Kitty Kelley Bush book?

[Equipoise]

I’ve never read a Kitty Kelley book so I don’t know what to expect. She’s coming out with a book called “The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty” on September 14 and I’m leaning toward buying it or at least, checking it out of the library.

Here’s what the inside flap says:

They have wielded enormous financial power and dominated world politics for more than half a century. They have been appointed to positions of great power and have been elected as governors, congressmen, senators and presidents. They have shaped our past and, with our country at war under the leadership of their number one son, they are, more critically than ever, shaping our future.

As the Bush family has risen to dominance, so too they have been master orchestrators of their own public image, acting and operating under the shield of privacy their money and status have always afforded them. Until now.

Number One bestselling author and investigative biographer Kitty Kelley has closely examined the lives of Jacqueline Onassis, Nancy Reagan, Frank Sinatra, and the British Royal family. Now the First Lady of unauthorized biography reckons with the first family of the United States–and the result is at once a rich and shocking history and a very human portrait of the world’s most powerful dynasty.

An important polemic on wealth, power, and class in America, The Family is rich in texture, probing in its psychological insight, revealing in its political and financial detail, and stunning in the patterns that emerge and expose the Bush dynasty as it has never before been exposed. Ms. Kelley takes us back to the origins of the family fortune in the Ohio steel industry at the turn of the last century, through the oil deals and international business associations that have maintained and increased their wealth over the past hundred years. The book leads us through Prescott Bush’s first entrée into government at the state level in 1950s’ Connecticut, to George Herbert Walker Bush’s long and winding road to the White House, to his son’s quick sweep into the same office. Along the way, we see the complex relationships the Bushes have had with the giants of the century–Eisenhower, Nixon, Joseph McCarthy, Kissinger, Reagan, Clinton–as well as the often ruthless methods used to realize their goals.

Perhaps most impressive–and surprising–is the way the book delves behind the obsessively protected public image into the family’s intimate private lives: the matriarchs, the mistresses, the marriages, the divorces, the jealousies, the hypocrisies, the golden children, and the black sheep.

At a crucial point in American history, Kitty Kelley is the one person to finally tell all about the family that has, perhaps more than any other, defined our role in the modern world. This is the book the Bushes don’t want you to read. This is The Family.

Any comments on Kitty Kelley in general? I’ve heard she’s never been sued successfully. If she didn’t get her ducks in a row she couldn’t continue writing these tell-much books, right or wrong?

[Loach]

Wrong. She has never been considered more than a trash writer by anyone. I wonder if opinions will suddenly change now that the subject matter is different. I suspect that Kelly will now be sited as a credible source because she is writing about Bush even though she used to be at the same level as the Enquirer.

[Kizarvexius]

Kitty Kelley used to churn out new volumes of dirt on a regular basis. Her only interest being sleaze and scandal, she sold a lot of books the merits of which were questionable at best. She also made a lot of enemies.

It’s been years since I’ve even heard her name mentioned. I do recall, though, that some time back someone turned the tables and published an unauthorized biography of her.

No less than what she deserved.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

I read this in some paper while on vacation, so excuse the total lack of citing, but supposedly Newsweek had a chance to run excerpts from the book pre-publication but turned it down on the basis that the reporting couldn’t be substantiated.

[RikWriter]

This would be the same ditzy bitch that wrote accusing President Reagan of rape with no proof whatsoever.

[Equipoise]

@Exapno Mapcase

I read this in some paper while on vacation, so excuse the total lack of citing, but supposedly Newsweek had a chance to run excerpts from the book pre-publication but turned it down on the basis that the reporting couldn’t be substantiated.

laugh sure. The same Newsweek who touted a cooked double-digit lead for B in the polls last week. That’s why Larry King, who has had Kelley on his show numerous times, decided to pass on an interview with her this time too.

What I want to know is if she’s entertaining to read. I don’t know if I will, but I have to admit to a certain guilty admiration for someone who would go after such high-profile, lawyered-up targets such as the Kennedys, the Chairman of the Board, the Royals and Nancy Reagan. And now the Bush Dynasty. Like her or not, it has to be admitted that the woman has balls the size of Texas. Not to mention very good lawyers.