The President's House: A First Daughter Shares the History and Secrets of the World's Most Famous Home, 1800 to Present

The President's House: A First Daughter Shares the History and Secrets of the World's Most Famous Home, 1800 to Present By Margaret Truman Ballantine Books, 406 pages.

Looks at the 200-year history of the White House from the perspective of a former resident (President Truman's only child). The author describes life in the 132-room mansion with its 1,600 employees and $1 billion budget as exhilarating and maddening, alarming and exhausting, but never dull. She recounts behind-the-scenes stories and humorous anecdotes about presidential families and their private lives, and looks at how their occupancy in this national shrine changed them forever.

-Ron Faucheux