Reading List: January & February

The President’s Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity, by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy. Droll history, starting with Herbert Hoover lending a hand to Harry Truman.

Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever, by Bill O’Reilly. Includes accounts of the final few Civil War battles, and hints of a conspiracy possibly involving Secretary of State Stanton.  

Abraham Lincoln: A Presidential Biography, by James McPherson. Good, but quite short.

Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F Kennedy. The former first lady recorded an interview just months after her husband was assassinated, in an effort to preserve her husband’s legacy. The tapes were then sealed for fifty years, and have just recently been published. Her perspective was interesting, and did not always jive with other accounts that I read in other spaces. In the background the voices of young Caroline and John John can be heard, along with the rattling of ice and cigarettes being lit.

Once Upon a Secret: My Affair With President John F Kennedy and Its Aftermath, by Mimi Alford. Happy to keep her secret, Alford was sad to see it was revealed by others over forty years later. She tells her life story, including her years of coming to terms with the event that changed her life forever.

Drop Dead Healthy: One Man’s Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection, by AJ Jacobs. When I saw this book on Jeff Henderson’s reading list I thought it had to do with getting healthy. Turned out to be a humorous book.

Full Black, by Brad Thor.

Against All Enemies, by Tom Clancy. Decent Clancy, combining Islamic Jihadists with Mexican drug cartels.

Around New Years I discovered GoodReads.com – a web site to organize reading lists. Much better than the Word document I was using.