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First Friends: The Powerful, Unsung (And Unelected) People Who Shaped Our Presidents
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About First Friends: The Powerful, Unsung
Product Description AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! A USA TODAY "BEST BOOKS OF 2021" PICK! In the bestselling tradition of The Presidents Club and Presidential Courage, White House history as told through the stories of the best friends and closest confidants of American presidents. Here are the riveting histories of myriad presidential friendships, among them: Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed: They shared a bed for four years during which Speed saved his friend from a crippling depression. Two decades later the friends worked together to save the Union. Harry Truman and Eddie Jacobson: When Truman wavered on whether to recognize the state of Israel in 1948, his lifelong friend and former business partner intervened at just the right moment with just the right words to steer the president’s decision. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Daisy Suckley: Unassuming and overlooked during her lifetime, Daisy Suckley was in reality FDR’s most trusted, constant confidant, the respite for a lonely and overworked President navigating the Great Depression and World War II John Kennedy and David Ormsby-Gore: They met as young men in pre-war London and began a conversation over the meaning of leadership. A generation later the Cuban Missile Crisis would put their ideas to test as Ormsby-Gore became the president’s unofficial, but most valued foreign policy advisor. These and other friendships—including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Franklin Pierce and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Bill Clinton and Vernon Jordan—populate this fresh and provocative exploration of a series of seminal presidential friendships. Publishing history teems with books by and about Presidents, First Ladies, First Pets, and even First Chefs. Now former Clinton aide Gary Ginsberg breaks new literary ground on Pennsylvania Avenue and provides fresh insights into the lives of the men who held the most powerful political office in the world by looking at the friends on whom they relied. First Friends is an engaging, serendipitous look into the lives of Commanders-in-Chief and how their presidencies were shaped by those they held most dear. Review "Intimate...Gary Ginsberg chronicles the unelected yet undeniably powerful people who shape presidencies...advisers of presidents with all-access passes to the Oval [who] can make or break legacies."― New York Times "Everyone needs a BFF, especially people in high places: someone to lean on in good times and bad. [An] entertaining and enlightening romp through interpersonal presidential relationships."― USA Today "Gary Ginsberg has brought us a fresh, fascinating and irresistible account of nine presidential relationships that helped to change history. FIRST FRIENDS demonstrates that one of the best ways of understanding the presidents of our past is to discover their relationships with intimate friends, and the author tells us many important things we did not know before.”― Michael Beschloss, New York Times bestselling author of PRESIDENTS OF WAR “One of the most important roles in any administration is that of First Friend, the person a president can trust completely and be relaxed around. It’s a wonderful idea for a book, and with his great research and personal feel for true friendship, Gary Ginsberg has woven together fascinating stories and memorable insights. His lessons are important not just for studying the presidency, but for understanding leadership and life.”― Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of LEONARDO DA VINCI “Gary Ginsberg takes a fascinating and utterly original look at the most crucial of questions: How do we best understand those who occupy our highest office, and the first friends who supported them?"― Malcolm Gladwell, #1 New York Times bestselling author of TALKING TO STRANGERS “Ginsberg has crafted an insightful series of biographies, showing just how these friendships thrived and survived and were consequential for the nation’s history.” ?― Booklist (s
