Download or read book My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House written by Lillian Rogers Parks and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the combined biography of two domestic servants, a mother and her daughter, each of whom worked for thirty years in the White House. In 1909, he mother was hired by President Taft, who was the first president ever to allow a Black person to enter the White House. She worked in the White House until 1939. Her daughter was hired by President Hoover in 1929 and she worked there until the final days of the Eisenhower Administration in 1959. This book should be required reading for every serious student of American history. The authors were eye witnesses to some of the great events of history and offer different prospectives from that found elsewhere. For example, we learn that when Calvin Coolidge announced in 1927 that he did not intend to run for re-election, he was playing hard-to-get. He believed that the people would insist that he accept a third term of office. He expected to be drafted. He actually wanted a third term in office. Coolidge was disappointed when Herbert Hoover was nominated as he disagreed with Hoover's ideas and policies. We learn that in the last year and a half of the presidency of President Woodrow Wilson, he had to be wheeled around the White House in a wheel chair and was often engaged in "sickbed rambling." When Franklin D. Roosevelt took office as president, he was an invalid, confined to a wheelchair. Few Americans knew this and elaborate means were devised to make it appear that Roosevelt was robust and healthy. Whenever he was to speak, railings were created beside where he was to be standing. This was done so that it would appear that FDR was walking, taking a few steps up to the speaker's podium, when in reality the handrails were holding him up and he was dragging his feet a short distance to create the illusion that he was walking. Also, Roosevelt was dependent on his mother, Sara Delano, who had all the money and controlled his finances.
Download or read book My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House written by Lillian Rogers Parks and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book My Thirty Years backstairs at the White House By Lillian Rogers Parks in collaboration with Frances Spatz Leighton Second printing written by Lillian Rogers PARKS and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Churchill and Roosevelt The Big Sleepover at the White House written by James Mikel Wilson and published by Gatekeeper Press. This book was released on 2015-10-17 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Churchill and Roosevelt: The Big Sleepover at the White House" received the 2018 Author Academy Award in Historical Fiction. A London playwright has converted the work to a stage play with plans to premiere in England in 2019 or early 2020. This book was written for those who enjoy history and political intrigue. It will appeal to those who enjoy reading about leadership, particularly in an arena where differences in political views, temperament, and agenda had to be overcome. Without collaboration and compromise, the world as we presently know it might be considerably different. Even though the story occurred over 75 years ago, the protagonists speak in first person voice, not knowing the outcome of the crisis they must confront. Readers may not have known that Winston Churchill visited Franklin Roosevelt two weeks after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt insisted that Winston sleep in the White House. The two men had much in common—more than they realized. There are plenty of other surprises along the way—a chance encounter with Adolph Hitler, a fishing expedition, a shared mentor, a favorite movie, a movie producer spy, Commander Ian Fleming’s visit to the Oval Office, and canine diplomacy to name but a few. During their time together, Churchill and Roosevelt shared many private moments as they forged a bond of friendship, trust, and cooperation that enabled them to defeat their countries’ common enemies. How their relationship evolved is dramatized and personified in this book. Most of the narrative is based on documentation, but what went on behind the view of the public eye is subject to the imagination and suspense. The author fleshes out the story with conversations that may have occurred over the course of three weeks but not necessarily provable. Lastly, the writer sets out to humanize these two epic leaders of the 20th century. He reveals not only their fears and tears but also their joys, humor, passions, temperaments, and schemes. He attempts to “break into their minds” as the two men join together to save the Western world from ruin. The author has also published: “Paw Tracks Here and Abroad: A Dog’s Tale,” (2014) and “Mr. Froggy’s Dilemma,” (2018). Website: www.jamesmikelwilson.com
Download or read book Downstairs at the White House written by Donald M Stinson and published by . This book was released on 2017-10-25 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The memoir of a teenager who frequently loitered outside the Oval Office during Watergate.
Download or read book White House Diary written by Henrietta Nesbitt and published by Frazer Press. This book was released on 2007-03 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BY HENRIETTA NESBITT There be five ihuu Aitd -j, The Preside if nf lec. uic vi71 have These are the sort of messages Mrs. Henrietta Nesbitt took in stride during her eleven years in the White House one of the largest, most complicated, and most fascinating households in America. Her story is a succession of intimate anecdotes of the great and the near-great Alexander Woollcott, Pade rewski, the King and Queen of Eng land, Jose Iturbi, Winston Churchill, and of course the Roosevelt family it self. It is also a salty and sprightly rec- ord of the worlds most demanding job of housekeeping. ne It was my first view of the White House. For that matter, Id never been in Washington before. Dad and I - Dad being my husband, Henry F. Nesbitt got up early the morning before the inauguration and went through the streets straight to the presidential mansion, as if wed lived in the capital all our lives. This was Mr.. Roosevelts first inaugural, in March 1933. We went up to the White House and stood looking through the northwest gate, and I felt like the old woman in the ditty, not certain if it were I, or somebody else. To tell the truth I was scared half to death. It was the biggest home I had ever seen. Like a big wedding cake, I said to Dad. The kind with the white mountain frosting. We walked all around, peeking through the eight gate ways and the iron fence to the green lawns and the flower beds, all planted new for the new president, and across the semicircular drive to the big beautiful house with the tall-pil lared porte-cochere. Even the trees looked important, with their names set in the bark, like trees in a park. I didnt know these very trees had been singed when the British soldiers set fire to the White House, in 1812, that Dolly Madison and her James led cotillions under the elms, and that the big magnolias, starting to bud even this early in the spring, were planted by President Jackson because he was homesick for his Tennessee. All the Presidents, it seems, planted trees to add to the beauty of the grounds. But I didnt leam these facts until later, along with a lot of other patter I memorized to reel off to guests in the White House, such as commenting on the classic architecture and the historic pieces, and the fact that thq cornerstone was laid in 1792 and President Washington hadnt been there to see it put down. I never did find out why. All I knew this morning was that the White House had me awed, and I didnt know how Id ever get up enough courage to walk in. But we were going to do just that, Dad and I, right after the ceremonies that had the whole city, and the country itself for that matter, all stirred up. We were going through those gates and into the White House as if we belonged thec. I said to Dad, not to show how nervous I was, It must take a sight of gardeners to keep all the leaves raked up and this place looking right. Of course I wasnt thinking much of the garden, because it wasnt my business. The White House was my affair. I was trying to count all the windows, but I gpve up somewhere around ninety. How were we going to keep them all clean But those windows would have to shine. The handsome, dignified building was the most important in the United States, and that meant in the world. As soon as the Roosevelts moved in, Id have the care of it. Care of the White House. I didnt know it that mom ing, hut this would be my job and my address for the next thirteen years. Through three Roosevelt administrations I would have personal charge of the house at 1600 Pennsyl vania Avenue, Washington, D. C, But we didnt know it would be that long, back in 33. So I just hung onto Dads arm and spoke as pertly as I could. Pshaw, its only four years, I can stand anything for four years. I guess the Roosevelts, back where wed left them in the Mayflower Hotel getting ready for the inaugural, had the same idea then. The White House would be a big responsibility, but Mrs...
Download or read book Home Town written by Tracy Kidder and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-09-05 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this splendid book, one of America's masters of nonfiction takes us home--into Hometown, U.S.A., the town of Northampton, Massachusetts, and into the extraordinary, and the ordinary, lives that people live there. As Tracy Kidder reveals how, beneath its amiable surface, a small town is a place of startling complexity, he also explores what it takes to make a modern small city a success story. Weaving together compelling stories of individual lives, delving into a rich and varied past, moving among all the levels of Northampton's social hierarchy, Kidder reveals the sheer abundance of life contained within a town's narrow boundaries. Does the kind of small town that many Americans came from, and long for, still exist? Kidder says yes, although not quite in the form we may imagine. A book about civilization in microcosm, Home Town makes us marvel afresh at the wonder of individuality, creativity, and civic order--how a disparate group of individuals can find common cause and a code of values that transforms a place into a home. And this book makes you feel you live there.
Download or read book The Fall of a Sparrow written by Robert Hellenga and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1999-07-06 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his rich and dazzling new novel, the author of the bestselling "The Sixteen Pleasures" chronicles the journey of a man awakening from profound sorrow and rediscovering love in a most unexpected time and place.
Download or read book The Chili Queen written by Sandra Dallas and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2003-09-10 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life may have been hard on Addie French, but when she meets friendless Emma Roby on a train, all her protective instincts emerge. Emma's brother is seeing her off to Nalgitas to marry a man she has never met. And Emma seems like a lost soul to Addie-someone who needs Addie's savvy and wary eye. It isn't often that Addie is drawn to anyone as a friend, but Emma seems different somehow. When Emma's prospective fails to show up at the train depot, Addie breaks all her principles to shelter the girl at her brothel, The Chili Queen. But once Emma enters Addie's life, the secrets that unfold and schemes that are hatched cause both women to question everything they thought they knew. With Sandra Dallas's trademark humor, charm, and pathos, The Chili Queen will satisfy anyone who has ever longed for happiness. The Chili Queen is the winner of the 2003 Spur Award for Best Western Novel.
Download or read book A Killer Ending written by Karen Macinerney and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2020-06-26 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Books, beach roses... and bodies. Bookseller and recent divorcée Max Sayers has risked her life savings to start a fresh chapter with the purchase of Seaside Cottage Books in cozy Snug Harbor, Maine. But she's barely opened the shop's doors when her new storybook life takes a dark turn. The morning after the grand opening--featuring a famous author who shows up at the store on the arm of Max's ex-husband--Max's rescue dog Winston finds a dead man on the beach behind the shop. The murder weapon? An antique flatiron doorstop... from Max's bookstore.Will Max solve the case before the murderer strikes again? Or will her bright new beginning turn into a killer of an ending?
Download or read book Upstairs at the White House written by J. B. West and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this New York Times bestseller, the White House chief usher for nearly three decades offers a behind-the-scenes look at America’s first families. J. B. West, chief usher of the White House, directed the operations and maintenance of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—and coordinated its daily life—at the request of the president and his family. He directed state functions; planned parties, weddings and funerals, gardens and playgrounds, and extensive renovations; and, with a large staff, supervised every activity in the presidential home. For twenty-eight years, first as assistant to the chief usher, then as chief usher, he witnessed national crises and triumphs, and interacted daily with six consecutive presidents and first ladies, as well as their parents, children and grandchildren, and houseguests—including friends, relatives, and heads of state. J. B. West, whom Jackie Kennedy called “one of the most extraordinary men I have ever met,” provides an absorbing, one-of-a-kind history of life among the first ladies. Alive with anecdotes ranging from Eleanor Roosevelt’s fascinating political strategies to Jackie Kennedy’s tragic loss and the personal struggles of Pat Nixon, Upstairs at the White House is a rich account of a slice of American history that usually remains behind closed doors.
Download or read book Sanctuary written by Emily Rapp Black and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[An] often beautiful jewel of a book . . . Black’s power as a writer means she can take us with her to places that normally our minds would refuse to go.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) From the New York Times bestselling author of The Still Point of the Turning World comes an incisive memoir about how she came to question and redefine the concept of resilience after the trauma of her first child’s death. “Congratulations on the resurrection of your life,” a colleague wrote to Emily Rapp Black when she announced the birth of her second child. The line made Rapp Black pause. Her first child, a boy named Ronan, had died from Tay-Sachs disease before he turned three years old, an experience she wrote about in her second book, The Still Point of the Turning World. Since that time, her life had changed utterly: She left the marriage that fractured under the terrible weight of her son’s illness, got remarried to a man who she fell in love with while her son was dying, had a flourishing career, and gave birth to a healthy baby girl. But she rejected the idea that she was leaving her old life behind—that she had, in the manner of the mythical phoenix, risen from the ashes and been reborn into a new story, when she still carried so much of her old story with her. More to the point, she wanted to carry it with her. Everyone she met told her she was resilient, strong, courageous in ways they didn’t think they could be. But what did those words mean, really? This book is an attempt to unpack the various notions of resilience that we carry as a culture. Drawing on contemporary psychology, neurology, etymology, literature, art, and self-help, Emily Rapp Black shows how we need a more complex understanding of this concept when applied to stories of loss and healing and overcoming the odds, knowing that we may be asked to rebuild and reimagine our lives at any moment, and often when we least expect it. Interwoven with lyrical, unforgettable personal vignettes from her life as a mother, wife, daughter, friend, and teacher, Rapp Black creates a stunning tapestry that is full of wisdom and insight.
Download or read book We Have Always Lived in the Castle written by Shirley Jackson and published by . This book was released on 1962 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate.
Download or read book Joe Gould s Secret written by Joseph Mitchell and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of a notorious New York eccentric and the journalist who chronicled his life: “A little masterpiece of observation and storytelling” (Ian McEwan). Joseph Mitchell was a cornerstone of the New Yorker staff for decades, but his prolific career was shattered by an extraordinary case of writer’s block. For the final thirty-two years of his life, Mitchell published nothing. And the key to his silence may lie in his last major work: the biography of a supposed Harvard grad turned Greenwich Village tramp named Joe Gould. Gould was, in Mitchell’s words, “an odd and penniless and unemployable little man who came to this city in 1916 and ducked and dodged and held on as hard as he could for over thirty-five years.” As Mitchell learns more about Gould’s epic Oral History—a reputedly nine-million-word collection of philosophizing, wanderings, and hearsay—he eventually uncovers a secret that adds even more intrigue to the already unusual story of the local legend. Originally written as two separate pieces (“Professor Sea Gull” in 1942 and then “Joe Gould’s Secret” twenty-two years later), this magnum opus captures Mitchell at his peak. As the reader comes to understand Gould’s secret, Mitchell’s words become all the more haunting. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Joseph Mitchell including rare images from the author’s estate.
Download or read book President Nixon written by Richard Reeves and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2002-10-10 with total page 708 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Unintimidated written by Scott Kevin Walker and published by Sentinel. This book was released on 2014-08-26 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The controversial governor recounts his fight to reform his state and issues a call to action for the whole country In 2010, Scott Walker was elected governor of Wisconsin with a mandate to improve its economy and restore fiscal responsibility. With the state facing a $3.6 billion budget deficit, he proposed a series of reforms to limit the collective bargaining power of public employee unions, which was costing taxpayers billions in pension and health care costs. . In June 2012, he won a special recall election with a higher share of the vote than he had for his original election, becoming the first governor in the country to survive a recall election. In this book, Governor Walker shows how his commitment to limited but effective government paid off. During his tenure Wisconsin has saved more than $1 billion, property taxes have gone down for the first time in twelve years, and the deficit was turned into a surplus. He also shows what his experiences can teach defenders of liberty across the country about standing up to the special interests that favor the status quo.
Download or read book The Help written by Kathryn Stockett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Original publication and copyright date: 2009.
