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.
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.
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.
NOV 2024
Featured Tour
Classic Hollywood and the City of Angels
Tinseltown!
Explore America's heritage.
But there’s much more to see in southern California than the Hollywood Sign. The Watts Towers and the mission church of San Juan Capistrano. The recently renovated Nixon Library and Birthplace. Will Rogers’ Ranch and Paul Getty’s astonishing Roman villa. The Griffith Observatory – remember it from LaLa Land? – and the La Brea Tar Pits, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House and the thought provoking, state of the art Museum of Tolerance.
And maybe the best attraction of all. Our home for seven nights – the newly restored Queen Mary, now permanently docked in Long Beach, a short drive from L.A. Perhaps the most famous of all the great Cunard liners, a thousand feet of Art Deco and prewar nostalgia.
Your staterooms are waiting. Just follow the Yellow Brick Road...