Product Description

Best Little Stories from the White House is a fascinating collection of more than 100 vignettes drawn from the life and times of America's most famous and legendary home. Here are stories about the house itself and how it has evolved over the years, as well as stories about its famous occupants. For instance did you know: • Woodrow Wilson used to chase up and down the White House corridors playing "rooster fighting" with his daughter Nellie? • Winston Churchill once suffered a minor heart episode while struggling with a stuck window in the White House? • Among the menagerie tended by Theodore Roosevelt's children was the pony Algonquin, whom the siblings sneaked upstairs in the White House elevator to cheer up their sick brother? • "Silent" Calvin Coolidge like to play pranks on his staff— he would press all the buttons on his desk, then hide behind the door as Secret Service agents, secretaries, military aides, and other support staff streamed in to look for him? • At Boris Yeltsin's first state dinner at the White House— the first state dinner for a non-Communist Russian leader since the nineteenth century—George and Barbara Bush presented him with an automatic tennis-ball server?

Also included are stories of the experiences of several first ladies, including Dolley Madison, Harriet "Hal" Lane (niece of James Buchanan), Mary Lincoln, Jacqueline Kennedy, Barbara Bush, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Laura Bush.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #809834 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Review
A slew of people died, or got married at the White House. Taft put in a giant bath tub to accommodate his girth and rudimentary air conditioning cooled James A. Garfield's sick room in 1881. "Best Little Stories from the White House" is "all that" and more. It's much more of a fact and interest book. I'd hate to call it trivia) than it is a gossip book, but there are great tidbits on how, say, outgoing presidential families related to incoming ones, etc. C. Brian Kelly's Cumberland House book is well planned, attractive and celebrates the 200th anniversary of the White House. -- Port Arthur News, October 10, 1999

This is a wonderful, humorous and informative book. I learned things from reading it about the White House and the president I never knew before.... It is fascinating reading and you won't want to put it down. -- Valdosta Times, October 10, 1999

About the Author
C. Brian Kelly, a prize-winning journalist, is president and founder of Montpelier Publishing and a columnist and editor emeritus for Military History magazine. He also is a lecturer in newswriting at the University of Virginia. Kelly's articles have appeared in Reader's Digest, Friends, Yankee, Rod Serling's Twilight Zone, and other magazines, and he is the author of several books on American history. Ingrid Smyer is a freelance writer and editor. They live in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
With the country in a financial panic, the stricken president's surgery should be carried out quickly and secretly, it was felt in the White House. And that is the way it was done--on a yacht cruising the East River in New York City, with the doctors on board ducking out of sight to avoid recognition by some sharp-eyed intern at Bellevue Hospital on the Manhattan side of the river.

The story begins on May 5, 1893, when President Grover Cleveland, fresh in a second White House term, first noticed an odd "rough spot" on the roof of his mouth. He didn't do anything about it at first, but by mid-June it was bothering him and he called in the White House physician, Dr. Robert M. O'Reilly.

What O'Reilly found was very serious indeed-- a cancerous growth extending from Cleveland's upper teeth on the left side to nearly the center of his mouth. A surgeon called into the case, Dr. Joseph Bryant, urged fast action. "Were it my mouth," he told the portly Cleveland, "I would have removed it at once." At the time, however, the country was gripped by economic crisis, the panic of 1893, a period of railroad failures, mortage foreclosures, collapsing stocks, and dangerously low gold reserves. And then, on June 27, the New York Stock Market crashed. Cleveland called for a special session of Congress to deal with the crisis--but he had to delay the date until August to allow time for the secret operation on his mouth.

Customer Reviews

Tedious at best
Poorly written. Simply putting an exclamation point after a sentence doesn't make it astounding! Or Exciting! And the overuse of quotation marks gives this "book" an odd feel. Poorly written and poorly researched. Stay away...or better yet, buy my copy from me. It's too small for the birdcage.

Reveals much about the Presidents, their families, visitors to the White House
If you want lively vignettes drawn from the life of America's White House residents, this light-hearted look at White House behind-the-scenes action is for you. From an automatic tennis ball server presented to Boris Yeltsin at his first state dinner at the White House to funny invitations, strange delegations, the antics and children and parents, and more, Best Little Stories From The White House's second edition reveals much about the Presidents, their families, visitors to the White House.

Reveals much about the Presidents, their families, visitors to the White House
If you want lively vignettes drawn from the life of America's White House residents, this light-hearted look at White House behind-the-scenes action is for you. From an automatic tennis ball server presented to Boris Yeltsin at his first state dinner at the White House to funny invitations, strange delegations, the antics and children and parents, and more, Best Little Stories From The White House's second edition reveals much about the Presidents, their families, visitors to the White House.