The President's House: A First Daughter Shares the History and Secrets of the World's Most Famous Home Book

As Margaret Truman knows from firsthand experience, living in the White House can be exhilarating and maddening, alarming and exhausting, but it is certainly never dull. Part private residence, part goldfish bowl, and part national shrine, the White House is both the most important address in America and the most intensely scrutinized.

In The President's House, Margaret Truman takes us behind the scenes as she reveals what it feels like to live in the White House. Here are hilarious stories of Teddy Roosevelt's rambunctious children tossing spitballs at presidential portraits and a heartbreaking account of the tragedy that befell President Coolidge's young son John. Here, too, is the real story of the Lincoln Bedroom - as well as the thrilling narrative of how first lady Dolley Madison rescued the priceless portrait of George Washington and a copy of the Declaration of Independence before British soldiers torched the White House in 1814.

Today the 132-room White House operates as an exotic combination of first-class hotel and fortress, with 1600 dedicated workers and an annual budget over $1 billion. But ghosts of the past still walk the august corridors, including the phantom whose visit President Harry S. Truman described to his daughter in eerie detail. From the basement swarming with reporters to the "Situation Room" crammed with sophisticated technology to the Oval Office where the President receives the world's leaders, the White House is a beehive of relentless activity, deal-making, intrigue, gossip, and, of course, history in the making.

Publishers Weekly

Bestselling novelist and first daughter Truman brings readers inside the White House, taking them on a notably reverential tour of its storied history, its well-known architecture and its intricate behind-the-scenes workings. There's a lighthearted jaunt through the White House kitchen, where one strong-willed housemaid kept serving President Truman brussels sprouts, though he hated them. The tour then goes to the White House garden, where Lincoln's gardener offered the first lady tips on hiding her excessive shopping expenses. Much of Truman's narrative is history lite aimed at the Martha Stewart set. Yet it contains just enough interesting anecdotes and stirring pageantry to be of interest to the general reader who's curious about how the White House functions. Truman dishes the gossip, especially about the White House as a social setting. For example, she describes Madame Chiang Kai-shek (wife of the Chinese general) as one of the most insufferable houseguests ever. Truman devotes separate chapters to the household staff, the political staff, the press corps, the security staff, White House weddings, first ladies, first children and even first pets: after the Clinton-era rivalry between Socks the cat and Buddy the dog, Socks ended up with a staffer while Buddy stayed with the Clintons. Despite the breeziness of this account, Truman does a fine job of evoking America's most famous residence as a place with "a unique combination of history, tragedy, comedy, melodrama and the ups and downs of ordinary living." 75 color and b&w photos. (Nov.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.