HISTORY
Three Books With Close-Up Portraits of Our Post-WW2 Presidents
“If you have a chance and don’t make the most of it, you are wasting your time on this earth.”— Roberto Clemente
Over the past 20 years of listening to audiobooks while commuting, I’ve listened to three that were especially insightful with regard to the presidents who have served our country over the course of my lifetime, which bean in 1952.
The three books I want to highlight here are Walter Cronkite’s A Reporter’s Life, Alan Greenspan’s The Age of Turbulence and Chris Whipple’s The Gatekeeprs: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency.
I just finished reading the last of these last weekend. Chris Whipple’s book is an outstanding insider’s view from the hottest hot seat inside the White House, the Chief of Staff, arguably the second most powerful person in the world. Whipple’s book is a truly up close look at every Chief of Staff from Nixon’s H.R. Haldeman, who literally defined the role, to Obama’s series of CoS gatekeepers.
The audiobook I listened to ended at the end of the Obama administration, but offered advice to the incoming Washington outsider Donald Trump. The most recent, updated version of the book has added a chapter…
