Hail to the Chiefs

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 20. JAN. 2003

While Art Buchwald has been lamenting the decline in humor writing ("It's a wasteland"), humorist Holland continues nonstop, writing articles for Country Journal,the Washington Post, and other publications, and books, including the nostalgic Wasn't the Grass Greener?: Thirty-three Reasons Why Life Isn't as Good as It Used to Be. Holland has long been an observer of buckles in the Beltway, noting that she was "born in the shadow of the White House and never recovered." From that vantage point, she offers this amusing, anecdotal volume, probing peculiarities of our presidents, past and present She has found prime targets for her trenchant, often wicked wit: "Kennedy was allegedly schtupping class acts like Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Dietrich, but Clinton appeared to be trolling the trailer parks." Andrew Johnson came to his inauguration "drunk as a hooty-owl." Ike, with his round bald head and smile, "looked like a happy doorknob," and Nixon, "our manliest President," used language so manly it "made Truman sound like a nun." George W. Bush, we learn, had "the grandest vision in the history of the American Presidency, possibly in the history of the world: he vowed to stamp out evil and evildoers everywhere, something God himself had never achieved." Holland writes in a casual style, larded with colloquialisms, and many readers will agree with Dave Barry, who finds this book "wonderfully funny." 43 presidential photos. FYI:This title, a Book Sense '76 pick for January/February, has a print run of 10,000.