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She always called him “Mr. President” — not Jack. He refused to kiss her on the lips when they made love. But Mimi Alford, a White House intern from New Jersey, was smitten nonetheless. She was in the midst of an 18-month affair with the most powerful man in the world, sharing not only John F. Kennedy’s bed but also some of his darkest and most intimate moments. In her explosive new tell-all, “Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath,” Alford, now a 69-year-old grandmother and retired New York City church administrator, sets...

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says in her new book that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who was killed Thursday, once played her a video montage of herself set to a tune called “African Flower in the White House,” the Daily Beast reports. “It was weird, but at least it wasn’t raunchy,” Rice says in an exclusive excerpt from her book obtained by the Daily Beast. Rice' s trip to Libya attracted considerable attention from the media (In a CNN interview afterward, she called it an "extraordinary moment."). Not only was it the first visit by a U.S. secretary of...

They still called him Junior when we first met, in forlorn Midland, Texas, back in July 1986. He was known then for being the son of the vice president of the United States, the agonizingly named George Herbert Walker Bush. As a young staff writer at The Washington Post Magazine, I was trying to persuade Vice President Bush to let me spend several months with him for an in-depth profile I intended to write. But the veep was skeptical, and he left it up to Junior to pass judgment on me and my request. “Come on down and visit,” the...

....As a public service, I took a pile of these literary works on vacation and dug in. (Now you know one more difference between Washington policy wonks and normal Americans.) And here's what I found: In their own telling, all these politicians are fiercely patriotic, devoted to their families and humble. .....Then there's Perry, who's almost as angry as Gingrich. "We are tired of being told how much salt to put on our food, what kind of cars we can drive, what kind of guns we can own, what kind of prayers we can say … [and] what doctor we...

The daughter of a prominent New York lawyer has told of her amazing transformation from sheltered, society girl to seasoned combat veteran. Former Manhattan jetsetter Jane Blair swapped her pampered life in New York to become one of the first women on the frontline in Iraq. In her new memoir Hesitation Kills, Mrs Blair, now a 38-year-old captain in the Marine Reserves, recalls the moment that changed her life. She said: 'I grew up in this environment where I never had to work for a living. My dad told me, "I will always take care of you".' She was in...

NEW YORK — Dick Cheney has finished his memoir, according to his daughter, and the book is scheduled to come out on Aug. 30. Liz Cheney said that the former vice president’s manuscript was turned in at the beginning of the month. She said the book, currently being edited, will be “very straightforward,” with “a lot of in-depth analysis of really critically important issues.” Cheney’s memoir, “In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir,” is being published by Threshold Editions, a conservative imprint of Simon & Schuster run by Republican strategist and former Cheney aide Mary Matalin.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Levi Johnston is promising to set the record straight about the Palin family. Touchstone Publishing has a fall publication date for Johnston’s book, "Deer in the Headlights: My Life in Sarah Palin’s Crosshairs." Johnston says the book, first reported by People.com Monday, will "tell the truth" about that relationship, including his "sense of Sarah and my perplexing fall from grace." He says he’s doing it "for me, for my boy Tripp and the country."

Apparently having run out of all other recourse to stave off the decline of his infamy (and ability to make money from it), Bristol Palin's babydaddy, Levi Johnston, is finally doing what he's long threatened and writing down everything bad he claims to know about Bristol's mom, Sarah, and the entire Palin brood. "I want to tell the truth about my close relationship with the Palins," he said in a statement from his publisher. "My sense of Sarah and my perplexing fall from grace — how I feel and what I've learned." Johnston also insisted he's not doing it for...

Bob Woodward is “flat-out disgusted” with Donald Rumsfeld’s memoir. “Rumsfeld's memoir is one big clean-up job, a brazen effort to shift blame to others -- including President Bush -- distort history, ignore the record or simply avoid discussing matters that cannot be airbrushed away,” Woodward writes on Tom Ricks’s Best Defense blog. “It is a travesty, and I think the rewrite job won't wash.”

Despite the family feud that has unfolded over the past few days between Ron Reagan and his half-brother Michael, Nancy Reagan said she is very proud of her son for writing his new book "My Father at 100." “She was worried about me. She said ‘Are you alright?’ I said ‘Yeah mom, I’m fine... but they are going to ask me what you think of the book. So what should I say to them,’” Ron Reagan said on “GMA.” “And she said, ‘You tell them that I’ve read it, I loved it, it made me cry and I’m very proud...

NEW YORK – Make that 2 million books sold for former President George W. Bush. The Crown Publishing Group said Wednesday that Bush's "Decision Points" passed the 2 million mark less than 2 months after its official release. ...

Looking at the 43rd and 44th American presidents right now, it is worth reflecting that it was only the unpopularity of Bush and all he represented that enabled someone as inexperienced and unproven as Obama to ascend to power. By the same token, perhaps only a performance in office as myopic, self-absorbed and hubristic as that of Obama could have brought about a Bush rehabilitation so swiftly.

Fox News host Sean Hannity sat down with former President Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, for an hour-long interview and this is the transcript and video at the Fox News link. George Bush Interview.

The terrorist attacks on America on September 11, 2001, gave his administration a clear goal and him the resolve to find out who was responsible and "kick their ass," former President George W. Bush writes in his new book. In "Decision Points," Bush describes his reaction when his then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice informed him of the crash of a third airplane into the Pentagon. "I sat back in my seat and absorbed her words. My thoughts clarified: The first plane could have been an accident. The second was definitely an attack. The third was a declaration of war," the...

Former President George W. Bush has just released a new video that previews his soon to be released presidential memoir Decision Points. "I wanted to give readers a glimpse of the presidency from my perspective," says Mr. Bush. "That meant focusing on the most demanding and important part of the job: making decisions." What the former president calls his "untraditional approach" includes personal decisions, political decisions and those he made once he became president.

In an interview on NBC's "Today Show" this morning, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted she doesn't miss the pressures of her former job, adding that now, when she hears breaking news, she doesn't "have to do anything about it." "It's nice to be out of the pressure-cooker, frankly," she acknowledged to "Today" host Meredith Veiera. Rice, who was on "Today" to promote her new memoir, "Condoleezza Rice: A Memoir of My Extraordinary, Ordinary Family and Me," spoke about her childhood in Birmingham, Alabama, and defended some of the more controversial foreign policy initiatives from the Bush administration. "History...

The former first lady Laura Bush has opened a diplomatic can of worms by writing in her new book that she and her husband may have been poisoned during a state visit to a G8 summit in Germany in 2007. The passage of Spoken From the Heart in which she discusses the incident amounts to the first time that the idea has been floated that George Bush's illness at the summit may have been the result of poisoning. The then US president succumbed to a stomach complaint, as did his wife and several members of their entourage, during a three-day...

Carol Burnett's new memoir, "This Time Together," is anything but a tell-all book. In fact, it's barely a "tell-some" book. But if anyone expects the 76-year-old TV legend to reveal herself as a back-stabbing, raging control freak who fought and clawed her way to the top and has nothing good to say about anyone she ever worked with, they really haven't been paying attention. On the page, Burnett comes across as the same plucky, down-to-earth, good ol' Texas gal we've known for years. Her first memoir, "One More Time," written in 1986, focused on her early years in Texas and...

From William F. Buckley Jr. to Barry Goldwater to Ronald Reagan, the creators of the modern conservative movement always taught that excessive concentration of power in government leads inevitably to corruption and the diminution of personal freedoms. But while Rove credits these leaders for shaping his early political views -- ... he did not pursue their values while in the White House. To the contrary, as the chief political architect of the Bush presidency, Rove was instrumental in directing an administration most notable for its enormous expansion of national government. [Snip] The truly unique aspects of Bush and Rove's compassionate...

The second half of Karl Rove's memoir, "Courage and Consequences," you've already read if you have followed the intricate and specific defenses the Bush administration put forth to parry Democratic attacks. But ... the first half you've never seen before. Here we meet a vulnerable, human, sensitive man struggling to rise above a plebian background and make his way in the world. The transition from the honesty and appealing openness of the first half and the institutionalized, politically correct defenses of the second perhaps illustrates the changes that power brings to us all. Yet it is to Rove's credit that...

The man with the truck will soon be the man with a book. Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), the party's hottest elected official, has decided to write a book that combines memoir and inspiration. Gail Gitcho, his new Senate communications director, tells POLITICO: “Senator Brown is honored and humbled to be approached by many people who want him to tell his inspirational personal story about his life leading up to his election as a United State Senator from Massachusetts. He will tell his story in a book in hopes of providing insight and encouragement to others and also to ensure that...

Memphis Daily News...Fred Thompson, the former Tennessee senator and 2008 Republican presidential candidate, has penned his memoir and given it a title that reflects his early days in small-town Tennessee. The 67-year-old former politician, actor and avuncular radio host who graduated from the University of Memphis titled his book “Notes from a Country Lawyer.” It’s scheduled for release in May. Amazon.com already is selling pre-orders of the book, the cover of which shows a smiling Thompson wearing a suit and seated on a brick front porch. The title is a label no doubt intended to hearken back to the days...

Publisher HarperCollins said Friday that Sarah Palin's memoir sold 300,000 copies its first day, among the best openings ever for a nonfiction book.

When Sarah Palin's big-bucks memoir "Going Rogue: An American Life by Sarah Palin" comes out Nov. 17, there'll be another book about her hitting the stores the same day: "Going Rouge: Sarah Palin, an American Nightmare." The "Rouge" book, with a similar name and cover, will be put out by a new company, OR Books, says Publisher's Marketplace, which says it will be composed of "essays assembled by Nation editors Richard Kim and Betsy Reed." Marketplace adds that "it promises 'progressive perspectives on Sarah Palin's political career' by writers including Naomi Klein, Jane Mayer, Katha Pollitt, Jim Hightower, Christopher Hayes,...

Sarah Palin's Memoir Ready for Christmas Book Market By LAURA FITZPATRICK Fans and foes alike are hoping for surprises in Sarah Palin's memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, which leapfrogged Dan Brown and Glenn Beck to the top of the Amazon.com bestseller last week before even being published. But with a few weeks to go until the book hits shelves on Nov. 17, the biggest shocker so far is the sheer speed with which she wrote it. The former Alaska governor penned the 400-page tome in just four months, finishing well before the planned spring release date. So how the...

Fifty one rejection letters -- that is the number Irene Vilar received before she finally found someone to publish a tale so extreme it would surely be fiction if it wasn't her personal story: A woman who says she had 15 abortions and describes it as an addiction. The book, Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict -- a graphic and disturbing tale of one woman's abortions and her personal quest to understand her actions -- is bound to provoke a fury when it is released next week. It is no surprise that publishers backed away. Ms. Vilar says the...

See link below.

Ms. Vincent didn't reveal any details about the book, but did acknowledge it will describe Ms. Palin's frustration over her treatment by the staffers she inherited from the McCain campaign after her surprise pick as the GOP vice presidential nominee last year. Ms. Palin was booked on grueling interviews with hostile reporters while talk-show hosts such as Glenn Beck couldn't even get through to her aides. Mr. Beck tells me he was stunned when he picked up the phone one day just before the election to discover Sarah Palin was on the other end of the line. "She explained that...

Bill Clinton on Lewinsky Affair: "I Cracked"Posted by Brian Montopoli September 21, 2009 3:14 PM (CBS)During a series of secret interviews in the White House with author and historian Taylor Branch, then-President Bill Clinton said his affair with Monika Lewinsky began because he "cracked" as a result of personal and political pressure. "I cracked; I just cracked," Clinton said, according to Branch, USA Today reports. The former president reportedly blamed the death of his mother, combined with the Democrats' losses in the 1994 midterm elections and the Whitewater investigation, for putting him in a state of mind that left him...

Former Russian president Boris Yeltsin got so drunk during a visit to Washington that he was found standing outside the White House in his underpants trying to hail a cab to go and buy a pizza. The following night he was mistaken for a drunken intruder when he was discovered stumbling around the basement of his guest house by secret service agents. The drunken behaviour of Yeltsin, who was known for his fondness for vodka and died two years ago aged 76, were revealed by former US president Bill Clinton. Russian President Boris Yeltsin (L) taps his watch to end...

A former aide to George W. Bush and Sarah Palin is dismissing a claim by onetime Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer that the former president was clueless about Palin when she was tapped as John McCain's running mate last August. ... But Jason Recher, who served as special assistant to President Bush and as a traveling aide to Palin during the campaign, said the former President was well aware of Palin — especially since the two met in person in Alaska just three weeks before Palin was added to the Republican ticket.

<p>While the rest of his party was celebrating the choice of novice VP candidate Sarah Palin last August, then-President George W. Bush attempted to inject some reason and caution into the melee, according to a new book by a former White House speechwriter.</p>

Is there a politician George W. Bush ever liked? Not according to former Dubya speech writer Matt Latimer. In his forthcoming memoir, "Speech Less: Tales of a White House Survivor," Latimer says the former Prez dissed pretty much everyone in Washington - including Barack Obama. "He came in one day to rehearse a speech, fuming," Latimer writes. "'This is a dangerous world,'" he said for no apparent reason, "and this cat [Obama] isn't remotely qualified to handle it. This guy has no clue, I promise you." GQ's October issue has a sneak peek at the book - out Sept. 22...

Hey everyone, I remember reading about errors in Obama's memoir recently. There was one example of him getting a job as some big financial hot shot in his book, but in reality he never had a job even close. Does anyone have that thread or website link? Thanks!

Here is a CNN video report on the soon-to-be published memoir of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and a few quotes from it. In the memoir, Kennedy reportedly says he "always accepted official findings of JFK's assassination," meaning the Warren Commission's finding that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin, and that he acted alone. He also reportedly admitted that his actions at Chappaquiddick were "inexcusable." The memoir is to be released on September 14. . . . (Watch Video)

Daily Newser Dave Saltonstall gets an advance copy of Ted Kennedy's posthumously-released memoir "True Compass" -- in which the Massachusetts senator used the platform to defend his inexplicable decision to abandon Mary Jo Kopechne after his car plunged off the bridge. Among the other revelations: A nine-year-old Teddy hid under the bunk at a private school in the Bronx because he was afraid of being sexually abused by the dorm master -- and the senator claims he was cajoled into cheating on a Spanish test at Harvard by a buddy and didn't hatch the scheme that resulted in his expulsion....

WASHINGTON – Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said in a new book that he was not romantically involved with young Mary Jo Kopechne and that he never escaped the despair he felt after she died in the 1969 car crash that has been seared into the national consciousness as "Chappaquiddick." He acknowledged that he enjoyed women and drink — sometimes too much so — but said reports of wild Kennedy excesses were exaggerated. Yet it was the specter of Chappaquiddick that Edward Kennedy, the youngest brother, never could shake. "That night on Chappaquiddick Island ended in a horrible tragedy that haunts...

Tom Ridge, former US Secretary of Homeland Security, has written in his new book that he was pressured by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft to "raise the terror alert to help Bush win re-election in 2004." He explains that "Bush's approval ratings typically went up when the threat level was raised, adding that Ashcroft and Rumsfeld pushed to elevate it during a vigorous discussion." After a number of former Bush administration officials called these claims "nonsense," Tom Ridge has decided to flip-flop on the issue, writes the USA Today. He now says that this...

Publisher expects its author to settle scores, take no prisoners, tell all WASHINGTON - Dick Cheney is one of the most remarkable figures in American political history. There, I said it. Objectively speaking, no matter your ideology, take a step back. One can only marvel at the former vice president’s moxie, mettle and maneuverability over a storied 40-year career. Forget that the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., authored some 300 or so laws, most of which undoubtedly touched every American — Dick Cheney wrote the book on how to work the system to one’s personal advantage.

Tom Ridge confirms a long-held suspicion among Bush critics, writing in his new autobiography that he "was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over."...

Ridge: I was urged to raise terror level for re-election @ 11:32 am by Eric Zimmermann Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge was pressured to raise the terror threat level in the run-up to President Bush's re-election, the former cabinet secretary will claim in a new tell-all book. Titled "The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege…and How We Can Be Safe Again," the memoir is intended to rouse Americans from their complacency about security issues, Ridge says. To accomplish that goal, Ridge has included some stunning allegations about his time in the Bush administration. He almost considered resigning after being...

The Cheney ChroniclesAugust 17, 2009Robert CostaSummertime in Wyoming is usually quite pleasant for the Cheney family. Last Thursday, the day before Lynne Cheney’s 68th birthday party, the Washington Post soured spirits just a bit with this headline: “Cheney Uncloaks His Frustration With Bush.� The front-page story detailed, with the help of numerous unnamed “associates,� how former vice president Dick Cheney’s upcoming book will supposedly open a “second front� against “Cheney’s White House partner of eight years, George W. Bush.� Team Cheney was not amused.“From the first sentence, the piece was clearly biased and inaccurate,� Mary Matalin, Cheney’s former White House...

THE first signs have emerged that former US vice-president Dick Cheney lost faith in his former boss George W.Bush for going "soft" after refusing to listen to his advice. Mr Cheney, who has always steadfastly supported the former US president, has reportedly told colleagues and political experts of his disappointment as Mr Bush's resolve weakened in response to souring public opinion during his second term. According to The Washington Post, the man often called the most influential vice-president in US history has made known his feelings during discussions about a memoir he is writing that publishers have been told is...

Former Vice President Thinks Bush Ignored Advice, Made Concessions To Public Sentiment Former Vice President Dick Cheney believes his old boss, President George W. Bush, gradually turned away from his advice during their second term in the White House, showing a surprising independence as he started taking more flexible positions on a range of issues, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. Cheney, often described as the most influential vice president in U.S. history, has been discussing his years in office in informal talks with authors, diplomats, policy experts and past colleagues, the Post said, as he works on a memoir due...

It began with youthful idealism and ended in bitter regret. Anthony Blunt - English gentleman, art adviser to Queen Elizabeth II, and Soviet spy - felt the decision to give British secrets to the Kremlin was “the biggest mistake of my life.’’ Blunt wrote of his remorse in a 30,000-word memoir completed shortly before his death in 1983 and released today by the British Library. It was given to the library in 1984 on condition it not be made public for 25 years. Blunt was the infamous “fourth man’’ in a ring of upper-class Britons who spied for the Soviet...

In his memoir, former CIA Director George J. Tenet described the agency's first course of action in a crisis. "Despite what Hollywood might have you believe," Tenet wrote, "you don't call in the tough guys; you call in the lawyers." For more than three decades, that almost always has meant making a call to John A. Rizzo. The acting general counsel at the CIA, Rizzo has guided generations of agency leaders on the legal contours of clandestine operations and the often-ensuing investigations. At CIA headquarters, he is known for his eye-watering wardrobe -- with ties, cuff links and suspenders colored...

NEW YORK (AP) - Former Vice President Dick Cheney has signed a book deal with a conservative imprint of Simon & Schuster and said he hopes readers of all ideologies will be interested in his story. The memoir by Cheney, widely considered the most powerful vice president in history, is expected to be published in Spring 2011, a few months after President George W. Bush's book comes out. Cheney's work is currently untitled and will cover his long career in government, from chief of staff under President Ford to vice president under Bush, from Vietnam and Watergate to the first...

Mimi Beardsley Alford, a retired New York church administrator who had an affair with John F. Kennedy while she was an intern in the White House, is breaking a silence of more than 40 years to tell her story in a memoir to be published by Random House. Ms. Alford’s secret was initially divulged six years ago when a biography of Kennedy was published with portions from a 1964 oral history that described the president’s 18-month sexual affair with a young intern named Mimi Beardsley. The Daily News tracked her down and discovered that she was Marion Fahnestock, who was...

Sarah Palin has picked a Christian author and magazine journalist to collaborate with her on her forthcoming memoir for HarperCollins. The journalist, Lynn Vincent, has been at World—the nation's best-read Christian newsmagazine—for the last 10 years as a writer and editor. This isn't a surprising choice for Palin, but it's certainly one worth noting. It's more evidence that she's honing a distinctly Christian public image since coming off the campaign trail last year. This seems to be a change from the days when she was a state-level figure, almost entirely unknown outside of Alaska.

> In his travel memoir, Twain describes a 1867 trip to the Land of Israel, which he finds a backward and desolate place devoid of culture or law. "Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village," he states, calling it a country where prosperity had died out, a place of lost splendor and beauty where joy has turned to sorrow, and where silence and death prevail in its holy places.