Presidential biography is a popular form of nonfiction. There are some true classics out there; I consider Carl Sandburg’s lyrical tribute to Abraham Lincoln one example of biography as fine literature. What about the biographies and stories of those who influenced the president — advisers and friends, even family? Where do these lie in the pantheon? As it turns out, there are a lot of them, and we carry many in our collection here at the library. (Although I do not believe a biography currently exists about Steve Bannon, one day soon there may be many.)
First, let’s go back in time about 80 years. A little known figure and private secretary in Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s inner circle, Missy Lehand, was one of the few very close advisers to the 
president. In “The Gatekeeper” by Kathryn Smith, this relationship is explored in depth. Indeed, Missy Lehand was the first person in the White House to learn about World War II: “The ringing of Missy’s bedside phone jarred her awake sometime after two on the morning of Friday, September 1, 1939. Could she authorize the switchboard operator to wake him?” Smith argues that not only did Lehand have unfettered access to the president, she was also extremely influential in the construction of the myriad government services needed for the New Deal.
The Secret Service also has a very close relationship with any president, but they are an unusual agency in that they generally hold to a nonpartisan stance. Clint 
Hill’s autobiography about his time with the Service, “Five Presidents: My Extraordinary Journey With Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford” is an examination of the closeness each agent develops with the man in the White House, as protector and sometimes as confidante. Traveling and advising each of these presidents, he says “I had the rare opportunity to observe the human side of these men — the most powerful in the world — as each dealt with the enormous responsibilities and unforeseen challenges thrust upon them.”
The people that a president surrounds himself with are inevitably gathered from his own inner circle of familiarity — consider Obama’s Chicago ties. 
For Jack Kennedy specifically, in the years leading up to and during his presidency, it was a close circle of family and friends, most of them Irish-Catholic. These included his brother Bobby Kennedy as well as Larry O’Brien and Dave Powers, among others. Please see “The Irish Brotherhood” by Helen O’Donnell for an intimate exploration of the role they played. “They were the new, post-World War II generation trying to shake up the drab, colorless political system and toss out the political hacks that they believed had move the country off track,” writes O’Donnell, whose father was also among JFK’s closest advisers.
Although only a decade has passed, many do not remember that the first Hispanic attorney general in American history actually served under a Republican administration.
“True Faith and Allegiance” recounts Alberto Gonzalez’s time serving in the George W. Bush White House, first as a close counsel and then as attorney general. An intimate portrait of the inner workings of the Bush administration at that time, it must be noted that several crucial events occurred during Gonzalez’s stint as special counsel to the president: 9/11 and the preparation for, and invasion, of Iraq. As a very personal document of these monumentally world-changing events, the books stands alone among its peers.
image credit: Reynolds, White House via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
