We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.Įveryone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia).
For example, in her chapter “Race and the Residence,” the author reveals the first “revolt” by the largely African-American staff to push for salary equality in the late 1960s.Ī work of great historical interest that is also quite entertaining. Brower is keen to sympathize with the plight of the hardworking help. There is also an affecting glimpse of Hillary Clinton attempting to enjoy a shred of privacy at the pool amid the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The most delicious stories involve President Lyndon Johnson and his extreme shower demands-it needed to have multiple nozzles shooting water at fire-hydrant intensity-while the most heartbreaking delineate Jackie Kennedy’s arrangements in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. First and foremost, they are fiercely devoted, sworn to be apolitical, serving each family that arrives after Inauguration Day as evenly as the next, despite emotional attachments-for example, chef Walter Scheib spent a stint teaching 17-year-old Chelsea Clinton to cook. Here, the staffers do not have the freedom to leave, and the work demands mean that they often sacrifice their own social and personal lives. The White House has six floors, 132 rooms, 35 bathrooms, and 28 fireplaces, with “shops” in the basement housing departments such as housekeeping and floral.
They (and the families themselves) often compare living in the White House to a prison, albeit a fancy one. The author has managed to track down numerous former staffers-ushers, electricians, maids, butlers, chefs, and florists-to share their mostly loyal thoughts on the illustrious families they served. While journalist Brower moves by theme in presenting the memories of select long-running staff at the White House-“Controlled Chaos,” “Discretion,” “Extraordinary Demands,” “Dark Days,” etc.-there is an irresistible, charmingly pell-mell quality to the arrangement of these dishy stories.
Anecdotes both touching and hilarious about living and working in the White House, “the country’s most potent and enduring symbol of the presidency.”
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