A Lifetime of Highlights

In 532 chatty pages, former First Lady Barbara Bush recalls a life where public involvement has been firmly balanced by a close and caring family. Here are some highlights:

* Given the choice between people and dogs, Barbara Bush would take . . . well, maybe the choice would not be so simple. “I value all people more than dogs,” she writes. “I may sometimes like the dog better, but people are and should be more important.”

* Bush spares no snipes for members of the press. Yet it turns out that as a congressional wife, she wrote a column, “Washington Scene,” for the papers back home in Houston. And such revelations! On a visit to the White House, she disclosed: “We did NOT try out the Lincoln bed.”

* At a 1970 dinner for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the future President offered a preview of coming abdominal attractions. “George fell ill and got sick all over his rented cutaway,” she remembers. “What a day it had been.”

* He was not the only member of the family with tummy troubles. At President and Mrs. Bush’s first formal White House dinner, a white-tie reception for diplomats, Millie, the best-selling dog, threw up. “Must be evening sickness,” quipped President Bush.

* Once, during the cook’s vacation, Barbara Bush spent hours personally preparing an elaborate dinner for her husband. George Bush, then director of the CIA, took one look at the baked stuffed redfish and declared, “You don’t think I’m going to eat this (expletive), do you?” She burst into tears, but the expression became a family joke.

* Forget what you have read up till now about Imelda Marcos. Mrs. Bush pronounces her “a charmer in her own right.”

* Bush’s longtime family nickname, “Bar,” is not a diminutive of Barbara. It’s an appropriation of an honorific bestowed upon Barsil, a horse George Bush grew up with.