FRONT ROW AT THE WHITE HOUSE

  There are two things in life you should keep to yourself until the last minute:(1) that you're going on a trip and (2) that you're writing a book.

  With the first you get peppered with questions like "When are you leav ing?" "What's your itinerary?" "Have you packed yet?"

  With the second it's "How is it going?" "What are you writing about?""When will you be done?" How's it going?

  How did it go? It went rough, easy, tough, tumultuous, happy, sad, joyful,tearful, bitter and sweet. Or, as I told that great former UPI editor Lucien Carr on the phone one night,"It's like being on a psychiatrist's couch."

  Trying to decipher old notes taken on the run and stopping to read stories written so long ago took a lot of time.

……

   From the woman who has reported oil every president from Kennedy to Clinton comes a privileged glimpse into the While House-and a telling record of the ever-changing relationship behveen the presidency and lhe press.

   Helen Thomas wanted to he a reporter fl'om her earliest years. She turned a copy-aide job all the Washington Daily News into a powerful and Successful career spanning thirty-seven years and eight U.S. presidents. Assigned to the While House press corps in 1961. Thomas was the first woman to close a press conference with "Thank you, Mr.President." She was also the first female president of the While House Correspondents Associalion and the first woman member, later president, of the Gridiron Club.

   In this revealing memoir, which includes hundreds of anecdotes, observations, and personal details, Thomas looks back on a career spent with presidents at home and abroad, on the ground and in the air. Providing a tmique view of the past four decades of presidential history, Front Rone at the While House offers a seasoned study of the rela tionship between the chief execulivc officer and the press-a relationship thai is some times uneasy, sometimes playful, yet always integral to the demoeratie process.