Forty-Two Years in the White House

Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Good in Fair dj. 1934. 7th Impression. Hardcover. [moderately shelfworn book, front hinge cracked but still holding, light soiling/browning to edges of text block, former owner's name plus date & place of purchase in ink at top of front endpaper; the jacket is kind of a mess, internally reinforced/repaired with clear tape along all edges and folds, with various small nicks and chips and general wear, one larger chip at top of front panel]. (frontispiece portrait, B&W photographs) Posthumously-published memoirs by the man who joined the White House staff at the age of 19 as an electrician in 1891, and eventually rose to become Chief Usher, essentially the executive head of the household, a position he held from 1909 until his death in 1933. As such, he was in charge of social affairs and household operations, and his duties brought him into close daily contact with the President and his family members. He oversaw the preparations for the funerals of Presidents McKinley and Harding, and for the White House weddings of three Presidential daughters (Alice Roosevelt, Eleanor Wilson, and Jessie Wilson); he also traveled with President Woodrow Wilson to the peace negotiations in France at the end of World War I, which experience he discusses in a chapter entitled "The Truth About Wilson's Illness." According to a Publishers' Note, Hoover had been at work on his memoirs at the time of his sudden death in September 1933, having planned to publish them after his retirement, scheduled for 1935. He had completed the manuscript through the Taft Administration, with the rest remaining "in the form of isolated chapters and rough notes," which were then arranged "in convenient form" and edited for publication. The book provides a wealth of anecdotal information about ten different U.S. Presidents (all pictured in silhouette on the rear jacket panel, with a one-liner about their personalities or peccadilloes) and their families, as well as many astute staff's-eye-view observations on the workings of government. The book went through at least eight printings in its original edition (this being the 7th, from December 1934, just four months after its initial publication) and was reprinted in 1974, yet remains elusive, and exceedingly so in the dust jacket -- although admittedly this isn't the prettiest copy you'll ever see. .