Now that we're spending so much time and ink debating which qualities make a First Lady into either a political asset or a liability, it's instructive to read Susan Eisenhower's sympathetic biography of her grandmother Mamie Doud Eisenhower. No public relations whiz or spin doctor coached Mamie during her difficult metamorphosis from soldier's bride to general's wife to presidential consort. All she had to do was get through it, which was rarely easy. Despite all its satisfactions, her life was a lonely and arduous one.
Plagued by frail health, she was forced to choose between long, worrisome separations from Ike and frequent moves to inhospitable postings: tropical heat and insects in the Philippines and Panama, freezing weather in France, substandard housing in Depression-era Washington. Worst of all, she was haunted by the memory of her older son, who died at the age of 3 from scarlet fever and meningitis.
The book's tone seems faintly defensive on the subjects of Mamie's alleged alcoholism (Eisenhower argues that a middle-ear condition, not drink, was what made her grandmother visibly tipsy) and Ike's rumored affair with his pretty wartime driver Kay Summersby. And the author fails to address the question of why Mamie, who died in 1979 at age 82, never considered emulating her more active predecessor Eleanor Roosevelt. Still, what emerges is a well-researched portrait of a modest, resilient woman who clearly believed that the job of a President's wife was to act, first and last, like a lady. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25)
by Lawrence Schiller and James Willwerth
This detail-packed, 700-page account of the O.J. Simpson saga is by far the juiciest Juice book yet. Hired to help write Simpson's jailhouse fundraiser I Want To Tell You in 1994, Schiller has cashed in on his access to O.J. by scoring the biggest prize of the Simpson literary sweepstakes to date: the cooperation of O.J.'s close friend and lawyer Robert Kardashian, who spilled his guts to assuage nagging doubts about his pal's innocence.
Kardashian's disclosures allow Schiller and Willwerth (who covered the trial for TIME) to reconstruct, in stunning detail, the events that followed the 1994 murders of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman. Among the compelling revelations: news that Simpson badly failed a lie detector test, the existence of a tape recording on which Simpson seems to express remorse, and a report that O.J.'s attorneys went to his Rockingham house before a tour for jurors and switched a picture of Paula Barbieri in the buff with family photos. But the most fascinating aspect of American Tragedy is its insight into Simpson's frame of mind throughout the ordeal: He emerges here as a calculating, tortured character who gives this book the force of a great crime novel. (Random House, $27.50)
by Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. with Tim Rutten
If American Tragedy (see above) is an act of contrition on the part of one of O.J. Simpson's lawyers, this is a self-congratulatory pat on the back. Primarily a memoir of Cochran's illustrious legal career—O.J. isn't even mentioned until page 158—Journey presents the Simpson trial as the culmination of Cochran's decades-long battle against police brutality and corruption in Los Angeles. From his high-profile defense of Black Panthers in 1971 to his own mistreatment at the hands of police officers [who, suspecting his Rolls-Royce was stolen, pulled him over on Sunset Boulevard in 1980, when he was an assistant district attorney], Cochran describes the events that fomented his distrust of the LAPD. He also argues that Simpson was framed not by stealthy conspirators but as a result of "the unplanned interaction of the sloth, carelessness, incompetence, dishonesty, bias and ambition of the police and prosecutorial authorities involved."
When it comes to his personal life, Cochran offers less than full disclosure; he devotes all of two paragraphs to a second family he has supported—a woman he never married and a son, now 23—that became public only during the trial. Fortunately, he is forthcoming about his Dream Teammate Robert Shapiro, gleefully depicting him as a bumbling, egomaniacal schemer who nearly sank Cochran's crafty stewardship of Simpson's defense. Beyond his harsh words for Shapiro, though, there aren't many surprises in Journey. Unlike Bob Kardashian, Cochran seems to have a crystal-clear conscience. (Ballantine, $26)
Barbara Mikulski and Marylouise Oates
Eleanor "Norie" Gorzack, the heroine of Barbara Mikulski's first novel, is a lot like the Maryland senator herself: feisty, Polish-American, with a soft spot for liberal causes. Unlike Mikulski, however, Gorzack is the wife of a Marine pilot declared missing in action during the Vietnam War. On Gorzack's first day in office, a Vietnam veteran is killed on his way to talk to her; a few weeks later one of her aides is murdered. Appointed to a select committee on MIAs, Gorzack seeks both to solve the murders and bring home the remains of some American servicemen. The premise could have made for an interesting mystery, but it falls flat in the hands of Mikulski and her friend Marylouise Oates, a former society writer for the Los Angeles Times. The coauthors clog the book with civics lessons on lobbyists and Senate protocol. Mikulski's inside perspective on Senate politics can't rescue her novel from its wooden dialogue and plodding pace. (Dutton, $23.95)
by Jenefer Shute
Page-Turner of the Week
AWAITING TRIAL FOR A LURID CRIME OF passion that has shocked the nation, Christine Chandler, better known to tabloid readers as the Boston Fury, is writing her memoirs. Nothing as tacky as some blood-money tell-all, but a plumbing of an alcohol-clouded memory that might possibly help her attorney explain how Chandler, 38, a wealthy, worldly, Harvard-trained lawyer, became so deeply enmeshed with boy toy Scott DeSalvo that she—well, exactly what the Commonwealth of Massachusetts charges she did is a secret that Shute dangles through almost two-thirds of this deft teaser.
Shute presents differing perceptions of the doomed affair—who was really obsessed with whom?—from Chandler, her friends, and even the sometimes contradictory evidence of phone records and police reports. As Shute lures readers down this dark tunnel of delusion, she never lets us lose sight of the real mystery here—the why. (Doubleday, $18.95)
>ODD COUPLE
On paper, it just shouldn't work—Herman Wouk, the 81-year-old author of epic novels like The Caine Mutiny and The Winds of War, collaborating with singer/beach bum Jimmy ("Margaritaville") Buffett on a Caribbean-flavored musical, Don't Stop the Carnival. "It's going really well," says Wouk, who wrote the book for the show, which is set to premiere in Florida next April. Exactly how did this unlikely twosome hook up? "I pursued Herman," says Buffett, a Wouk fan. "He didn't know who I was, so I sent him a couple of my records."
FERGIE FRENZY
Bidding to excerpt My Story, the memoirs of high-flying Sarah Ferguson, climbed to a staggering $775,000 in the U.K. before Hello! magazine landed a three-parter. But her tell-some saga, due Nov. 13, will have to compete with two other dishfests—Fergie: The Very Private Life of the Duchess of York, by her former psychic Madame Vasso, and Fergie: Her Secret Life, by Allan Starkie, business buddy of former Fergie flame John Bryan.
BULL MARKET Now that Bad as I Wanna Be has sold 750,000-plus copies, Chicago Bull Dennis Rodman has pulled down a seven-figure, two-book deal with Delacorte. Book 1: Walking on the Wild Side, tales from the tattooed one due next May. Book 2: a Christmas '97 release with photos of Dennis's decorated body. Just when you thought the season had lost its meaning.
>Richard Dooling
EXPLETIVES DEFENDED
RICHARD DOOLING SWEARS A LOT. Never at home in Omaha, mind you, or around his wife, Kristin, or their four young children. But during an interview, he's likely to blurt out 4-letter, 6-letter, even 12-letter profanities. "You know the old Mark Twain quote," says Dooling, 42. " 'When angry, count to four. When really angry, swear.' "
Dooling isn't angry, though, he's just discussing Blue Streak: Swearing, Free Speech and Sexual Harassment, his lively defense of dirty words. "I don't think people should be able to swear whenever they want," he says. "I just don't want the federal government making laws about swearing. We should trust people's own instincts about what is appropriate in any given situation."
Dooling's interest in expletives derives from his days as a labor lawyer in his native St. Louis, where he defended corporations against discrimination lawsuits. "When a sexual harassment charge is filed, right away people think the person charged is guilty," says Dooling. "I saw it from the other side, where what is essentially a personality conflict blossoms into a federal lawsuit. Someone tells a dirty joke, and then someone else says, 'Hey, I bet I could sue him for that.' "
Dooling quit practicing law three years ago to focus on fiction (his second novel, White Man's Grave, was a finalist for the 1994 National Book Award, and he's laboring on a third). His first nonfiction work tracks the shifting shock value of certain obscenities. "The potty words and sex words are almost not offensive anymore," he says. "And what's supplanting them are the racial and gender epithets. As a society we pick words that are offensive based on what we're most afraid of. We associate sounds with some dangerous idea, and right now the most dangerous thing to us are the differences between us." Another observation: The male urge to offend is stronger than the female. Says Dooling: "Men are more often thrown into situations where a problem could be solved using violence, so instead of resorting to violence they use violent language. That allows them to blow off some of the same emotions they would express physically. In a confrontational situation, a man is not going to cry, or, if he can avoid it, fight, so it helps to be able to say [deleted] you." There he goes again.
Get up-to-the-minute celebrity news and photos on your cellphone, iPhone or Blackberry at www.people.com!
