Are You Prepared for the Storm of Love Making?: Letters of Love and Lust from the White House

Summary

An “irresistibly readable” (David Michaelis, New York Times bestselling author of Eleanor) collection of love letters by American presidents to their wives—and lovers—revealing an intimate and deeply personal side of our leaders.

Our presidents loom so large in history that we often forget they are human. Are You Prepared for the Storm of Love Making? is a collection of handwritten love letters that offers a surprising and intimate portrait of the men who occupied the White House. From George Washington to Barack Obama, these are not the presidents we see in history books. “In this varied (and variously entertaining) assortment of excerpted letters…a careful reader will see in the decorous prose of…George Washington and Thomas Jefferson that the hearts of real men beat beneath their stiff frock coats, too.” (The Wall Street Journal)

Some of the letters are incredibly romantic—and surprisingly so.

It took Richard Nixon years to convince Pat Ryan to marry him: “Someday let me see you again? In September? Maybe?”

Others will make you blush.

Staid-looking Woodrow Wilson, about to return home from a trip, warned his wife of ten years: “Do you think you can stand the unnumerable kisses and the passionate embraces you will receive? Are you prepared for the storm of lovemaking with which you will be assailed?” In letters to one of his mistresses, Warren G. Harding referred to his penis as “Jerry”—letters which would later be used to blackmail him.

All the letters show the writer at his most vulnerable. We see letters of sorrow written about the death of a child or during a time of separation while the president was away on the battlefield. This “lovely book, stuffed with romantic details…[is] a helpful reminder that historical figures are also human beings: petty, sappy, and flawed” (The New York Times Book Review), revealing a never-before-seen side of the men we still honor today.