FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Tammy Blake(212)572.2542

Tblake@randomhouse.com

EXPLOSIVE NEW BOOK FROM INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING

AUTHOR RONALD KESSLER TO EXPOSE THE SECRET LIVES OF OUR NATION’S LEADERS

THE FIRST FAMLY DETAIL to be published August 5, 2014, by Crown Forum

(New York, NY, May 21, 2014)—Since publication of his New York Times bestselling book In

the President’s Secret Service (Crown Forum, 2009), award-winning investigative reporter

Ronald Kessler has continued to penetrate the wall of secrecy that surrounds the U.S. Secret

Service, breaking the story that Secret Service agents who were to protect President Obama hired

prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia, in April 2012 and revealing that the Secret Service allowed a

third uninvited guest to crash a White House state dinner in January 2010.

Now, in his highly anticipated new book, THE FIRST FAMILY DETAIL: Secret Service

Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents, which Crown Forum will publish on August 5,

2014, Kessler presents far bigger and more consequential stories that will make headlines about

our nation’s leaders and the agency sworn to protect them. In this eye-opening and uncensored

book, Kessler widens his scope to include presidential candidates and former presidents after

they leave the White House. In particular, he focuses on first ladies and their children and their

relationships with the presidents. Based on exclusive, on-the-record interviews with former and

current Secret Service agents, THE FIRST FAMILY DETAIL will include revelations about

the first families and their feuds, foibles, idiosyncrasies, and character and explore the special

challenges agents assigned to their protective details face.

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Secret Service agents have a front-row seat to the presidents’, vice presidents’, and presidential

candidates’ private lives and those of their wives and children. From seeing reckless behavior

that threatens the country’s safety, to overhearing First Lady Michelle Obama’s admonitions to

the president, to watching their own agency take risks that could result in an assassination, Secret

Service agents know a hidden world that Ronald Kessler exposes in THE FIRST FAMILY

DETAIL.

“Presidents, vice presidents, and presidential candidates create an image of themselves that is

often the opposite of the truth,” Kessler says. “Secret Service agents see what goes on behind the

scenes and know the real story. Besides making for some explosive reading, those stories provide

clues to character that voters need to consider, as opposed to politicians’ acting ability on TV or

what they promise. In the end, character may be the deciding factor in the success or failure of a

presidency.”

Ronald Kessler is the New York Times bestselling author of The Secrets of the FBI, In the

President’s Secret Service, and The CIA at War. A former Wall Street Journal and Washington

Post investigative reporter, Kessler has won eighteen journalism awards, including two George

Polk awards: one for national reporting and one for community service. He was named a

Washingtonian of the Year by Washingtonian magazine. Kessler lives in Potomac, Maryland,

with his wife, Pamela Kessler.

Crown Forum is an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin

Random House Company.

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