Air Force One; A History of the Presidents and Their Planes

New York: Hyperion, 2003. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xvi, [6], 261, [3] pages. Illustrations (some in color). Appendix. Endnotes. Bibliography. Index. Foreword by Robert Dallek. . Kenneth Thomas Walsh (born May 1947) is an American journalist. From 1994 to 1995, he was president of the White House Correspondents' Association. The author was the chief White House correspondent for U.S. News & World Report. He joined the magazine in 1984 as a congressional correspondent and has covered the presidency, presidential campaigns, and national politics since 1986. Walsh is one of the longest-serving White House correspondents in history. He has won the two most prestigious awards for White House coverage: the Aldo Beckman Award (twice) and the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency (three times). In 2006, he won the Fitzwater Prize for Leadership in Public Communication presented by the Fitzwater Center at Franklin Pierce College. Walsh's freelance work has been published in the Washington Post, the American Journalism Review, and the New Republic. Prior to working at U.S. News, Walsh was Washington correspondent for the Denver Post from 1981-1984. Before that, he covered government and politics for the Denver Post in Denver, and was a newsman and Statehouse correspondent for the Associated Press in Denver for three-and-a-half years. Walsh earned a master's degree in communication from American University and a B.A. in journalism from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. From the award-winning chief White House correspondent for U.S. News & World Report comes the definitive history of Air Force One. From FDR's prop-driven Pan Am to the glimmering blue and white jumbo 747 on which George W. Bush travels, the president's plane has captured the public's awe and imagination, and is recognized around the world as a symbol of American power. In this unique book, Kenneth Walsh looks at the decisions that our last 12 presidents made on the plane; the personality traits and peccadilloes they revealed when their guard was down; and the way they each established a distinctive mood aboard that was a reflection of their times, as well as their individual personalities. Based on interviews with four living presidents, scores of past and present White House officials, and staff and crew members of Air Force One, Walsh's book reveals countless fascinating stories of life aboard the "flying White House." It also features descriptions of the food, the decor, the bedrooms, the medical clinic, and much more--as well as remarkable photos of the planes (inside and out) and the presidents. Derived from a Publishers' Weekly article: This peek inside the "flying Oval Office" comes courtesy of U.S. News and World Report's award-winning White House correspondent, who has logged more than 200 trips aboard Air Force One. To document the history and evolution of the "flying White House," Walsh interviewed more than 120 people, including the plane's crews and staff, plus past presidents and White House officials. Americans once thought presidents should "never stray from the United States," but FDR "changed the whole dynamic," becoming the first airborne chief executive when he flew to a secret 1943 meeting with Churchill in Casablanca. Truman, who used "the plane itself as a power tool," was the first to fly routinely, and Eisenhower was the first to travel by jet. The code name Air Force One was introduced in Ike's era after air traffic controllers confused Eastern 610 with the president's Air Force 610. JFK made the code name public, and his sleek new 707 "seemed to embody modernity itself" after Jackie Kennedy and industrial designer Raymond Loewy devised the now-familiar blue-and-white exterior. Focusing on the mystique and prestige of Air Force One and its ascendancy as a symbol of world power, Walsh describes key decisions made in the air, leaving a contrail of anecdotes about presidential behavior aloft, and concludes by detailing the dramatic events aboard the presidential jet on September 11 when the controversial decision was made not to return to Washington.