In the course of reading Carl Sferrazza Anthony's biography of Florence Harding, I came across a copy of FBI agent Gary Aldrich's breathless account of scandal and intrigue in the Clinton White House, Unlimited Access , at a used-book sale. To be sure, we know a great deal about our presidents through official papers, the accounts of administration officials, or the dogged work of historians poking about in archives and interviewing insiders, but the kind of Faustian bargains made by the ambitious men and their equally ambitious wives to gain the Oval Office is ultimately elusive.
Presidential autobiographies are the least useful sources.
There is also a class of accounts written by insiders whose closeness to events is subject to debate and whose work does not stand the test of time. A number of the books written by Kennedy administration figures falls into that category. It is with gratitude, then, that we greet the appearance of a fine biography such as Anthony's Florence Harding . The virtue of this book, in addition to its superb readability, is the author's skill in handling a complex character who could easily be reduced to a stereotype or cliche. Anthony does not exactly rescue Florence Harding's reputation by surgically extricating it from that of her pathetic, bumbling husband.