Author Gary Ginsberg talks presidential influencers at Literary Society luncheon

For the final luncheon of the season for the Literary Society of the Desert, Gary Ginsberg, author of “First Friends,” captivated the audience with history told through the stories of best friends and closest confidants of U.S. presidents.

Literary Society of the Desert board member Donna Martin welcomed attendees, acknowledged students from Palm Desert and Rancho Mirage High Schools and thanked volunteers. Students and faculty from the high schools met with Ginsberg prior to the luncheon of chilled vichyssoise, chopped cobb salad with grilled chicken breast, avocado, tomato and smoked bacon with champagne vinaigrette and a dessert of lemon bombe.

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Board president Nancy Cunningham introduced author Ginsberg and Ambassador David Lane, president of the Annenberg Foundation Trust, who moderated the discussion. The two men met in 1984 while working on the Gary Hart presidential campaign and have remained friends over the years and a variety of careers. Ginsberg and Lane were seated on comfy chairs on the stage and proceeded to enthrall the audience with political anecdotes and stories from the book.

Lane’s first question to Ginsberg was, “What was your method of selecting the nine presidents and their friends for the book?” Ginsberg answered that wives and family members were excluded from consideration and the friend had to shape the president and history in a powerful way.

Ginsberg wanted to provide fresh insights into the lives of the men who held the most powerful political office in the world by looking at the friends on whom they relied. He researched and wrote about the friendships between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Franklin Pierce and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed, Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, FDR and Daisy Suckley, Harry Truman and Eddie Jacobson, Jack Kennedy and David Ormsby-Gore, Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo and Bill Clinton and Vernon Jordan.

Ginsberg told several stories of how friends influenced the location of the U.S. Capitol to Washington, D.C., how they swayed opinion to abolish slavery and how in 1948 Eddie Jacobson shaped Harry Truman’s decision to accept Israel as a Jewish state. This story was well known by attendee Loreen Jacobson who is married to the nephew of Eddie Jacobson.

Sponsors of this final event of the season held at Eldorado Country Club were Karlene Garber and Li-Anne Mannix.

For more information on the Literary Society of the Desert call (760) 289-0173 or visit literarysocietyofthedesert.org.

Marge Dodge serves on several local non-profit boards supporting her passions of education, literacy and the arts. She is on the advisory board of the Literary Society of the Desert performing public relations.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Gary Ginsberg talks presidential influencers at La Quinta luncheon