- After Ushering the Trump Circus Into The White House, Brad Parscale Is Turning His Megaphone on San Antonio
- W. Kamau Bell on addressing racism on screen and in real life
- High school students practice real-life decision-making on careers, finances
- Cancer survivors bring new life to Mother’s Day at Great America
- Real-life 'spiderman' rewarded after rescuing boy from fourth-floor balcony in Paris
- A Real-Life Enchanted Forest
- Greil Marcus’s Real Life Rock Top 10: Angels, Demons, and Philip Roth
- Karl Marx is 200 years old today
- REAL LIFE: ‘Anger just takes too much effort’
- REAL LIFE: My foster mother violently abused me – and I forgave her
| Product | ★ |
| Hidden Mysteries: Titanic - Secrets of the Fateful Voyage / The White House - PC (check at Amazon) | 3.7 |
| BACKSTAIRS AT THE WHITE HOUSE DVD (check at Amazon) | 4.8 |
| A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy (check at Amazon) | 4.1 |
| The White House: Behind Closed Doors (check at Amazon) | 4.9 |
| Inside the White House (check at Amazon) | 4.6 |
| Eleanor and Franklin Double Feature (The Early Years / The White House Years) (check at Amazon) | 4.6 |
| A Brady Bunch of Movies (The Brady Bunch Movie / A Very Brady Sequel / Brady Bunch In The White House / Growing Up Brady) (check at Amazon) | 4.5 |
| Gabriel Over The White House (check at Amazon) | 0.0 |
| American Icons: The Capitol, The White House, and the Supreme Court (C-SPAN) (check at Amazon) | 5.0 |
| The Fight For The White House (check at Amazon) | 5.0 |
| National Geographic's Inside the White House (check at Amazon) | 4.5 |
| The Brady Bunch in the White House (check at Amazon) | 0.0 |
| Great Monuments of Washington D.C.- The History Channel (The White House, the Presidential Memorials, War Memorials (check at Amazon) | 4.3 |
| 60 Minutes Presents Obama: All Access - Barack Obama's Road To The White House (check at Amazon) | 5.0 |
| Thank You Mr. President: Helen Thomas at the White House (check at Amazon) | 4.6 |
| Echoes From the White House (check at Amazon) | 0.0 |
| Madeline At The White House Game (check at Amazon) | 0.0 |
| Eleanor and Franklin - The White House Years [VHS] (check at Amazon) | 0.0 |
| Echoes From the White House: A Celebration of the Bicentennial of America's Mansion [VHS] (check at Amazon) | 5.0 |
| Dark Days At The White House: The Watergate Scandal And The Resignation Of President Richard M. Nixon [VHS] (check at Amazon) | 4.0 |
| At the White House Conference (check at Amazon) | 0.0 |
| Live at the White House (check at Amazon) | 0.0 |
| A Concert at the White House (Blu-Spec) (check at Amazon) | 0.0 |
| Live at the White House Lawn (check at Amazon) | 0.0 |
| Heath McCabe Vincent Van Gogh The White House at Night Fine Bone China Coffee or Tea Mug (check at Amazon) | 0.0 |
Real Life at the White House: 200 Years of Daily Life at America's Most Famous Residence have 415 words, post on at April 16, 2015. This is cached page on USA Breaking News. If you want remove this page, please contact us.
very good
Everytime I order anything from your fine establishment I am pleased. What a wonderful opportunity to receive books and items that are top quality. Many thanks.
I found this book full of information about the different Presidents and their families and how they adjusted to living in the White House.
There is a lot of information about earlier, less known Presidents, and I enjoyed reading those chapters.
I was also interested to read about all the pets over the years.
Every family seemed to have all sorts of animals.
It was interesting to read about the First Ladies and their "quirks". Mary Todd Lincoln ran up clothing bills that she tried to hide—just like Jackie.
Other stories that I found amusing were that Nixon would not allow guards or policemen to speak to him or Mrs. Nixon. Betty Ford couldn’t understand why they ignored her greetings until this was explained to her.
Ronald Reagan served tea to Prince Charles who did not touch it because, as he explained later, he didn’t know what to do with the little bag!
Many such amusing stories made this a truly enjoyable book. I recommend to anyone wanting to know about living in the White House.
I was so excited when I got this book. I love stories about Presidents. However, everything in this book I had read somehwere else. Same old boring stuff. No new pictures. Basically, I thought it was awful.
Former White House curator Clement Conger calls this one of the best White House books he’s read. White House scholar William Seale also endorses it. I found it full of fasincating stories that really show what it was like for forty families to live in one house over 200 years.
If you simply want a few raise-your-eyebrows stories about WH occupants, order this one. If you care about historical accuracy and context, forget it. The myriad misspelled names and often creatively edited/paraphrased quotations are the first big clue that these authors took the path of least resistance (how hard is it for a self-professed history teacher and an alleged professional journalist to check these simple and very important facts?). The heavy reliance on only a few sources–some of them completely unattributed and others, like Ronald Kessler’s Inside the White House, entirely questionable–is the second.
Certainly, most readers won’t care that much about these flaws. If you’re more interested in storytelling than history, this is a decent collection of cotton-candy gossip about presidents and their families. But history fans looking for a competently executed and engagingly written account of White House private life will still do better to check out the work of the wonderful William Seale, among other writers. Though it’s written by self-described professionals, Real Life at the White House is amateur hour.
Father-daughter team John and Claire Whitcomb have woven a tapestry of American history from the perspective of the White House and the nation’s first families. Their command of detail is impressive: not only the familiar trivia about decorations and furniture that you can find in other White House histories, but how each first family related to the staff, how each president financed the home’s operation (paying until modern times out of his own pocket for the staff, public entertainment, and refurbishing), and how the White House has both changed and changed with the nation’s concept of the connection between the people, their leaders, and their house.
I have been reading about American history and presidential trivia for three decades and, instead of running into the same familiar overused anecdotes on which so many books draw, this book contained educational and entertaining surprises on every page. The book portrays our presidents as human beings, and tells a story not only about their habits and routines, but about their emotions and their lives in and out of the public eye. The image that struck me the most was President Pierce–mourning his son’s recent death–spending his first night as president nearly alone in the White House, sleeping "on a mattress on the floor, wrapped in his coat to keep warm," because his belongings were still packed, his grieving wife had not yet arrived in Washington, the Fillmores had not quite moved out, and the furniture was in disarray from the inaugural celebration. The book is full of such human anecdotes. I could hardly put it down.
Excellent book about the First Families, history of the building itself and just good old fashioned American History. As a history buff, I found this excellent reading and extremely informative. Interestingly enough, Mr. Clinton was not the only soundrel who lived there and the election of Dec 2000 was not the first. The similarity of that and the past is downright spooky.
This book is dangerous. Were it the U. S. History highschool textbook, every student would become a history major. Or sociology. What a delicious insight into forty-two families, their joys and sorrows, idiosyncrasies and foibles, and their forty-two different relationships with this old house. John collects tasty historical tidbits with the appetite of a black hole. Claire kneads them into irresistible prows like Bonbons of chewy fact. More danger ? you can?t put the book down! Real Life in the White House provides a surprisingly pleasant review of U. S. history with a lot of interesting occurrences you?ll want to remember and share.
This book is dangerous. Were it the U. S. History highschool textbook, every student would become a history major. Or sociology. What a delicious insight into forty-two families, their joys and sorrows, idiosyncrasies and foibles, and their forty-two different relationships with this old house. John collects tasty historical tidbits with the appetite of a black hole. Claire kneads them into irresistible prows like Bonbons of chewy fact. More danger ? you can?t put the book down! Real Life in the White House provides a surprisingly pleasant review of U. S. history with a lot of interesting occurrences you?ll want to remember and share.
Real Life at the White House not only compiles into one fascinating book the history of the house itself, but some serious insight into the office of President, the types of men who have found themselves in the position, and how it changed them for better – or worse. It is amazing what we DIDN’T know about Ike, about Kennedy and about Reagan. Some of it is downright scary! While it is reassuring to know we have managed to stumble along as a nation because of, sometimes in spite of, the people who have held this high office, one is often reminded also that "absolute power corrupts absolutely", whether it is the President, his spouse, or the chief housekeeper.
I was just fascinated to see how forty families lived in one house. Real Life at the White House is full of wonderful anecdotes?many of them I hadn’t heard before?and it really gives you a sense of how history happened, all in one place. It’s well written and charming. I agree with curator Clement Conger, who calls this book "the best" of the genre.
I was fascinated by the way forty families lived in one house. Real Life at the White House is filled with wonderful anecdotes, many of them unknown to me, and I’m quite a history buff. I agree with White House curator Clement Conger that this is "the best" of the genre.
I thought this book was a bit on the nasty side. I read the chapter on the Clintons first and they repeat hearsay on Mrs Clinton expecting Secret service to carry her bags and the nasty things she said and it goes down hill from there. I read the other modern president’s chapters and those were also a bit on the catty side. I did get a bit disturbed by the tone and didn’t finish the book. If you want unsubstantiated catty gossip, this is the book for you. (Or you could just read the National Enquirer.)
200 years of daily life at the White House are revealed in an involving pictorial history of the home lives of each presidency. Real Life at the White House is more than just a probe of presidential families; it provides in-depth White House history and examines the role of the First Lady as it’s changed over the decades. An intriguing presentation.
I read almost every book on the White House and First Families and this truly is one of the best! A wonderful history of how our First families lived and worked in that most historic home! So very many pictures in this book are never before seen! The authors have truly done homework, talked to all the right people and have made a volume sure to be a reference book for all time! Great work! Great book!