Inside the White House.

• Author: Fischer, Raymond L.

In researching and writing Inside the White House, Ronald Kessler, an award-winning Wall Street Journal correspondent, has produced his most revealing book - one destined to surpass his earlier best sellers. (In the past, he has given the public comprehensive information about the FBI, the CIA, and now the White House and its tenants.) Kessier takes the reader upstairs, downstairs, and all through the house. Readers may not want to know what occurs in the White House's underground vaults - and they never would guess what happens in the Lincoln bedroom.

As the author interviewed Secret Service agents, domestic servants, Air Force One stewards, military aides, chefs, ushers, and hundreds of others, he found them more secretive than CIA and FBI staffers. Nevertheless, somebody (if not everybody) must have talked, because Kessler seems to have uncovered just about everything that goes on behind the scenes at the White House. He persuasively and comprehensively documents the names. events, and relationships.

Kessle covers not only the lives of the presidents,, but also those of their wives and children. He discusses in detail three important areas: the influence the White House has one those who live there, their idiosyncrasies, and the outrageous costs of running it. The author concludes that being in the White House drastically changes almost everyone who becomes president - most seem to lose touch with the public reality. and the fact that the are human; wives have a tendency to turn into shrews and children into brats.

En route, Kessler chronicle shocking habits of several of the presidents, including details of the sexual proclivities of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, an especially Bill Clinton. The most striking information concerns the cost of...