the Presidents’ Children by Doug Wead.

I rarely refuse to finish a book. I feel that once I’ve invested the time to select, pick up, and begin to read a book, it deserves my attention. It deserves to be read.

Mr. Wead, you’ve challenged that assertion. Your bland, uninspired prose allowed me to quit on page 76. The book jumps around constantly, to the point that I was left uncertain more than once as to whom I was reading about. Pronouns are used indiscriminately, leaving me to wonder if the book was edited at all. I wonder whether the authors close connections to the Bush family are the reason this book was published at all; had it been left to my devices, it would have been tossed into the fire as so much kindling.

In short: don’t bother.

I really enjoy biographies, especially of presidential families including the Kennedys and Roosevelts. I feel something of a connection to the Roosevelts, since FDR and Eleanor spent much of their lives here in New York’s Hudson Valley, where I now live. I’ve had the opportunity to visit both FDR’s childhood home in Hyde Park, as well as Eleanor’s quaint Val-Kill cottage, where she lived after FDR’s death.

So I was inspired to pick up Eleanor and Harry: The Correspondence of Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, a compendium of the letters exchanged between Mrs. Roosevelt and President Truman in the years after FDR’s death.

First things first, I think it’s a shame that the art of letter writing is dying out—a sentiment I share with Gloria Steinem, who wrote the book’s forward. I am not sure that I share her optimism that email has the potential to bring that art back to us, since it seems things like Twitter and Facebook make us less likely to craft careful and thoughtful prose… it’s far too easy to write mindless drivel.

It’s an incredibly interesting insight into the lives of these two influential Americans, that their correspondence has been shared publicly. What I read showed me the admiration and pride that they both had in the American political system, despite their personal differences. I was also surprised at the language used, especially by Mrs. Roosevelt: her writing is extremely self-deprecating, yet I don’t believe she viewed herself as inconsequential or believed her opinions shouldn’t be valued by Mr. Truman (both during and after his presidency). I wonder whether that style reflected her true personality, or was simply a consequence of the time in which she lived? For his part, Truman understood the role of Eleanor Roosevelt as “First Lady of the World,” and felt that appropriate respect and deference must be shown to her.

Could you imagine this relationship happening today? Laura Bush exchanging emails with Barack Obama? I certainly can’t! Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book immensely.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had a fascination with history, with historical figures of all kinds… but primarily, with US Presidents and their families. I’ve read countless books—autobiographies, biographies, trivia compilations.

I find it’s most fascinating to read about the remarkable women who lived alongside the presidents: their mothers, sisters and wives often have incredible stories to tell, and yet as a consequence of the age in which they live, their own talents and skills were put on a shelf; they were too often footnotes in history.

The story of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is one I’ve read about more than once. Her incomparable style is fascinating to me (I have the sunglasses, after all!) and I think she suffered terrible tragedies that were magnified by her public status.

So I picked up Farewell, Jackie: A Portrait of Her Final Days by Edward Klein, a New York Times bestselling author. And frankly, he didn’t impress me.

His watered-down portrayal of the last six months of Mrs. Onassis’s life was distilled into less than 200 pages, and is primarily a rework of his previous writings. (He actually has an additional ten pages of notes at the end of the book, explaining his sources, many of which are his own writing!)

Klein also has a nauseating habit of referring to himself in the third person throughout the book as “this author.”

In short: don’t bother. There are far better biographies of Mrs. Onassis.

And I like it. Via http://www.patrickmoberg.com/.

I’m so excited to exercise my right to vote on Tuesday. I’m supporting Senator Obama for president, but whoever you’re voting for, I hope you will vote.

I even have printed out an electoral map, so I can color it in as the states are called on TV. It’s going to be a late night!