The Private Lives of American Presidents

Many of us grew up in the era of Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson, but we knew very little about their private lives or those of other former presidents. Researching the private lives of the forty-six American presidents provides a remarkable insight into many of their love affairs, amorous entanglements with young women (and the resulting off-spring and related complications), as well as a rich trove of salacious love letters between them and their inamorata, preserved in the archives of the Library of Congress. The presentation will address the romantic affairs of such former Presidents as Jefferson, Cleveland, Harding, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, Clinton and several others. And then there are the First Ladies, a precious few of whom conducted themselves in a similar fashion to their presidential spouses. Caution: Be advised that this lecture is not for the faint of heart. These people were human, and their behavior runs the gamut from sharing a bed to hush money paid out by a major political party’s national committee - does that sound familiar? We hope you will be with us for this journey into the distant and not so distant past of life in the White House.