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First Friends: The Powerful, Unsung (And Unelected) People Who Shaped Our Presidents
Maybe someday
41
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
65/100Critics
17/100Scholars
Author:
Gary Ginsberg
Publisher:
Twelve
Date:
July 6, 2021
A figure in the Bill Clinton administration profiles the confidantes of U.S. presidents, including Abraham Lincoln's pal Joshua Speed, Harry Truman's buddy Eddie Jacobson, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's distant cousin Daisy Suckley, among others.
What The Reviewers Say
... enchanting.
... [an] entertaining and enlightening romp through interpersonal presidential relationships.
Mr. Ginsberg is too loyal a Clintonite to state plainly that Mr. Gore’s 'friend deficit,' as he delicately puts it, made him ill-suited to the presidency. But clearly it signaled a problem. It is a problem that, as Mr. Ginsberg shows, presidents usually manage to avoid. This is Mr. Ginsberg’s first book after a career as a communications executive at various companies, including News Corp. The book’s strongest chapters relate friendships in which the president might have been expected to lose touch with an old friend but didn’t, and in which the friend never tried to take advantage of his valuable new connection.
Some presidents have...had very striking friendships.
