Special People Hardcoverby Julie Nixon Eisenhower (Simon Schuster)

In this book Julie Nixon Eisenhower writes about a different famous person from history in each chapter--Golda Meir, Ruth Bell Graham, Prince Charles, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Mao Tse-tung, and Mamie Eisenhower. She was able to interview them all. I read this for the first time in 1977 when it was first published and just re-read it in the last week.

The interview with Prince Charles especially is more interesting now that we know how history has played out. He was single when he spoke with Julie and he said that his marriage would have to last--that divorce was just not possible. I enjoyed hearing about the visit Prince Charles and Princess Anne paid to Washington D.C. and the account of the tours they went on with Julie and David. I found it very interesting to hear Julie's take on how the visit progressed especially with Princess Anne getting more irritable as the days dragged on.

Julie gives us a bit of history with a touch of the personal--we learn that Golda Meir had an obsession with shampooing her hair and that Billy Graham preferred that his wife Ruth dye her hair (brown hair looks better than white in the sunlight he claims).

Julie's father paved the way for her history-making visit with Mao Tse-tung (she is accompanied by her husband David Eisenhower). It's amazing to hear that Mao Tse-tung was so taken with the couple that he didn't want them to leave.

In these days when we have organizations set up for missing and exploited children and kidnappings of children have become more frequent than we would like, it's still shocking to read of the tragedy Charles and Anne Lindbergh suffered when their 18-month old son (their first-born) is kidnapped and murdered. I was interested to hear about how Anne Morrow Lindbergh's writing sustained her. She was able to grieve by expressing herself through both the spoken and written word, whereas her husband didn't express his grief outwardly.

It's a good book--a little slow going in parts but I enjoyed most of it and have kept it on my book shelf all these years as somehow I knew that it would prove to be even more interesting as time goes on.