Front Row at the White House : My Life and Times

Author - Helen Thomas ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Paperback Book item from Scribner was reviewed on 5-Nov-2008.

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1) Paperback Book Front Row at the White House : My Life and Times by Scribner. Helen Thomas is beautiful in every way. Her writing ability is incredible, her life in the front row at the White House was brilliant. Her honesty, brilliance and passion is to be valued and respected by everybody. An amazing read, you won´t share this book even with your best friend, just in case you never get it back. It´s a book that you can read over and over again and still learn more. Thanks Helen, hopefully people are inspired to follow their dreams as you have done. Thanks Amazon, I couldn´t get it here in Australia, you came through for me again.¤

2) Paperback Book Front Row at the White House : My Life and Times by Scribner. I respect Helen Thomas for her fearlessness, tenacity, and the fact that she broke so much ground as a woman in the WH Press Corp. However, as other reviewers have noted, this book didn´t have the bite of her questions at a press conference.

I´m glad I read this book - parts were very interesting. Her insights into individual Presidents and First Ladies, the way they viewed the press, and the insidious transition from communications to spin and handling. She also takes the press to task for buying into this.

The book is kinda wonky, and if you aren´t a press junky, it wouldn´t mean much. I didn´t know there was so much to know about Air Force One - and even after reading it, was numb.

Reading this book made me think that I had Helen Thomas at a loooong Saturday afternoon brunch, and she had begun holding forth. Fascinating premise. But after a while, you´d want a break - take a walk, see if they brought out more shrimp, maybe check the Blackberry. After a while (or maybe 30 pages), it would be irresistable to go back and see what she was saying now. You´d be rivited for a while, then your eyes would start to glaze over, and it´s time to see if they have FINALLY brought out more shrimp. After everyone has had three glasses of wine, you´re in a mellower mood to listen, and she´s in a crazier mood to talk, so it all works out just fine.

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3) Paperback Book Front Row at the White House : My Life and Times by Scribner. I never noticed Thomas much until I saw her bit on Steven Colbert´s famous slap in Bush´s face at the White House Pres Corps dinner. I started reading more about her and listened to her on many different shows. I respect her a great deal, so was very interested in this book.

Much of it is about her. Too much really. There is also way too much name dropping as well as anecdotes about her and her cronnies that were frankly rather boring. She aslo is rather contradictory. She prides herself on her journalistic integrity but doesn´t understand why someone like Lady Bird would have been furious over her leaks about her daughters. She makes a big deal of her front row seat and on the many compliments and accolades that the various presidents bestowed on her. Such things got in the way of what really was an excellent look at the administrations that she worked with.

However, it was in her chapters on Marha Mitchell, and the first ladies, that really make this book a gem. The former esp - we were always told by the administration that she was insane. She wasn´t - she was speaking the truth about watergate, and no one wanted to listen. And for the most part does a good job outlining each administration´s successes and faults.

However, She was also far from being unbiased. Kennedy was the only democratic president who she had good things to say about. To hear her talk, Clinton´s lies were much worse than Watergate or Contragate. She pretty much gave Nixon and Reagan a free pass, but spent pages ranting about Clinton. I don´t expect someone working so long to not have opinions but for heavens sake try to put things into perspective.

Since this book was written just at the end of Clinton´s term, and since I know that her opinion of Bush Jr is less than stellar, I´d be interested in reading her more current book which talks about his administration. I wonder if she now sees Clinton with perhaps less myopic eyes?


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4) Paperback Book Front Row at the White House : My Life and Times by Scribner. I liked doing business with them. The book came in very good packaging. I plan on doing more business with them in the future. Keep up the good work!!!¤

5) Paperback Book Front Row at the White House : My Life and Times by Scribner. If you´ve ever wondered about the woman who for years asked the first question at presidential news conferences and also ended each one, then this memoir will be entertaining. Thomas had a long career and got to know every president since JFK pretty well, or so you´d think from this book which is chock full of interesting anecdotes and opinions. It is a bit repetitious and would have benefited mightily from tighter editing. One wonders if the publisher was a little too reverential to use the red pencil. Somewhere along the line, UPI, her employer, lost a lot of its power and impact, due to business turmoil. Still, Thomas soldiered on. She doesn´t say much about UPI in the memoir, probably because she´s still working, though for Hearst. If you follow the journalism biz, you´ll want to read this one.¤

6) Paperback Book Front Row at the White House : My Life and Times by Scribner. "Thank You, Mr. President."

From the woman who has reported on every president from Kennedy to Clinton comes a privileged glimpse into the White House -- and a telling record of the ever-changing relationship between the presidency and the press.

Helen Thomas wanted to be a reporter from her earliest years. She turned a copy-aide job at the Washington Daily News into a powerful and successful career spanning thirty-seven years and eight U.S. presidents. Assigned to the White House press corps in 1961. Thomas was the first woman to close a press conference with "Thank you. Mr. President." She was also the first female president of the White House Correspondents Association and the first woman member, later president, of the Gridiron Club.

In this revealing memoir, which includes hundreds of anecdotes, observations, and personal details. Thomas looks back on a career spent with presidents at home and abroad, on the ground and in the air. Providing a unique view of the past four decades of presidential history. Front Row at the White House offers a seasoned study of the relationship between the chief executive officer and the press -- a relationship that is sometimes uneasy, sometimes playful, yet always integral to the democratic process.¤

7) Paperback Book Front Row at the White House : My Life and Times by Scribner. Born in 1920, Helen Thomas was one of United Press International´s very few female journalists for years. She promoted herself to UPI´s White House Press Corps in 1960 ("I just started showing up every day") and has reported on eight administrations. Her episodic, old-fashioned autobiography contains anecdotes about each president, their first ladies, and their staff. Her stories are often funny, and she doesn´t mind when the joke´s on her: "Isn´t there a war somewhere we can send her to?" Colin Powell inquired after being buttonholed at a party; President Carter´s mother said the greatest lesson she learned in 80 years was, "Never to open my mouth around Helen Thomas." She´s also fair: even the press secretaries get balanced treatment, though Thomas criticizes the White House´s growing efforts to "manage" the news. (Her most affectionate political portrait is of the unmanageable Watergate wife Martha Mitchell.) Thomas pays loving tribute to her parents, hardworking, religious Syrian immigrants, and to her late husband, Associated Press reporter Doug Cornell, but she keeps the focus on the people and public events she covered. Scrupulously impartial when reporting the news, she feels free here to be bluntly opinionated, especially in her unrepentant advocacy of the media´s responsibility to ask uncomfortable questions, even when the public condemns them as intrusive. --Wendy Smith¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 3-Dec-2008, 06848680919780684868097, 640-3X0-910-600-260-030-771-30B-8

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