Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Men of the White House
An Odd Couple
For most of his life, Washington was in love with a woman named Sally Fairfax, wife of George William Fairfax -- Washington's neighbor and best friend. Although his passions for the worldly and beautiful Sally probably never waned, Washington settled for a much more practical match: the widow Martha Custis, whose considerable holdings made him the wealthy gentleman he longed to be. The two were married in January 1759 and made an odd couple indeed -- George, a giant for his time at about 6' 2", towered over his portly bride, whose head didn't make it to his shoulders.
-- Cormac O'Brien, Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Men of the White House
Do you remember your American History classes in high school or college? Remember having to take notes full of dry facts and statistics about such topics as the Articles of Confederation, the Federalist Papers, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Smoot-Hawley Act, and Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies? If you were like me when I was in school, the very mention of history class probably evokes memores of sitting through sleep-inducing lectures and enduring stressful pop quizzes and essay exams with questions such as Name three major causes of the War of 1812.
Lost somewhere in between filmstrip presentations and droning dissertations about "checks and balances" in the government were the personalities -- the human qualities and quirks -- that each of the 44 U.S. Presidents has possessed. From George Washington to Barack Obama, the men who have lived and worked in the White House are rarely portrayed in textbooks as individuals with human vices and virtues.
Cormac O'Brien's book Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Men of the White House is the antidote to the almost-deadly impersonal history textbook portrayal of America's Chief Executives. Mixing facts and trivia from a wide variety of sources, O'Brien describes each President's Administration in a two-to-three page overview, then tosses in a few more pages of short but revealing peeks into the Commander in Chief's personal life.
Take William Henry Harrison, whose astrological sign was Aquarius, political party was the Whig, and whose Inaugural address on a freezing day in March 1841 not only was the longest ever given by a President (one hour and 45 minutes) but also was the catalyst for the shortest term in office; on April 4, 1841, President Harrison was dead.
In stark contrast, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's stay in the White House was -- and will remain -- unmatched; our first disabled President stayed in office for 12 years and was elected an unprecedented four times during two of America's worst crises: the Great Depression and World War II. And of course O'Brien talks about FDR's crippling bout of polio, his often controversial recession-fighting New Deal policies and his efforts to balance American isolationism with the harsh realitiy that sooner or later the U.S. would have to fight against Nazi Germany. But O'Brien also dishes some very revealing glimpses into FDR's little-known love life.
In a section titled Hanky Panky, O'Brien tells us that a young FDR first had an affair with Lucy Mercer, his wife (and fifth cousin) Eleanor's social secretary. When Eleanor found out in 1918, she banished Lucy and threatened to file for divorce. Franklin accepted the terms, but his wife never slept with him again.
However, that didn't stop FDR from finding another mistress: Missy LeHand, who:
...became one of his secretaries while he was governor of New York, and she would stay with him right into the White House. Stories abound of people walking into the president's office to discover Missy sitting on Roosevelt's lap. Eleanor seemed far less bothered by LeHand than she'd been by Mercer -- perhaps because she was said to have her own mistress by this time. Reporter Lorena Hicock lived in a room in the White House across from the first lady's, and it seems certain to many that the two shared more than just a deep friendship.
When Missy Lehand died in 1944, FDR mourned her passing...then started up with Lucy Mercer again. Because Eleanor's ban on Mercer was still in effect, the relationship remained a secret (with the help of the Secret Service, of course, who regularly arranged for illicit meetings between their boss and his old flame).
Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Men of the White House is not without its flaws, however. It seems to be well-researched -- I learned, for instance, that the tenth President, John Tyler, had 15 children, the most in American history, and that James Monroe once chased the Secretary of the Treasury out of the White House with a pair of iron thongs -- but it still gets things wrong. O'Brien, possibly focusing on the fact that President Gerald Ford was appointed as Vice President in 1973 (Nixon's first veep, Spiro Agnew having been forced to resign), then became President upon Nixon's resignation in August of 1974, starts the chapter on President No. 38 thusly:
No American citizen ever voted for Gerald Ford in either a vice presidential or presidential race. He is the only man in American history to have been foisted on the nation by circumstances -- twice.
While it is true that Ford's truncated "caretaker" Presidency came about because Agnew and Nixon resigned, the fact remains that, unless Jerry Ford was substituted by a look-alike alien from another dimension, he did run for a term of his own in 1976, going on "to lose a close (race) with Democrat Jimmy Carter (who, O'Brien cheerfully informs us in the next chapter, is the only President who has ever claimed to see a UFO)."
In addition to the 44 Presidential chapters -- each with its portrait by Monika Suteski -- Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Men of the White House has an introduction and six short chapters on such topics as presidential pets, the White House, the secret lives of the U.S. Freemasons, and aptly at the ending, famous last words.
O'Brien, of course, seeks to inform the reader while avoiding a sleep-inducing didactic manner. Even when covering either very familiar territory (come on, surely JFK's sexcapades aren't news to anyone by now!) or less-than-outstanding Chief Execs (James Buchanan, Millard Filmore), his entries still find something for the reader to at least chuckle over. His style is the literary equivalent of TV's Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, straightforward at first, then slyly irreverent. Be warned, though; although O'Brien doesn't linger to stare too long at the details of, say, JFK's sexual dalliances while living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he does mention them. He also highlights some most un-Presidential language in the chapter about LBJ (who, by the way, liked to drive superfast along the roads of his Texas ranch....while drinking alcoholic beverages), making this book somewhat unsuitable for very young readers.
Copyright ©2012 Alex Diaz-Granados. All Rights Reserved.
For most of his life, Washington was in love with a woman named Sally Fairfax, wife of George William Fairfax -- Washington's neighbor and best friend. Although his passions for the worldly and beautiful Sally probably never waned, Washington settled for a much more practical match: the widow Martha Custis, whose considerable holdings made him the wealthy gentleman he longed to be. The two were married in January 1759 and made an odd couple indeed -- George, a giant for his time at about 6' 2", towered over his portly bride, whose head didn't make it to his shoulders.
-- Cormac O'Brien, Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Men of the White House
Do you remember your American History classes in high school or college? Remember having to take notes full of dry facts and statistics about such topics as the Articles of Confederation, the Federalist Papers, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Smoot-Hawley Act, and Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies? If you were like me when I was in school, the very mention of history class probably evokes memores of sitting through sleep-inducing lectures and enduring stressful pop quizzes and essay exams with questions such as Name three major causes of the War of 1812.
Lost somewhere in between filmstrip presentations and droning dissertations about "checks and balances" in the government were the personalities -- the human qualities and quirks -- that each of the 44 U.S. Presidents has possessed. From George Washington to Barack Obama, the men who have lived and worked in the White House are rarely portrayed in textbooks as individuals with human vices and virtues.
Cormac O'Brien's book Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Men of the White House is the antidote to the almost-deadly impersonal history textbook portrayal of America's Chief Executives. Mixing facts and trivia from a wide variety of sources, O'Brien describes each President's Administration in a two-to-three page overview, then tosses in a few more pages of short but revealing peeks into the Commander in Chief's personal life.
Take William Henry Harrison, whose astrological sign was Aquarius, political party was the Whig, and whose Inaugural address on a freezing day in March 1841 not only was the longest ever given by a President (one hour and 45 minutes) but also was the catalyst for the shortest term in office; on April 4, 1841, President Harrison was dead.
In stark contrast, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's stay in the White House was -- and will remain -- unmatched; our first disabled President stayed in office for 12 years and was elected an unprecedented four times during two of America's worst crises: the Great Depression and World War II. And of course O'Brien talks about FDR's crippling bout of polio, his often controversial recession-fighting New Deal policies and his efforts to balance American isolationism with the harsh realitiy that sooner or later the U.S. would have to fight against Nazi Germany. But O'Brien also dishes some very revealing glimpses into FDR's little-known love life.
In a section titled Hanky Panky, O'Brien tells us that a young FDR first had an affair with Lucy Mercer, his wife (and fifth cousin) Eleanor's social secretary. When Eleanor found out in 1918, she banished Lucy and threatened to file for divorce. Franklin accepted the terms, but his wife never slept with him again.
However, that didn't stop FDR from finding another mistress: Missy LeHand, who:
...became one of his secretaries while he was governor of New York, and she would stay with him right into the White House. Stories abound of people walking into the president's office to discover Missy sitting on Roosevelt's lap. Eleanor seemed far less bothered by LeHand than she'd been by Mercer -- perhaps because she was said to have her own mistress by this time. Reporter Lorena Hicock lived in a room in the White House across from the first lady's, and it seems certain to many that the two shared more than just a deep friendship.
When Missy Lehand died in 1944, FDR mourned her passing...then started up with Lucy Mercer again. Because Eleanor's ban on Mercer was still in effect, the relationship remained a secret (with the help of the Secret Service, of course, who regularly arranged for illicit meetings between their boss and his old flame).
Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Men of the White House is not without its flaws, however. It seems to be well-researched -- I learned, for instance, that the tenth President, John Tyler, had 15 children, the most in American history, and that James Monroe once chased the Secretary of the Treasury out of the White House with a pair of iron thongs -- but it still gets things wrong. O'Brien, possibly focusing on the fact that President Gerald Ford was appointed as Vice President in 1973 (Nixon's first veep, Spiro Agnew having been forced to resign), then became President upon Nixon's resignation in August of 1974, starts the chapter on President No. 38 thusly:
No American citizen ever voted for Gerald Ford in either a vice presidential or presidential race. He is the only man in American history to have been foisted on the nation by circumstances -- twice.
While it is true that Ford's truncated "caretaker" Presidency came about because Agnew and Nixon resigned, the fact remains that, unless Jerry Ford was substituted by a look-alike alien from another dimension, he did run for a term of his own in 1976, going on "to lose a close (race) with Democrat Jimmy Carter (who, O'Brien cheerfully informs us in the next chapter, is the only President who has ever claimed to see a UFO)."
In addition to the 44 Presidential chapters -- each with its portrait by Monika Suteski -- Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Men of the White House has an introduction and six short chapters on such topics as presidential pets, the White House, the secret lives of the U.S. Freemasons, and aptly at the ending, famous last words.
Copyright ©2012 Alex Diaz-Granados. All Rights Reserved.
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