Kelley's reputation as an "unauthorized biographer" precedes her—how many authors feel the need to mention that they've "never lost a lawsuit"?—and she is best appreciated less as an investigative journalist than as a folklorist, amassing a compendium of gossip (much of it denied by her subjects). Generations of Bushes have given her plenty of material. She presents Prescott, the alcoholic senator who beat his children; George H.W., the tightfisted husband with a mink-clad mistress; and a supporting cast of uncles and brothers embroiled with dictators and Japanese Mafiosi. There is Barbara's grudge-bearing (a streak so mean one feels almost sorry for Nancy Reagan), Laura's reputation as a college drug source, and ex-daughter-in-law Sharon's tales (since recanted) of cocaine at Camp David. Capping it all is George W., who—from financial shadiness and substance abuse to a suspect military record and a blithe confidence that he deserves all he has been given and more—is portrayed not as the family's black sheep but as the epitome of its values.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker Anyone who has ever read Kitty Kelley knows what to expect: a dishy story, poorly sourced, but with a definite point of view. No surprises here. Kelley's premise is that the Bush clan has succeeded in portraying themselves as an all-American family when they are actually snooty, snotty, vindictive, and petty (dishy enough?). In making her point, Kelley provides a wealth of anecdotes, most from secondary sources, some from anonymous sources, and a few from people brave enough to admit they don't like the Bushes. Most of the book, surprisingly, focuses not on George W. Bush but on his parents--with plenty of attention also given to George H. W.'s parents, Senator Prescott Bush and his wife, Dorothy. The most explosive of the charges (drug use by both Laura and George W.) already has received plenty of play in the press (no advance galleys were distributed for this book), but none of the reviews thus far have bothered to notice that Kelley does the most damage with a thousand smaller but more telling cuts--everything from George W.'s foul mouth to Barbara's abrasiveness (her sons apparently call her "the nutcracker") to Laura's obliviousness. The book is compulsively readable, although if one pauses for breath, it's quickly apparent that Kelley is no stylist: she jumps from one subject to another with sentences that lack even a hint of connective tissue. Moreover, even the identified quotes are impossible to trace because, for each chapter, Kelley only offers a massive list of books and magazines. The book ends abruptly, too, as if the author couldn't write one more insulting word about the Bushes. Even Bush haters should stick with Schweizer's The Bushes: A Portrait of a Dynasty [BKL F 1 04], a much better and more solidly sourced book. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"This is a story of power, sex and betrayal--but mostly of power." –The New York Times Book Review
"A thoroughly researched piece of work. Ms. Kelley clearly devoured and digested the extant literature on the family." –The New York Times
"Kelley's account of the rise and fall of the Bush family is both inspirational and cautionary. She convincingly shows that good looks, energy, athleticism, ambition, felicitous marriages and social networking can compensate for intellectual ordinariness." –The Washington Post Book World
"The Family . . . has left few stones unturned. . . . Kelley has brought new information to bear on a family that, for better or worse, deserves her kind of royal treatment." –The New York Times Book Review
"A sweeping indictment of the mind-set of the [Bush] family, that they grew up feeling that this was their due." –Garry Trudeau, The Charlie Rose Show
"Despite the best efforts of the media, the public is gaining insight into their president as the facts leak out and as Kitty Kelley's The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty, tops the sales chart." –Newsday
"Kelley nails the evidence and, although the secretive Bush family will not like it, demonstrates beyond doubt what the American press dared not print." –The Guardian
From the Trade Paperback edition.
From the Inside Flap
They have wielded enormous financial power and dominated world politics for more than half a century. They have been appointed to positions of great power and have been elected as governors, congressmen, senators and presidents. They have shaped our past and, with our country at war under the leadership of their number one son, they are, more critically than ever, shaping our future.
As the Bush family has risen to dominance, so too they have been master orchestrators of their own public image, acting and operating under the shield of privacy their money and status have always afforded them. Until now.
Number One bestselling author and investigative biographer Kitty Kelley has closely examined the lives of Jacqueline Onassis, Nancy Reagan, Frank Sinatra, and the British Royal family. Now the First Lady of unauthorized biography reckons with the first family of the United States—and the result is at once a rich and shocking history and a very human portrait of the world's most powerful dynasty.
An important work on wealth, power, and class in America, The Family is rich in texture, probing in its psychological insight, revealing in its political and financial detail, and stunning in the patterns that emerge and expose the Bush dynasty as it has never before been exposed. Ms. Kelley takes us back to the origins of the family fortune in the Ohio steel industry at the turn of the last century, through the oil deals and international business associations that have maintained and increased their wealth over the past hundred years. The book leads us through Prescott Bush's first entrée into government at the state level in 1950s' Connecticut, to George Herbert Walker Bush's long and winding road to the White House, to his son's quick sweep into the same office. Along the way, we see the complex relationships the Bushes have had with the giants of the century—Eisenhower, Nixon, Joseph McCarthy, Kissinger, Reagan, Clinton—as well as the often ruthless methods used to realize their goals.
Perhaps most impressive—and surprising—is the way the book delves behind the obsessively protected public image into the family's intimate private lives: the matriarchs, the mistresses, the marriages, the divorces, the jealousies, the hypocrisies, the golden children, and the black sheep.
At a crucial point in American history, Kitty Kelley is the one person to finally tell all about the family that has, perhaps more than any other, defined our role in the modern world. This is the book the Bushes don't want you to read. This is The Family.
About the Author
Kitty Kelley is the internationally acclaimed bestselling author of Jackie Oh!; Elizabeth Taylor: The Last Star; His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra; Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography; and The Royals. The last three titles were all #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Ms. Kelley has been honored by her peers with such awards as the Outstanding Author Award from the American Society of Jouranlists and Authors, the Philip M. Stern Award, and the Medal of Merit from the Lotos Club of New York City. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, People, Ladies Home Journal, McCall’s, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her physician husband, Jonathan Zucker.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER ONE
Flora Sheldon Bush was fuming. Her thirteen-year-old son, Prescott, was supposed to have spent that August of 1908 at a New Jersey sports resort with a classmate and his family. Flora's husband, Samuel Prescott Bush, had sent the boy there to play tennis, while Flora, their two daughters, Mary and Margaret, their younger son, Jim, Samuel's mother, Harriet, and the family nanny were spending the month at the East Bay Lodge in Osterville, Massachusetts. But Prescott had abruptly been sent home by his friend's mother, Mrs. Dods. Flora's regal mother-in-law, Harriet Fay Bush, urged her to demand an explanation and an apology from Mrs. Dods, but Flora, whose social instincts were unerring in these matters, restrained herself. "I am not ready for that," she wrote to her husband. "I think I may hear from Mrs. D. and if so, you must forward the letter . . . for nothing has ever happened that raised my indignation more than her summary dismissal of Prescott."
A few days later Flora again mentioned her vexation: "Your mother is quite sure I ought to write Mrs. Dods. It scarcely seems right. I resent it all more than anything I have experienced."
The unexpected change in Prescott's plans upset his father, who worried that the incident might have been Prescott's fault. If so, that might affect his acceptance into St. George's School in the fall. But after hearing her son's side of the story, Flora tried to assure her husband that the youngster was not entirely to blame:
I am sorry you are disappointed in Prescott and yet I am not surprised. He is of course a boy of very tender years. And I sometimes have a feeling of great dread at sending him away to school and yet I do feel that the strict discipline may be just the thing. He was glad to get back to us again but he misses his sport at Osterville--There are no tennis courts here but poor grass ones--he said if he had his clubs he would play golf.
The matter of Prescott's departure was finally cleared up when Samuel telegrammed Flora that the much-maligned Mrs. Dods had indeed written to explain herself. Samuel forwarded the letter from Ohio, and Flora was almost comforted to learn that Mrs. Dods had taken ill in New Jersey. "It was the only excuse I could possibly have accepted," she wrote. "Her letter was as satisfactory as anything could be + while I do not justify the haste I at least can appreciate her anxiety to get rid of the young company--as summer cottages are not the quiet hospitals one needs in case of illness."
A few days later, Prescott received his golf clubs. And Samuel must have been somewhat reassured to receive a letter from his seventy-nine-year-old mother extolling the teenager, if not without reservation:
I was much impressed with Prescott's appearance and manner as he jumped out of the carriage + came to speak to me--he is a handsome boy + a well developed figure for [illegible] growth. I trust the time will soon come when he will--if I can use the word--slough off the pernicious habit of fooling. If I had not seen its results in Aunt Virginia's family perhaps it would not seem to be so fraught with danger, but with you and Flora to guard him and the uniform discipline of a school he will doubtless find its disadvantages himself. It makes friends with the boys but antagonizes the teachers as I also know by personal experience but little can be done except . . . protect him until he is wise enough to check it.
Grandmother Bush was more perceptive than perhaps even she could have realized. Her grandson's "pernicious habit of fooling" was something that would remain with him for years. At times, the result would be humorous; at other times, there would be serious repercussions.
Prescott could simply not be suppressed. He possessed all the precocious gifts of a firstborn son who was indulged and adored by his parents. He had inherited humor, dramatic flair, and sociability from his mother, while he exhibited his father's height, good looks, and graceful athleticism. The surprising effect of her "splendid boy" was not lost on Flora. "I have had one new experience," she wrote to her husband, "and that is the devotion of girls 18 or 19 years old to Prescott. He is having a charming time dancing with them + going swimming + indeed walking or running. Prescott + one or two boys a little older are all the boys there are + you may imagine their popularity. I shall be glad to have him away from the girls. He is very kind to me + indeed to us all--but--of course, being in such demand for any length of time might turn his head."
Even his grandmother's efforts could not rein him in, and she was someone to be reckoned with. Already widowed for nineteen years when she wrote the note analyzing Prescott, Harriet Fay Bush was born in Savannah, Georgia, of illustrious ancestors who fertilized the family tree with connections to British royalty. On occasion Mrs. Bush could be as starchy as Queen Victoria, but Flora loved her mother-in-law and fussed about the elderly woman's frailty. "I wonder how she keeps up at all," Flora wrote. "She has had so many wretched days + people tire and annoy her so very much that I have felt a number of times that it was almost too much for her."
Flora need not have worried. Behind that swansdown fan fluttered a steel magnolia who would outlast most of her relatives, including her daughter-in-law. As sturdy as the kudzu of Georgia, Harriet Fay Bush would live to be ninety-four years old.
During the summer of 1908, the Bushes were completing a two-and-a-half-story colonial-style seventeen-room home on Roxbury Road overlooking the bluff of Marble Cliff in Columbus, Ohio. They had purchased the 2.7-acre site for $12,500 the year before, and their letters were filled with details of the seven-bayed windows, five dormered bedrooms, upstairs ballroom, cedar-lined storage room, and awninged porch atop the first-floor sunroom.
"I still remember that house, and I'm ninety-five now," recalled Indiana Earl in 2001. "Of course, it was fitting for Samuel Bush to live there because he was extremely wealthy and viewed with enormous respect in the community. The Bushes' big white house sat at the top of a hill looking down on a marble quarry across the street from Sylvio Casparis's castle . . . Mr. Bush was well-to-do wealthy but not as really rich as old Mr. Casparis, who owned the Marble Cliff Quarries."
As the daughter of a prominent dry-goods merchant, Flora understood how to run a fine home and was delighted when her husband, the president of the Buckeye Steel Castings Company as well as one of the founders of the Scioto Country Club of Columbus, bought land in Grandview Heights near where her brothers and sisters were building their large homes. Flora oversaw the architectural plans for the new house and attended to the details of paying various merchants. "This bill of Sargents is a terror," she wrote. "Certainly changing those panes is pretty expensive." Her letters brimmed with eagerness to see the construction completed in time for her family to move in the fall. "We shall all be together and be so very happy," she put in one of her notes.
In an era before such modern conveniences as washing machines and dryers, Flora expressed concern for a satisfactory cellar that would be "clean and nice and serve as an excellent drying room for laundry." She acceded to her husband's love of flowers and his desire for larger gardens to accommodate more plantings, but insisted on her own way in other areas. "About the fireplace--it must be done," she wrote. "There is no doubt about it. I am willing to compromise on the red. My only choice has been a suitable brown and if that cannot be found I shall certainly never give you cause to regret the red."
As pleased as Flora was to be at Cape Cod with her children and away from the noisy builders and summer heat of the Midwest, she missed her forty-four-year-old husband, who was known to intimates by his middle name. She began each letter with loving salutations such as "My Dear Prescott" or "My Dearest Boy." Irrepressibly affectionate at the age of thirty-six, she signed off with endearments such as "Adieu, my darling Boy," "I love you my darling and am thinking of you constantly," "I love you sweetheart dearly. Don't get on too well without me," "Please miss me a little, my dearest."
Nor was she coy about her desire for the man she called "Bushy." In one letter she wrote:
I should like to have you down here fore [sic] a week after every one has gone--+ we should lead an Adam + Eve existence--bathe and roam about--We could have a very happy time near to nature's heart . . . I so seldom see a person I desire for a friend. Of course it is because you + I are so much to each other. We do not need the others--I surely need little dear when I am sure of you--but it is the most vital thing in the world that you stay by me.
She also wrote about her own pleasure at "bathing," especially on the rare days she dared to ditch her petticoats, whalebone collars, and fishnet hose. One day, she said, was absolutely perfect because "we went in without skirts or stockings and the sensation was delightful." And Flora burbled on about the children's swimming lessons: "Such progress as they are making is truly delightful. Diving or rather jumping into the water and swimming right off--it is fine--I would give anything to have that love for the water or rather the faith--for I do love it--but to be without fear--there is nothing like it."
Flora seemed quite ready to leave behind the nineteenth-century discomforts of carriages and embrace the new invention of the automobile. As she wrote to her husband, "There is only one comfortable way to get about and that is in a motor car--suc...
