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Gerald R. Ford: A Selected Bibliography

The list below describes a selection of published biographies and memoirs concerning President Ford's career, especially his presidency. For more information about published sources concerning President Ford, his administration, or issues and events of his presidency, contact the Ford Library.
  • American Energy Policy in the 1970s. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014. Edited by Robert Lifset.
  • Bauer, Stephen M. At Ease in the White House: The Uninhibited Memoirs of a Presidential Social Aide. Birch Lane Press, 1991 [Four chapters cover the Ford administration]
  • Booraem, Hendrik. The Education of Gerald Ford: Gerald Ford's Early Years. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016.
  • Booraem, Hendrik. Young Jerry Ford: Athlete and Citizen. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016.
  • Brinkley, Douglas. Gerald R. Ford. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2007.
  • Campaign for President: The Managers Look at '76., edited by Jonathan Fraser and Janet Moore, Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1977.

  • A Companion to Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell Publishing, 2015.

  • Cannon, James M. Gerald R. Ford: An Honorable Life. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013.
  • Cannon, James. Time and Chance: Gerald Ford's Appointment with History. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. [Chapters 1-3 concern Ford's early life and election to Congress; chapters 4-7 his congressional career; chapters 8-11 Watergate; chapters 12-19 concern Ford's appointment as Vice President, his vice presidency, the move to impeach Richard Nixon, and the transition to the presidency; chapter 20 concerns the Nixon pardon; and chapter 21 is a summary of the Ford presidency.]
  • Casserly, John J. The Ford White House: Diary of a Speechwriter. Boulder, CO: Colorado Associated University Press, 1977. [Memoir by a speechwriter for President Ford. It covers the period from November 1974 to January 1976.]
  • Cheney, Dick with Liz Cheney. In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. [Memoir by President Ford's Assistant to the President for White House Operations.]
  • Coleman, William T. Counsel for the Situation: Shaping the Law to Realize America's Promise. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2010 [Memoir by Secretary of Transportation - see part V "Serving in the Ford Cabinet" - pages 213-277]
  • Congressional Quarterly, Inc. President Ford: The Man and His Record. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1974. [Background on Ford's political career and legislative record prior to becoming President, including his statements on major issues.]
  • Congressional Quarterly, Inc. Presidency. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1974-1976. [Annual volumes reviewing activities or issues.]
  • Coyne, John R. Fall in and Cheer. New York: Doubleday, 1979. [Memoir. Chapter 7 concerns his service as a Ford speechwriter, August 1974-February 1975.]
  • DeFrank, Thomas M. Write It When I'm Gone: Remarkable Off-the Record Conversations with Gerald R. Ford. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2007. [The author is a journalist who covered Gerald Ford through the Vice Presidential and White House years and then conducted extensive off-the-record interviews with the President during the post-presidential years]
  • Ford, Betty. The Times of My Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. [Mrs. Ford's memoir - chapters 22- 37 concern her husband's presidency. The book emphasizes personal and family experiences rather than political events.]
  • Ford, Betty. A Glad Awakening . Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987.
  • Ford, Gerald R. Selected Speeches. Arlington, VA: R.W. Beatty, 1973. [A collection of speeches Ford delivered between 1965 and 1972 concerning politics and domestic and foreign affairs.]
  • Ford, Gerald R. A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. [Memoir mainly concerning his presidency.]
  • The Ford Presidency: Twenty-Two Intimate Perspectives of Gerald Ford, Edited by Kenneth W. Thompson. Portraits of American Presidents, VII. Lanham, MA: University Press of America, 1988. [Oral Histories with Ford administration officials.]
  • The Ford White House: A Miller Center Conference Chaired by Herbert J. Storing. edited by Miller Center of Public Affairs Staff at the University of Virginia. Lanham, MA: University Press of America, 1986.
  • Gerald R. Ford: Presidential Perspectives from the National Archives. Washington, DC: National Archives Trust Fund Board, 1994. [Sections written by Frank H. Mackaman, Leesa Tobin, and David Horrocks of the Ford Library. Photographs selected by Audiovisual Archivist Ken Hafeli.]
  • Gerald R. Ford and the Politics of Post-Watergate America, edited by Bernard J. Firestone and Alexej Ugrinsky. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993. [Proceedings of a conference on the presidency of Gerald R. Ford that took place at Hofstra University in April 1989.]

  • Graham, Otis L. Presidents and the American Environment. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015.

  • Greene, John Robert. Betty Ford: Candor and Courage in the White House. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004.
  • Greene, John Robert. The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995.
  • Hartmann, Robert T. Palace Politics: An Insider's Account of the Ford Years. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980. [Memoir. Several chapters concern his work as an assistant to Congressman and Vice President Ford. Chapters 7-16 concern his work as a White House Counsellor and supervisor of the speechwriting unit.]
  • Hersey, John. The President: A Minute-by-Minute Account of a Week in the Life of Gerald Ford. New York: Knopf, 1975. [A writer examines President Ford's activities during one week in March 1975. Originally appeared in the "New York Times Magazine," April 20, 1975. Reprinted in Hersey's book "Aspects of the Presidency: Truman and Ford in Office," New Haven, Ticknor and Fields, 1980.]
  • Hinton, Elizabeth. From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016.
  • Horrocks, David A. "Gerald Ford: All-American Counsel," in America's Lawyer-Presidents. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2004 [Concerns Ford's education and career as a lawyer].
  • Hyland, William. Mortal Rivals: Superpower Relations From Nixon to Reagan. New York: Random House, 1987. [Memoir - Information on his Ford administration work in the State Department and on the National Security Council staff appears on pp. 76-201. The focus is on Soviet-American relations, including the Vladivostok summit, Helsinki Conference, Angola, detente, and the role of Henry Kissinger.]

  • Johns, Andrew L. Vietnam's Second Front:  Domestic Politics, the Republican Party, and the War. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010. 

  • Jones, Sidney L. Greenspan Counsel. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2008. [Detailed look at Alan Greenspan as head of Ford's Council of Economic Advisers. The author was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy in the Ford administration]
  • Kalman. Laura. Right Star Rising: A New Politics, 1974-1980. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010.
  • Keininger, Stephan. Dynamic Détente: the United States and Europe, 1964 – 1975. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018.
  • Kennerly, David Hume. Shooter. New York: Newsweek Books, 1979. [Memoir by the chief White House photographer during the Ford administration]
  • Kissinger, Henry A. Years of Renewal. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999. [Memoir by the former Secretary of State and National Security Adviser]

  • Kruse, Kevin Michael. Fault Lines: a history of the United States since 1974. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2019.

  • Lankevich, George. Gerald R. Ford-Chronology-Documents- Bibliographical Aids. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana Publications, 1977.
  • Lechner, Zachary J. The South of the mind: American Imaginings of White Southernness, 1960 - 1980. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2018.
  • LeRoy, David. Gerald Ford -- Untold Story. Arlington, VA: R.W. Beatty, 1974. [Biography written by the publications director of the House Republican Campaign Committee.]
  • MacDougall, Malcolm D. We Almost Made It. New York: Crown Publishers, 1977 [Memoir by a member of Gerald Ford's campaign advertising staff for the 1976 election]
  • Mieczkowski, Yanek. Gerald Ford and the Challenges of the 1970s. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2005.
  • Michel, Eddie. Racial Justice and the Cold War: Gerald R. Ford, Rhodesia and the Geneva Conference of 1976. The Journal of South African and American Studies, Volume 20, 2019 - Issue 4.
  • Mollenhoff, Clark R. The Man Who Pardoned Nixon. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1976. [The Washington bureau chief and investigative reporter for the "Des Moines Register and Tribune" examines Ford's first 19 months in office.]
  • Morgan, Michael Cotey. The Final Act: The Helsinki Accords and the Transformation of the Cold War. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018.
  • Nessen, Ron. It Sure Looks Different from the Inside. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978. [Memoir by President Ford's Press Secretary.]
  • Nessen, Ron. Making the News, Taking the News: From NBC to the Ford White House. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2011.Osborne, John. White House Watch: The Ford
  • Years. Washington, DC: New Republic Books, 1977. [A collection of Osborne's columns published in the New Republic magazine, 1974-1977. Many relate to the campaign.]
  • Peabody, Robert L. Leadership in Congress: Stability, Succession, and Change. Boston: Little, Brown, 1976. [Chapter 4 concerns the House of Representatives minority leadership contest between Ford and Charles Halleck in 1965.]
  • Phillips–Fein, Kim. Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2017.
  • Porter, Roger B. Presidential Decision-Making: The Economic Policy Board. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980. [Memoir - the Board's former executive secretary examines its operation during the Ford administration.]
  • Reeves, Richard. A Ford, Not A Lincoln. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975. [A journalist describes Ford's first 100 days as President.]
  • Reichley, A. James. Conservatives in an Age of Change: The Nixon and Ford Administrations. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1981.
  • Rigueur, Leah Wright. The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.
  • Rozell, Mark J. The Press and the Ford Presidency. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1992.
  • Rumsfeld, Donald. Known and Unknown: A Memoir. Sentinel HC, 2011.

  • Rumsfeld, Donald. When the Center Held: Gerald Ford and the Rescue of the American presidency. New York: Free Press, 2018.

  • Sargent, Daniel J. A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
  • Schwartz, Thomas A. Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography. New York: Hill and Wang, 2020.
  • Sidey, Hugh. Portrait of a President. New York: Harper & Row, 1975. [Textual and photographic portrait of the first months of the Ford presidency.]
  • Simon, William E. A Time for Truth. New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1978. [Memoir in part - A statement of his personal philosophy and examination of his work as Secretary of the Treasury.]

  • Spruill, Marjorie J. Divided We Stand: The Battle over Women’s Rights and Family Values that Polarized American Politics. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2017.

  • Stocker, James R. Spheres of Intervention: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Collapse of Lebanon, 1967 – 1976. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016.
  • terHorst, Jerald F. Gerald Ford and the Future of the Presidency. New York: Third Press, 1974. [Biography covering Ford's early life through the first month of his presidency.]
  • Turner, Michael. The Vice President as Policy Maker: Rockefeller in the Ford White House. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982.
  • U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Rules and Administration. Nomination of Gerald R. Ford of Michigan to be Vice President of the United States: Hearings. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1973. [Much relates to Ford's congressional career and personal finances.]
  • U.S. Congress. House. Committee on the Judiciary. Nomination of Gerald R. Ford to be Vice President of the United States: Hearings. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1973. [Much relates to Ford's congressional career and personal finances.]
  • Van Atta, Dale. With Honor: Melvin Laird in War, Peace, and Politics. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008. [Much pertains to his role as a colleague, friend, and associate of President Ford.]
  • Vestal, Bud. Jerry Ford, Up Close: An Investigative Biography. New York: Coward, McCann & Geohegan, 1974: [A biography by a Michigan journalist.]
  • Weidenfeld, Sheila Rabb. First Lady's Lady: With the Fords at the White House. New York: Putnam, 1979. [Memoir in the form of a journal kept by Mrs. Ford's Press Secretary.]
  • Werth, Barry. 31 Days: The Crisis that Gave Us the Government We Have Today. New York: Doubleday, 2006 [An examination of President Ford's first month in office.]
  • Whitcover, Jules. Marathon: The Pursuit of the Presidency, 1972-76. New York: Viking Press, 1977. [Detailed account of nomination and general election campaigns]
  • Woodward, Bob. "Gerald R. Ford," in Caroline Kennedy, Profiles in Courage for Our Time. New York: Hyperion Press, 2002. [Regarding the legacy of the Nixon pardon.]
  • Zarnow, Leandra Ruth. Battling Bella: the Protests Politics of Bell Abzug. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2019.