She Remembers Father

On a painful note, Koch looks at how her parents coped with the death of their firstborn daughter, Robin, who died before Koch was born. The Bushes have never liked to talk about Robin's death from leukemia, but Koch captures the devastation through others who witnessed it. One friend from Midland, Tex., recalled to Koch how Bush continued to teach Sunday school as his daughter was failing and how often "he arrived disheveled and unshaven, to teach his class."

"Having no time to prepare the lesson, he would share with these young people his feelings on life, death, war, faith, hope, and despair."

Koch tries to explain her family's distrust of the media, and how, despite a lifetime in the public eye, they often felt under siege.

She examines a damaging story from 1992 -- "the worst political year" of Bush's life -- when the New York Times reported that the president didn't understand how a basic grocery store scanner worked, which Bush has long refuted. "The trouble is, it gets stuck in the computer, and it's still there today," he tells Koch. "It's just manufactured news -- fake history -- but there's no question that it hurt me a lot."

She describes a scene of hurt and turmoil in the family when Newsweek published its infamous cover in 1987 referring to Bush as a "wimp." She says they all felt stunningly betrayed because they had cooperated with the magazine and the reporter.

While Bush's live shouting match with Dan Rather on the "CBS Evening News" has not gone underreported, Koch offers a new, colorful version of the story as told by Roger Ailes, then Bush's media adviser, who was in the room for the interview. At one point, Ailes relates that he could see the vice president was reluctant to hit back at Rather as the anchor shouted at him over the Iran-Contra scandal. Ailes frantically held up a sign urging Bush to bring up one of Rather's more embarrassing career moments -- when he had walked off the broadcast leaving dead airtime. Bush went for the jugular, which made for one of the best moments in TV news.

Koch brings up the rumor that Bush had an affair with a longtime aide -- which he always denied. She interviewed Bush's 1988 Democratic opponent, Michael S. Dukakis, on why he fired then-aide Donna Brazille after she talked about the rumor publicly. "To hell with all that. I just said 'Look, we're not going to have any part of that,' " the former Massachusetts governor told Koch. "When you decide you're going into this business, you've got to decide who you are. . . . If folks get out of line, you can't accept that."

Koch doesn't offer any new insights into the 2000 electoral drama between her brother, George W. Bush, and Al Gore. But she reveals one hilarious story about joining protesters in front of the vice president's mansion, disguising herself in dark glasses and scarf. She said her ex-husband met her at the site where she was "standing in the freezing cold, yelling very creative and very adult chants such as 'Get Out of Cheney's House!' and 'Sore Loserman!' "

In the end, Koch cannot help but give us an extra line of sight on history because she lived it. She offers up the book her father will probably never write. But now at least, we know what he might have said.

Romano is a Washington Post national staff reporter.