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Title: Hail to the Chiefs: Presidential Mischief, Morals, and Malarkey from George W. to George W by Barbara Holland ISBN: 1-57962-081-7 Publisher: Permanent Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Richie's Picks: HAIL TO THE CHIEFS
Comment: "The main cause of the Revolution, aside from all those Adamses, was the quantity of feisty, short-tempered people on this side of the Atlantic at the time, and the quantity of unusually bossy, fat-headed chumps on the other side, topped by poor George III, who suffered from funny feelings in his head."
Sarcastic references to the temperament of John Adams, his relatives, and assorted descendants, which pop up on a regular basis throughout this book, are among the multitude of laugh out loud moments packed into this clever "tell-all" about the lives, wives, dinner parties, dalliances, and various personal difficulties that characterized the forty-three great white leaders who have served as our nation's Chief Executive.
"John Adams, back in the beginning of it all, had always felt that the Presidency should be, well, not exactly hereditary, which would be undemocratic, but just naturally reserved for a group of the right sort of families whose sons would be properly educated and trained up for public service, and dedicated to knowing what was best for the rest of us rabble. The idea still hangs around to this day, but at the time some people were upset when Adams's son John Quincy turned up."
A book that will delight and reward students who've paid attention in their middle school or high school American History classes, HAIL TO THE CHIEFS had me giggling and snorting page after page.
"Grover Cleveland...weighed nearly three hundred pounds and wore an immense walrus mustache with bits of corned beef and cabbage in it. The orator Robert Ingersoll said he could 'slip his collar off over his head without unbuttoning it,' which gives you an idea of his neck, and he had a high squeaky voice and some unrefined personal habits. I've heard that when he was practicing law in Buffalo he couldn't be bothered to go down the hall and relieved himself through his office window, and once a passerby sued.
"People called him 'the Beast of Buffalo.' He was a bachelor, and no wonder."
Footnotes, utilized for cheeky asides, are stacked up at the foot of many of the book's pages:
"Andrew Johnson should not be confused with Andrew Jackson. He didn't have Jackson's charm, or anyone else's either. 2
2 The White House staff called him 'The Grim Presence.' "
But, beyond the humor, this book provides fascinating stories and information about the Presidents that I have never run across elsewhere. The author notes of James Garfield (1881-1881):
"Garfield was tall and handsome and genial and scholarly. He believed that strikers had a right to strike and black men to vote and might have been a historically Good President if he'd stuck around long enough."
The author goes on to talk about Garfield's shooting at the hands of a disaffected job-seeker who wanted to be the American consul in Paris:
"Everyone thought Garfield was a goner, and [Vice President] Arthur was already testing out the mattresses and deciding which furniture to get rid of, but at four in the morning the President was actually quite chipper and telling funny stories. "The doctors rallied round and tried everything they could lay hands on to dig for the bullet. The bullet was minding its own business and not bothering anyone, comfortably lodged behind the pancreas out of harm's way, but the doctors couldn't rest till they'd excavated. "Dr. Bliss hauled in the big Nelaton Probe and shoved it into the wound and twisted it around and around, looking for a pathway that felt like a bullet track. It made some interesting tracks of its own, and got wedged in the broken bits of a rib and had to be wrenched back out, but it didn't find any bullet. Then Bliss poked around with his fingers for a while, and called more doctors in from all over the country to poke with their fingers too, and pretty soon Garfield was a maze of secret passageways, but the bullet stayed put. "Then Alexander Graham Bell had a better idea. He was so pleased with his telephone that he thought it could do anything, and he rigged up a receiver with a primary and secondary coil that he said would hum when it got near the bullet. He brought it around, and they rubbed it all over Garfield, and once they did hear it hum, or anyway, they thought they did. 6 Bell showed the doctors where to go in and dig deeper and wider holes, and they did, but still no luck. 7
6 Some claim it was confused by the metal bedsprings...
7 The autopsy found it a good ten inches from where Bell said it was."
HAIL TO THE CHIEFS is chock full of log cabins, land grabs, liquor, liars, and levity. Each chapter begins with a clearly reproduced full page portrait. (If there were one thing I would have added, it would have been a corresponding set of portraits of the equally quirky First Ladies whom we meet.)
For those of us who've always seen many of the Presidents as interchangeable and unremarkable, HAIL TO THE CHIEFS reveals a uniquely bizarre, er, I mean human side to our fearless leaders.
Richie Partington...
Rating: 5
Summary: Makes the boring Presidents look interesting
Comment: I must say, I picked up this book at a local bookseller because of my love for politics and history. from the beginning of the book I immediately was drawn into Barbara Hollands humorous demeanor and writing style. She brilliantly brings the past presidents to life and pokes fun where sarcasm is due. Before reading her book I did not know that much about the lesser-known presidents- aka Martin Van Buren etc... but even for the boring presidents (Harrison's 30 days in office) she makes the history entertaining and lively.
A must buy for any political science or history fan or even the casual reader interested in a good laugh tempered by true facts of our nation's past presidents.
Rating: 5
Summary: Irreverent brevity
Comment: Readers of any political stripe should enjoy Holland's breezy, brief and irreverent takes on our presidents. From George Washington's preoccupation with mules to George W's fitness regime, she pokes fun at personal quirks while touching on the major historical moments in each administration and showing that however bad we think things are now, they've been worse. Campaigns, for instance, are models of honesty and restraint in comparison to the days when Adams was not only accused of listening to his wife but described in the newspapers as "old, querulous, blind, crippled, toothless."
These thumbnail sketches remind us not only of who all those middle-19th century one-term presidents were and when, but give us the firsts. New Hampshire's Franklin Pierce, for instance, was the first to have a Christmas tree in the White house and installed central heating too. Benjamin Harrison was the first to watch a professional baseball game And Andrew Jackson was the first "to decide that a President can veto a perfectly constitutional bill just because he doesn't like it, and he was like a kid with a new toy."
Most of the presidents known for freeing their slaves never did, but Robert E. Lee did and "he didn't wait till he was dead to do it, either." Some presidents were more interesting for their wives - Holland gives most of Madison's space to Dolley and not just his space either. Taft's wife wanted the presidency more than he did and nudged him at conferences to stay awake while Pierce's wife was so unhappy at his election, she refused to attend the inauguration.
There are scandals and wars and statesmanlike deeds, sure, but there are also pets and bratty children and fashion statements and swelled heads. A useful, funny and caustic book.
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Title: Endangered Pleasures: In Defense of Naps, Bacon, Martinis, Profanity, and Other Indulgences by Barbara Holland ISBN: 006095647X Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 20 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: They Went Whistling : Women Wayfarers, Warriors, Runaways, and Renegades by Barbara Holland ISBN: 0385720025 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 05 February, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Bingo Night at the Fire Hall: Rediscovering Life in an American Village by Barbara Holland ISBN: 0156006650 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: June, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Gentlemen's Blood : A Thousand Years of Sword and Pistol by Barbara Holland ISBN: 1582343667 Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Wasn't the Grass Greener?: Thirty-three Reasons Why Life Isn't as Good as It Used to Be by Barbara Holland ISBN: 015601176X Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 26 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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