When George W. Bush and his staff finally got word he had 
officially won the 2000 presidential election, they had only 
thirty-seven days left to shift from campaign mode to governing. 
Fortunately for the Bush team, a group of presidency scholars had 
gathered and provided them with a wealth of substantive analysis 
about presidential transitions and White House operations.
	
    With information covering six administrations and interviews 
with seventy-five former senior White House officials as well as 
with President Gerald Ford, the White House Interview Program 
proved an important resource for the new occupants of the West 
Wing.

    The White House World gathers and digests the same material 
that was provided to the incoming White House staff. Its individual 
chapters contain a veritable "how to" manual: information on the 
dynamics of White House operations; the functions of seven 
critical White House offices; and the actual transition of President 
Bush. In a final section, scholars and Bush administration insiders 
offer brief views of George W. Bush’s unique transition into office.

    In addition to Kumar and Sullivan, scholars contributing to the 
volume include: Peri E. Arnold, MaryAnne Borrelli, John P. Burke,
George C. Edwards III, John Fortier, Karen Hult, Nancy Kassop,
John H. Kessel, G. Calvin Mackenzie, Norman Ornstein, Bradley H.
Patterson, Jr., James P. Pfiffner, Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, Charles
Walcott, Shirley Anne Warshaw, and Stephen J. Wayne. The
section on the Bush transition also contains an essay by Clay
Johnson, executive director of the Bush-Cheney Transition and
now director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel.

    The project was sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts and 
carried out by members of the Presidency Research Group of the 
American Political Science Association.

    This is a must-have book for all current and aspiring participants 
and all serious observers of the American presidency.

    "Future presidential staffs will ignore this book at their own 
peril; those who read it will undoubtedly benefit by a shortened 
learning curve."—Matthew J. Dickinson, Middlebury College

_________________________________________________________

MARTHA JOYNT KUMAR is director of the White House Interview
Program and its parent project, the White House 2001 Project.
She is a faculty member in the Department of Political Science
at Towson University and lives in Washington, D.C. TERRY
SULLIVAN, associate director of the White House Interview
Program and the White House 2001 Project, is a member of the
Department of Political Science at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.


The Presidency and Leadership, A Joseph V. Hughes, Jr., and
Holly O. Hughes Book


What people are saying about this book

". . . a wealth of information . . . a wonderful road map to a job I 
had never done before.  [This] book should be mandatory reading."—
L. Ari Fleischer, George W. Bush’s White House Press Secretary