Robert Klara

Journalist • Historian • Author

: Explaining the White House’s structural woes on WABC’s “The John Batchelor Show,” January 9, 2014. [Photo by Alfred Miller]

: Spotted on the American History shelf at Barnes & Noble Union Square, NYC

: Earvin L. Ruddick, 92, who worked on the White House renovation in 1951—and reached out after receiving “The Hidden White House” for Christmas.

: April 21, 2013: deadline for the White House manuscript, all 562 pages of it. An editor awaits somewhere in the Flatiron Building, background.

: The first of many acquisitions for the White House research: A piece of the mansion’s 1817 roof truss.

: The W.T. Stead memorial in Central Park. White House architect Lorenzo Winslow came here for a seance in 1949.

: A regrettable souvenir sold as part of the Truman renovation: Bookends made from the mansion’s original gray-white Aquia Creek sandstone.

: Another acquisition: A lucite paperweight holding fragments of the demolished mansion.

: Truman used to give out mechanical pencils like this to keep visitors from stealing souvenirs from the White House. It didn’t work.

: June 2011, “FDR’s Funeral Train” appears (here, on the center table of Barnes & Noble at East 86th Street in Manhattan.)

: A random book spotting in Baltimore—the one time Robert Klara stood next to Karl Rove.

: Presenting a copy of the book to the New York Public Library’s Frederick Lewis Allen Room, where much of the book was written.

: Signing books at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, April 15, 2010.

: Attendees at the FDR Library lecture and signing

: Winston Churchill wore his monogrammed opera slippers when visiting FDR. A certain writer figured he’d do the same.

: The paperback edition of “FDR’s Funeral Train” appears in November of 2011. (Shown here at Barnes & Noble on East 86th Street in Manhattan.)

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