Three dollars, and worth every penny . . .

I am reading Bob Greene's book, Fraternity: A Journey in Search of Five Presidents. I came across it in Big Lots the other day while Mrs. Frankly was shopping for . . . whatever it was she was shopping for. I loved Greene's Once Upon a Town, so I picked it up. By the time Tracy found me reading in some recliner destined to become a Christmas gift for someone's lucky husband, I had already chewed through the first chapter.

Greene interviewed five former Presidents for the book: Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush. It is the best $3 read I've ever bought. Here is a snippet from the book in which Greene considers the toughness of veteran combat pilots George H. W. Bush (41) and Geroge McGovern, who unsuccessfully ran for the office that Bush eventually attained:

I've always thought that there should be an unwritten rule for those of us who were born after World War II: Whenever you meet an old combat pilot from the war, you are automatically disqualified from thinking that your life could possibly measure up to his. He beat you before you blinked in the light. Yet somehow Bush - and McGovern - had been judged by millions of their countrymen, and by commentators who had never heard a shot fired in anger, as if they were lifelong croquet players, badminton aficianados, instead of men who, when it counted, piloted bombers against the enemy during the greatest war in the history of human conflict.

Both Georges, and millions of other men and women just like them, deserve our thanks. And, in a smaller - but no less sincere way - Bob Greene has earned mine.