An Ordinary ManThe Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford
Available Now
A decade in the making, based on hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents, this is the definitive life of America’s 38th president. Full of surprises, historical revelations, and intimate details from the Warren Commission to Watergate to the Nixon pardon, the fall of Saigon, and the epic Ford-Reagan battle for the soul of the GOP… a gripping narrative that’s sure to invite a reappraisal of the “accidental” president whose decency and decisiveness look better and better with the passage of time.
“So few people knew that I was not Jerry Ford’s son in Grand Rapids … and we sure never talked about it in our house.”
”Dancing is discovery, discovery, discovery” - Martha Graham, credited by her student, Betty Ford, as one of the three most influential women in her life (the others her mother and Eleanor Roosevelt).
”Don’t ever tell me again what a nice goddamn guy Jerry Ford is” So observed a bitterly disappointed Republican House Leader in January, 1965, after “good old Jerry” ousted him in a closed door cliffhanger.
“You can’t pull a bandage off slowly” Ford said in defending his controversial pardon of Richard Nixon. Here, accompanied by presidential speechwriter Bob Hartmann, the look on Ford’s face says it all. It is moments away from his Sunday morning bombshell that led journalist Carl Bernstein to inform his Watergate partner, Bob Woodward,”The sonofabitch just pardoned the sonofabitch”.
”The type of man I could establish a great rapport with” Ford spoke the truth regarding Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, shown here during their first meeting in June, 1975. Their mutual trust led to the Sinai II agreement, separating Egyptian and Israeli forces and foreshadowing the landmark Camp David Accords brokered three years later by President Jimmy Carter.
Ford and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev failed to conclude an arms control deal when they met at Helsinki in August, 1975. But they achieved something even more important… rejecting harsh criticism from right and left, Ford signed the Helsinki Accords, seen today as a major milestone on the road to human rights and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.
“It is a little startling to look down to shake hands and you see a hand with a gun in it… Say a little prayer and the Lord will take care of you”. So Ford described his encounter with Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a disciple of mass murderer Charles Manson, outside the California State Capitol in Sacremento on the morning of September 5, 1975.
Few would have imagined it on the morning of January 20,1977, but onetime rivals Ford and Carter would become close friends, their post-White House relationship unmatched since the autumnal reconciliation of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
Advance Praise
John Meacham
John is a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, author of the New York Times bestsellers Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, Franklin and Winston, and Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush
Bob Schieffer
Journalist & Anchor, CBS News
Take a Moment to
Explore Richard's work.
AUTHOR &
HISTORIAN
Richard Norton Smith is a nationally recognized authority on the American presidency and a familiar face to viewers of C-SPAN, as well as The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Following graduation from Harvard in 1975, he worked as a White House intern and a speech writer for Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke. In 1979 he went to work for Senator Bob Dole, with whom he collaborated on several volumes of autobiography and political humor.
Smith’s first major book, Thomas E. Dewey and His Times, was a finalist for the 1983 Pulitzer Prize. He has also written An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover (1984), The Harvard Century: The Making of a University to a Nation (1986), Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation (1993), The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick, which received the prestigious Goldsmith Prize awarded by Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School, and has been described by Hilton Kramer as “the best book ever written about the press.” In October 2014 Random House published On His Own Terms, a monumental life of Nelson Rockefeller described by Douglas Brinkley as “one of the greatest cradle to grave biographies written in the past 50 years,” and tagged in advance by Amazon as one of the fall’s Twenty Big Books in Biography and Memoir.
Between 1987 and 2001, Mr. Smith served as Director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa; the Dwight D. Eisenhower Center in Abilene, Kansas; the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and the Reagan Center for Public Affairs in Simi Valley, California; the Gerald R. Ford Museum and Library in Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor, Michigan respectively.
In December, 2001 Mr. Smith became director of the new Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. There he supervised construction of the Institute's $11.3 million permanent home and launched a Presidential Lecture Series and other high profile programs. In October, 2003 he was appointed the first Executive Director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, a four building complex in Springfield, Illinois. The Library opened to the public in 2004 and the Museum opened the next year.
Much in demand as a speaker, in 2009 Smith was invited by Congress to be one of two historians addressing it on the two hundred anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. Earlier, millions of television viewers heard him deliver the final eulogy at Gerald Ford’s Michigan funeral, a role he repeated at Betty Ford’s request when she was laid to rest beside her husband in 2011. Twice a year he personally leads historical tours (www.presidentsandpatriots.com) emphasizing American presidents and history rarely found in the text books.
EXPLORE OUR PAST WITH RICHARD
Discover the advantages of traveling on one of our guided, personally hosted, small group tours. Each of our two annual tours are hosted and led by renowned author and presidential historian Richard Norton Smith.
INVITING
Solo Friendly
Whether you're newly single or, perhaps, your companion just isn't into history as much as you are, solo travelers will find our tours fun and enjoyable, all while discovering new places and meeting new friends. And don't feel like you'd be the odd one out... our tours are comprised of roughly half doubles and half singles. As an added service, should you wish to be matched with another solo traveler, we will be more than happy to try to find you a roommate.
GREAT PEOPLE
Join "the Club"
Our deluxe motor coach tours are designed with your comfort and enjoyment in mind, and our small group setting creates a much more intimate, personal setting when compared with other tours who attempt to fill their motor coaches to capacity. In fact, many of our guests are repeat participants (more than 90 of our guests have joined us on six or more tours!). This, combined with a shared interest in the history being experienced, makes for an unusually relaxed, fun and friendly atmosphere. As a result, many of our patrons have begun calling us "their Travel Club".
C-SPAN
As Seen on TV
Our host, Richard Norton Smith, was C-SPAN's in-house historian, where he was responsible for such long form series as Presidential Libraries: History Uncovered, The Contenders, and Influence and Image: America's First Ladies. C-SPAN viewers may have seen one or more of our tours featured over the past several years. C-SPAN has been along with us on several past trips, and has broadcast segments on their history channel, C-SPAN 3.
SEPT & OCT 2023
Featured Tour
Monuments, Missiles & The Wild West
Black Hills Magic
After more than twenty years on the American road uncovering a history not always found in the history books, it gives us special pleasure to plan a trip to a place new to us. Such a destination is South Dakota and its Badlands region. The first human entry into the adjacent Black Hills is frankly uncertain. The oldest Indian site found to date is a little over 7,000 years old. It is thought these early people were big game hunters who stalked the mammoth and bison that thrived in the lush post-glacial grass lands.
For eight days in June 2024, we will follow in their footsteps, encountering fossilized remains of prehistoric creatures, ancient mountains carved by daredevil sculptors, and the raucous frontier of Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickock. Basing ourselves in Rapids City, South Dakota – and staying in the same downtown hotel for eight nights – we’ll explore stunning landscapes in and around the Black Hills. From a moving nighttime lighting ceremony at Mount Rushmore and a mountaintop excursion to the nearby Crazy Horse Memorial – a monument in the making – to Wyoming’s Devils Tower, and the colorful history of Deadwood.
Explore America's heritage.
On the itinerary: An old gold mine, restored 19th century brothel, Victorian mansion, and a scenic train ride through the Black Hills. We’ve included a safari Jeep ride through herds of Buffalo and other animals in Custer State Park, lunch at Calvin Coolidge’s summer White House, an actual Minuteman missile in its Cold War silo, plus chuckwagon dinners and frontier breakfasts. And did we mention: THE SAME HOTEL – THE RUSHMORE – FOR THE ENTIRE TRIP.
With a first-class hotel, meals to match, and the incomparable landscape of the Badlands – we think you’ll agree that this tour does indeed deliver Black Hills Magic.
