Customer Reviews

Real Life at the White House: 200 Years of Daily Life at America's Most Famous Residence

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 am a serious fan of anything presidential, have visited several presidential homes, the White House, and have read extensively on many of the presidents. When I received this book as a gift I was excited. Instead of a look at a particular presidency or president, the book takes you behind the scenes of the WH, including a look at construction and decoration over the years and also how each first family lived there. From Washington to Clinton, there are a lot of inside stories and details. Having said that, there are a few flaws that detract from my overall positive feeling about the book. First, sometimes the authors diverge into too much back story of a president or first lady, meaning they turn their attention away from the White House and into pre-presidential years, not the focus of the book. Also, as an historical work, there unfortunately are multiple editing errors, in particular dates. One of the worst is when they say Nancy Reagan was first lady in 1992. Overall highly recommended, but note the detractions.

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 a waste of time and money. It presents nothing that two other more significant works do not already present in more accurate, better edited ways. These two other works are: 1)Inside the White House: America's Most Famous House, The First 200 Years by Better Boyd Caroli, published by Canopy Books; and 2)The White House: Its Historic Furnishings and First Families by Betty C. Monkman, published by Abbeville Press. Caroli has much more research experience with the White House and the nation's first ladies, and Momkman actually worked in the White House Curator's Office.

If it were not for sloppy editing and factually incorrect information, the Whitcomb and Whitcomb book would be a nice addition to these two more accurate, and frankly more interesting works. Grammatical and punctuation errors pepper the entire book and really take away from its readability. Worse are the blatantly wrong facts presented in this book. For example, on page 371 in the chapter on Lyndon Johnson, Clark Clifford's wife is erroneously called "Mary." Her name was actually "Marny," which was a nickname for Margery (Margery Peperell Kimball). The authors interestingly cite Clark Clifford's memoir, Counsel To The President published by Random House, as a source of infomration for the chapters on Presidents Truman and Johnson.

On page 395, in the chapter about Richard Nixon, the authors state that Daniel Ellsburg was a psychiatrist. Had the two authors consulted Ellsberg's memoir, Secrets: A Memoir Of Vietnam And The Pentagon Papers, published by Viking Penguin, they would have seen that Ellsberg is indeed NOT a psychiatrist, but that he earned a doctoral degree in economics from Harvard and later worked in the Pentagon under Secretary McNamara. The authors are undoubtedly confused; there was a break-in at the office of Ellberg's psychiatrist (a Dr. Lewis Fielding...the real pshychiatrist), which was a scheme carried out by G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt.

Another misconception put forth by Whitcomb and Whitcomb on page 395 is that the so-called "White House Plumbers" were the infamous Watergate burglars. The team known as the Plumbers consisted of four men: Liddy, Hunt, Bud Krogh, and David Young. Only Liddy and Hunt were present at the June 17th break-int. However, they were not members of the break-and-enter team. Hunt had recruited five cuban nationals and two Americans, one of whom (James McCord) worked for the CIA and was director of security for the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) to go into the Watergate. The authors negelected to consult the most accurate account of Watergate and events leading up to the infamous burglary, Watergate: The Corruption Of American Politics And The Fall Of Richard Nixon, published by Simon and Schuster. This book is the accompaniment to a documentary on Watergate developed by the BBC and the Discovery Channel.

These mistakes make me wonder what else the authors got wrong....and such factually inaccurate information really takes away from a historical work. I encourage readers to consult the Caroli and Monkman books for all things White House, as well as the independent biographies and memoirs of the presidents, first ladies, and their staff members (e.g., the memoir by Clark Clifford) instead of wasting their time and money on this sloppy attempt at historical writing.