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The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity

Author: Michael Duffy & Nancy Gibbs
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2012
May 16 2012
Private Event

About the Authors - Michael Duffy is TIME's Washington Bureau Chief and directs the coverage of presidents, politics and national affairs for both the magazine and Time.com.

Nancy Gibbs is Executive Editor of TIME magazine and co author with Michael Duffy of the New York Times bestseller The Preacher and the Presidents; Billy Graham in the White House. Named by the Chicago Tribune as one of the ten best magazine writers in the country, she is the author of more than 150 TIME cover stories and now writes the back essay page.

About the Book - The bestselling authors of The Preacher and the Presidents return with a riveting new history of the private relationships among the last thirteen presidents, uncovering and exploring the partnerships, private deals, rescue missions, and rivalries of those few men who served as commander in chief.

The Presidents Club was born at Eisenhower’s inauguration when Harry Truman and Herbert Hoover first conceived the idea. Over the years that followed—and to this day—the presidents relied on, misunderstood, sabotaged, and formed alliances with one another that changed history. The world’s most exclusive fraternity is a complicated place: its members are bound forever because they sat in the Oval Office and know its secrets, yet they are immortal rivals for history’s favor.

Some presidents needed their predecessors to keep their secrets; others needed them to disappear. Most just needed help getting the job done. Truman enlisted Hoover to help him save Europe; Kennedy turned to Ike on Cuba; Nixon sought Johnson’s advice on getting reelected, but then tried to blackmail him; Ford and Carter couldn’t stand each other until they saw what they had in common; Reagan and Clinton relied on Nixon as an off-the-books emissary to Russia; Bush put Clinton and his father to work and they became like father and son; and Obama and Clinton became quiet rivals for the same crown.

Journalists and presidential historians Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy unravel the secret compacts, the shared scars, and the private cease-fires from Hoover to Obama. The Presidents Club will change the way we think about the presidency, for the club itself is an instrument of presidential power.

Buy this Book at Politics & Prose