Summary
In THE FAMILY, biographer Kitty Kelley once again practices her own brand of page-turner journalism that helped make best sellers of her bios of Frank Sinatra, Nancy Reagan, Jackie Onassis, and the Windsors-all of which made news because of their sometimes stunning and embarrassing revelations. Kelley is often damned both for her tabloid style and her failure to identify sources. Yet her readers find her narrative skills and prodigious research clearly evident. For them, she simply has a gift for digging out the dirt, and the courage to tell it. In this 600-page investigative report, Kelley treats the entire Bush clan in a group portrait that examines nearly a full century in the lives of the Bush-Walker-Pierce family tree: the accumulation of wealth and status, the political aspirations, and the petty behavior and little scandals (and coverups). What ties everything together seems to be the Yale connection, through which three generations have leveraged access to high office. Painting an unflattering portrait of Barbara Bush, Kelley seems to take delight in her revelations about the reputed mistress of George H. W. Bush. She also discloses supposedly new facts about George W., including his adolescent hijinks, his National Guard experience, and his reported alcohol and drug abuse. (Even Laura is accused of being a drug-dealer in college.) Either a celebrity tell-all with aspirations to being a serious study of power, or a lengthy account of a tawdry family of privilege, Kitty Kelley's THE FAMILY piles it on!
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Bibliographic Details
Publisher: Random House Inc
Published date: 2005
Size: 5.25 x 8.25 inches
Weight: 1.7 pounds
Pages: 737
Publisher's Notes
From the First Lady of unauthorized, tell-all biography, this is the first real inside-look at the most powerful–and secretive–family in the world. From Senator Prescott Bush's alcoholism, to his son George Herbert Walker Bush's infidelities, to George Walker Bush's religious conversion, shady financial deals, and military manipulations, Kitty Kelley captures the portrait of a family that has whitewashed its own story almost out of existence.
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