Adventures in Vice Presidential Literature


![Dan Quayle, Standing Firm](http://www.depauw.edu/photos/PhotoDB_Repository/2008/9/Dan%20Quayle%20Standing%20Fim.jpg)
Dan Quayle, Standing Firm
Excited about tomorrow’s release of Sarah Palin’s memoir [*Going Rogue*](http://www.amazon.com/Going-Rogue-American-Sarah-Palin/dp/0061939897/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258398370&sr=1-1)? Looking for a way to while away the time until its release? Over at [The Awl](http://www.theawl.com/), they are too, and they have enlisted Rudolph Delson, Stanford Class of ’97 for help. What followed was a delightful series of book reviews of “the Vice Presidential literary canon,” which unearthed a great many nuggets of Vice Presidential literary achievement.

Consider a sample from Mr. Delson’s review of Dan Quayle’s memoir, Standing Firm (now available new for $0.72):

The paramount question of Standing Firm: A Vice-Presidential Memoir is whether or not Dan Quayle has a sense of humor. On the one hand, Quayle says this: “I’ve got a pretty good sense of humor.”

On the other hand, it is obvious that he does not.

The exciting Vice Presidential revelations continue with this excerpt from Spiro Agnew’s somewhat controversial memoir Go Quietly…Or Else, a book dedicated to Frank Sinatra:

I was told, ‘Go quietly–or else.’ I feared for my life. If a decision had been made to eliminate me–through an automobile accident, a fake suicide, or whatever–the order would not have been traced back to to the White House any more than the ‘get Castro’ orders were ever traced back to their source.

If Spiro Agnew’s accusation that Nixon was going to kill him if he didn’t resign doesn’t whet your appetite for Vice Presidential literature, perhaps other reviews featuring  Geraldine Ferraro’s insistence that she was the top Italian in the country, the crushingly boring solemnity of Joe and Hadassah Lieberman, Edmund Muskie’s feebleness, theories on why George H.W. Bush wrote the introduction for a book about getting rich the biblical way titled “Doing Business by the Good Book, Richard Nixon’s love of milkshakes, and of course Spiro Agnew’s invention of a new sexual position.

For more of Mr. Delson’s writing, you can visit his personal webpage, featuring links to his book review of the 2009 Federal Budget, an open letter to President Hennessy deriding the Stanford Bookstore, and a choose your own adventure!


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