Friends.

Sometimes they save your life or help you become your best self. They can be a sounding board and tell you the truth when others can’t. Or, they can indulge or even share your darker side, your weaknesses, your vices.

The friends of powerful people can sway decisions that affect more than one person or one family. Like the president’s spouse, First Friends are unelected yet may have access to privileged information and great influence.

First Friends is a unique presidential history in which Gary Ginsburg portrays nine presidents and their best friends. Although I have read biographies of most of these presidents, Ginsberg pulled out new understandings and gave me a greater depth of understanding.

“…a First Friend is essential to presidential success,” Ginsberg asserts; “What unites the nine stories is the presence in each of a deep, abiding affection between two individuals.” Nathaniel Hawthorne actually said he loved his college buddy, the Southern, slave-owner Franklin Pierce and supported his political career even when Hawthorne’s Transcendentalist (and abolitionist) neighbors were appalled.

Each friendship had a different impact on the president.

Daisy Suckley gave her cousin President Franklin Roosevelt idolization, fun, and companionship with no political impact. Eddie Jacobson pushed President Harry S. Truman to recognize Israel after WWII, risking their long friendship. Colonel House was a gatekeeper and fixer for President Woodrow Wilson during WWI. Wilson stated, “I never met a man whose thought ran so identically with mine,” and gave him great power of decision. (But Wilson’s second wife Edith couldn’t wait to push House out of power; after her husband’s stroke, she took over!)

President Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed shared more than a bed; they both struggled with depression and fear of intimacy with a woman. After Speed married, he wrote Lincoln that it went pretty well–don’t be afraid. The Speed family’s slaves were a problem for Lincoln, but Speed was a pro-Union democrat who worked to keep Kentucky in the Union. And, his abolitionist brother served as Lincoln’s attorney general.

President John F. Kennedy relied on the British ambassador David Ormsby-Gore during the Cuban Missile Crisis. President Bill Clinton’s friend Vernon Jordan helped save his marriage after the Lewinsky scandal. President Thomas Jefferson and President James Madison were intellectual powerhouses with a common heritage and political vision.

If President Clinton was charming and made friends easily, President Richard Nixon was the opposite. Kissinger wondered what kind of man he could have became had he been loved as a child. His parents were strict. He lost two brothers. He was intelligent and driven–and ruthless. His friendship with Bebe Rebozo gave him a respite, and they spent hours together without saying a word. Rebozo could read Nixon’s mood, was always loyal, and never made demands. Together, they managed to contribute to Nixon’s downfall.

Accessible and enjoyable, First Friends would make a great read for those new to presidential biographies, but offers fresh insight for readers like me who have been reading about the presidents for a long time.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased. ( )