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A few years ago, the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. asked me to write a book about Gerald R. Ford for his American Presidents Series. Ive learned never to tell Arthur no; its one of my smarter habits. Before long, I found myself holed up at the Ford Presidential Archive in Ann Arbor, poring over recently declassified documents pertaining to the fall of Saigon in 1975. To my surprise, Ford, against virtually all of his foreign policy gurus advice, insisted that we evacuate as many South Vietnamese as possible. To celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War in 2000, I wrote a long essay for Time titled Of Ladders and Letters, showcasing the new batch of documents. I used material from that Time article in this book.

Even though the Ford Library documents were illuminating on U.S. foreign policy from 1974 to 1977, they lacked emotive quality. I wondered where Fords personal correspondence was located, letters that he had received from Barry Goldwater or Henry Kissinger or Billy Graham over the years. The hunt eventually led me to Glenn Horowitz Booksellers in Manhattan. In July 2006, Ford sold his personal library, correspondence, and mementos to Horowitz, the best manuscripts/archive dealer in America. Its a stunning collection.

Although the archive is closed from public viewing, that is until they find the proper institutional home, I was given special access.Here, at last, was the personal side of Ford I so desperately needed for my book. Whether its Ford calling Madeleine Albright the Tiger Woods of foreign policy or lobbying behind the scenes so the folksinger Burl Ives could receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom or kibbitzing with Bess Truman on Jimmy Carters flakiness, the collection sheds important new light on Fords seminal place in twentieth-century American history, including his role on the Warren Commission, Watergate, the Mayaguez incident, the Helsinki Accords, and the end of the Vietnam War. But clearly the most extraordinary materials are original handwritten letters that Richard M. Nixon sent Ford from 1956 to 1994, which I quote throughout the narrative.

Besides bringing new Vietnam War and Nixon-Ford relationship evidence to light, I was granted a no-holds-barred interview with President Ford at his office in Rancho Mirage, California. (I had previously, for other projects, interviewed him in April 1998 and April 2000.) As always, his forthrightness was refreshing for a career politician.

In Rancho Mirage, his blue eyes had a slightly glazed, watery look, as if suffering from hay fever. Despite his age, however, Fords broad shoulders werent sloped, there was no loose unwrinkled skin hanging on his neck. I had a close one, Ford explained of his latest stroke. I was about as close to a collapse without literally falling as possible. Complete dizziness. The secret service and the person I was playing with saved me from falling. My blood pressure was very abnormal.

Throughout the process of writing this book I received editorial assistance from Shelby Sadler (research/line-editing), Andrew Travers (manuscript preparation), and Paul Golob (shepherding). Dr. Elaine K. Didier, director of the Ford Presidential Library and Museum in both Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids, constantly encouraged me in numerous ways. She is superb. Archivist David Horrocks of the Ford Presidential Library dutifully answered a barrage of queries. CBS News had me serve as the presidential historian for Gerald Fords funeral and provided generous support of this project.President Fords longtime assistant Penny Circle was my Rock of Gibraltar throughout the three years it took me to finish. And, finally, James Cannon, President Fords authorized biographer, proofread my manuscript, catching a number of glaring errors.

The Great Deluge

The Boys of Pointe du Hoc Tour of Duty

Wheels for the World

The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation
(with Stephen E. Ambrose)

Rosa Parks

The Unfinished Presidency

John F. Kennedy in Europe

Rise to Globalism
(with Stephen E. Ambrose)

FDR and the Creation of the U.N.
(with Townsend Hoopes)

The Majic Bus

Driven Patriot
(with Townsend Hoopes)

Dean Acheson

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY is the director of the Theodore Roosevelt Center and professor of history at Tulane University. He is the author of biographies of Henry Ford, Jimmy Carter, Dean Acheson, James Forrestal, John Kerry, and Rosa Parks, and his most recent books include The Great Deluge , The Boys of Pointe du Hoc, and Tour of Duty . He is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair , the Los Angeles Times Book Review , and American Heritage and a frequent contributor to The New York Times , The New Yorker , and The Atlantic Monthly . He lives in New Orleans with his wife and children.

1: MICHIGAN UPBRINGING

Author interview with Gerald Ford, Rancho Mirage, Calif., March 23, 2003.

James M. Cannon, Gerald R. Ford: Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, 19651973, in Roger H. Davidson, Susan Webb Hammond, and Raymond W. Smock, eds., Masters of the House (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1998), p. 261.

Julian Street, Abroad at Home (New York: Century, 1916), p. 128.

David A. Horrocks and William H. McNitt, Gerald R. Ford Biography, Guide to Historical Materials in the Gerald R. Ford Library (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Gerald R. Ford Library, 2003), p. 1.

President Gerald R. Ford, in a speech before the National Quadrennial Convention of the Polish-American Congress in Philadelphia, Penn., September 24, 1976. Transcript appears in The Presidential Campaign 1976 , Volume Two, Part Two: Gerald R. Ford (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979), p. 754.

Jerald F. terHorst, Gerald Ford and the Future of the Presidency (New York: Third Press, 1974), pp. 3840. In 1929 and 1930, young Jerry Ford earned two dollars (plus lunches) a week, working at Bill Skougiss restaurant across the street from South High every school day from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 7 to 10 p.m. one night a week.

James Cannon, Time and Chance: Gerald Fords Appointment with History: 1913 1974 (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), pp. 426.

Ibid., pp. 1213.

President Gerald R. Ford, in remarks at a Michigan Union dinner for the University of Michigan football team and athletic staff, Ann Arbor,Michigan, September 15, 1976. Transcript appears in The Presidential Campaign 1976, Volume Two, Part Two: Gerald R. Ford , pp. 74243.

terHorst, Gerald Ford and the Future of the Presidency , p. 40.

Ibid, p. 42.

Ibid., pp. 4243.

Author interview with Gerald Ford, Ann Arbor, Mich., April 18, 2000.

Israel Shenker, Ford, a Traditionalist Who Believes in Home, Family, Hard Work, and Patriotism, New York Times , August 9, 1974, p. 8.

terHorst, Gerald Ford and the Future of the Presidency , pp. 89.

Robert Drury and Tom Clavin, How Lieutenant Ford Saved His Ship, New York Times , December 28, 2006.

Cannon, Time and Chance , pp. 3738.

Ibid., p. 11.

President Ford: The Man and His Record (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1974), p. 32.

Author interview with Gerald Ford, Rancho Mirage, Calif., March 23, 2003.

2: MAN OF THE HOUSE

terHorst, Gerald Ford and the Future of the Presidency , p. 53.

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