History Books

"Five Days in November" by Clint Hill with Lisa McCubbin   Gallery Books   243 pages   $30

Hill, as many of you already know, was  Mrs. Kennedy's lead Secret Serviceman.  The book is more pictures than words (always helpful to me) and the words used summon up more poignant times. 

Hill's self-slathered guilt - coulda, shoulda, woulda - has lasted 50 years. But he did have a front row, center, seat at the Jackie Kennedy Show.  His words about her ring very truthfully indeed.  Apparently she did exactly as she pleased.

"The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion" by Fannie Flagg   Random House   347 pages   $27

Flagg is the wonderfully funny Southern writer responsible for the book (and then movie) "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café."

In this excursion, we meet the very respectable, nice Sookie Poole, Earle Poole's wife, several of Sookie's friends and her really awful mother, Lenore.  She loves the spotlight and is described as "the bride at every wedding; the corpse at every funeral."  She was a trial as a mother and now, at 88, she is a nightmare as well as a bald-faced liar.  Her version of her family's Civil War events are far from the truth but she's been telling them so long that she actually believes them.

The plotline includes true life information about an unsung group - Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs.)  They were the licensed female pilots who ferried war planes from the factory to their destination.  Our government (finally) decided that women could do this work "to free up a man to go fight."  Chauvinism much?

As always, Flagg can make you laugh out loud from the comments and craziness expressed by her characters.