Billy Graham, arguably the world’s most famous evangelist, was a close confidant of eleven presidents. No man has had such unfettered access to the White House for such an extended period of time. They called him in for comfort, for advice and guidance, and he considered each one of them a close personal friend. Three of those friends, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush, were on hand for the dedication of the Billy Graham Library, in Graham’s hometown of North Carolina, which opened shortly before Graham’s wife, Ruth, slipped into a coma and died. In the wake of all this, there comes a book: The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House, co-authored by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, which examines the unique intersection of faith and politics that Billy Graham personified.

The book was featured on Friday on Good Morning America. Read the article here.

How’s this for alternative history: the first humans were female, and they were called the Clefts. Why? I do not know. They lived in harmonious bliss, impregnated every so often by “a fertilizing wind or wave”. It had been like this since before anyone could remember. But then there was this child, a child produced with a terrible defect, a “lumpy swelling”, the likes of which they had never seen before. From this child, rape and murder are born, and love, consensual sex, and babies as we now know them — the first of a new race.

This could only be the work of that zany Doris Lessing, who, at age 88, is one of the most lauded novelists of the 20th century. The Cleft examines the interplay of and inherent friction produced by the two genders, using a vehicle - the creation myth - that is as effective as it is original. NPR’s Alan Cheuse reviewed the novel a few days back, and you should listen to it here.

It makes you feel like you’re in seventh grade again, all these summer reading lists. They do have their purpose, though, and everyone has found one or two books worthwhile on them. The latest, and probably last of the season, appeared on NPR’s Day to Day this morning, and includes books from James Lee Burke, Tina Brown, Ridley Pearson and several others. Certainly some stuff worth checking out.

Read the list here. A 500 word report will be due on the first day of school.

Jed Babbin. With a name like that, how could you forget him? He was the George H.W. Bush’s Undersecretary of Defense, and now he’s joined the ranks of people that insist we knew about 9/11 years before it happened, and still failed to take any preventative action. But that’s not even the important part: in his newest book, In the Words of Our Enemies Babbin says we’re still being warned by Iran, North Korea, and terrorist factions across the world. The inside flap informs us that the book tackles such topics as, “What the Islamists themselves are saying about their plans for America–mass murder followed by imposition of Islamic sharia law?”, “How Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez is leading a radical anti-American revolution that aims to organize the world’s oil supplies against America”, and “How many countries have threatened to use nuclear weapons against America (it’s more than you think)”.

So conspiracy theorists rejoice. This will give you fodder for years.

Babbin appeared on the Daily Show several days ago. Watch the full interview here.

ps. Foreword by Newt Gingrich!

We as a country like rich people. We’re fascinated by them. Whole magazines, TV series, books and movies are devoted to the badness of the idle rich, and somehow, they never get boring. The latest in the vein is The Descendants, the first novel by Hawaiian writer Kaui Hart Hemmings. Set against the lush backdrop of her native state, the book follows resident rich person Matthew King, a royal descendant and one of the largest landowners in the state. Should be happy, yes? Of course not. One daughter, an ex-model, is a recovering drug addict, the other is a smart-ass attention whore, and his wife lies in a coma after a boat-racing accident, unlikely to reawaken. Matt faces the challenge of rallying family and friends to say their bedside goodbyes, except that one man, the most important man, has not been told: the man she was having an affair with, and quite possibly the one man she truly loved. Discovering that man’s existence, the now-estranged husband has to hit the road with his daughters to find this man, and profound personal change and self-actualization remain close at hand throughout.

How about that for a tale of the upper-class woe?

NPR’s Alan Cheuse reviewed the novel, and what that man says matters! Listen to it here, and be sure to check out the little “Novel Ideas” blurb at the bottom of the page.

A political book entitled Prince of Darkness could be about so many things. I’m not sure why veteran reporter Robert Novak chose that name for his memoirs, but it certainly does pique your interest. Novak, who has been reporting in Washington for fifty years now, was most recently embroiled in the Valerie Plame outing, and before that, his 2005 dismissal from CNN, but it goes so much deeper than that. He has covered every president since Truman, and broken some of the biggest stories of the century. During the late 60s and 70s, his columns on Vietnam and Watergate were closely read for inside information, as they were in the 80s, when he wrote the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Most interesting, though, are the candid stories throughout, stories about the Kennedys, a drunk LBJ, Deng Xiaoping, Ezra Pound, Reagan and his first meeting with President Bush that, before now, Novak had kept close to his chest.

Maybe you’ll hear one of those zany stories during his interview with Diane Rehm, which you may listen to here.

From the NPR website: ” Some years ago, acclaimed novelist Mary Gordon wrote a memoir about her father, revealing how the man she had loved as a Catholic intellectual was actually a converted Jew, a rabid anti-Semite and an academic fraud.”

I tried to rewrite that, but could think of no other way to put it. Now, in Circling My Mother Gordon tackles the other half, and casts mom Anna Gagliano Gordon in a more favorable light. Spurred by Anna’s death in 2002 at the age of 94, Gordon began tracing the major events of mom’s life, from contracting polio at age three, enduring both World War II and immigration to the United States, and successfully bringing up Mary on her own (Dad died early on) while holding down a steady job. The result is this memoir, a loving testament to the woman. “I write about her,” says Gordon, “because I am a writer and it’s the only way that I can mourn her.”

Gordon appeared yesterday on NPR to discuss the project. Listen to the full interview.

As anyone who has set foot in a Barnes and Noble over the past month now knows, Jeffery Eugenides’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Middlesex was the Oprah Book Club’s pick for July. As it is now August, I felt I should make one last effort to direct you over to the supplementary material on Oprah’s website, which now includes a fireside chat between O and Eugenides, a Q and A in which reader questions are answered, and Mediterranean-style recipes to serve at YOUR next get-together.

Everything you ever wanted to know is here.

Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden is late. John Edwards has three books out. Obama has two. Hillary has at least one and dozens more written about her. Even Mitt Romney got a book out before Biden did. But slow and steady does win the race, I suppose. Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics, the Delaware Senator’s first memoir has just recently been released, and was featured on Today yesterday. Having been in the Senate since 1973, Biden has seen his fair share of congressional combat, and lovingly renders every moment of it, from the tail-end of Vietnam through the fall of the Soviet Union up to the current conflict.

Watch the interview and read the excerpt.

As many of you perhaps know, Prime Minister Tony Blair was voted out of Parliament just a few weeks ago after a ten year stint at No. 10 Downing Street. The timing, as you may also know, is ripe for a rash of Blair critiques and retrospectives, the first major one being The Blair Years: The Alistair Campbell Diaries.

Campbell, Blair’s Press Secretary and strategist from 1994-2003, kept exhaustive diaries of his time in with the former Prime Minister, and touched on many major events as he and Blair saw them: the rise of the Labour party, the peace negotiations in Northern Ireland, the death of Princess Diana, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and the War on Terror. Most valuable, though, are the moments at which Campbell captures the man behind the nation, defying relentless and crushing pressure to govern in what he hoped were the people’s best interests.

During the time he was in Parliament, Campbell was called Blair’s right hand man and the second most powerful figure in Britain. If he doesn’t know what went on behind closed doors, then maybe we were just never meant to know. But he does dish on Diane Rehm:
Listen to the full interview.