Cooper's dad writes a memoir

Between the CreeksRoy Cooper's father has written a memoir.

Roy Cooper Jr. (the attorney general is the III) wrote a book called "Between the Creeks: My Sapony Adventures," a collection of stories about his childhood in Nash County in the 1920s and '30s.

Republicans hoping for a tell-all about the possible Senate candidate are out of luck. Most take place decades before he was born.

The 24 stories in the book include Cooper's adventures with a "fish whisperer," riding to school on the back of a mule and planting a peach orchard by himself.

A recent review in "Our State" magazine said the book "draws from the days when familes gathered to tell and retell generations worth of stories." Former Gov. Jim Hunt has also praised the book.

The attorney general and his brother Pell will speak at an event promoting the book at the Matthews House in Cary on April 5 from 3 to 5 p.m.

The 200-page hardcover is available on Amazon for $19.95.

Naked came the governor

"The Governor's Choice" is too dull a title for this book.

Perhaps "Beyond the Valley of the Governor's Doll"? "Naked Came the Governor"?

After all, it only takes about three pages before the heroine, Anna Widener, thinks something so blushworthy that we at Dome can't even approximate it without going too far.

(Regular readers can e-mail me and I'll tell you what it is.)

She's also given a pretty lengthy physical description, and most of the first chapter centers on her sipping sauvignon blanc at a cabin in the Blue Ridge mountains, waiting for the gov to call.

Anyone hoping for a roman a clef will be disappointed, though. The governor is described as an attorney with undergraduate and graduate degrees from UNC-Chapel Hill (where he was a golf champ), 5-foot-10 with a slight gut and thick, straight, black hair.

He's also from Eastern North Carolina, where he's married to "one of the city's richest women" and has three kids.

The Governor's Choice

Many months ago, we at Dome received an interesting book.

At the time, the blog was just getting set up, so we set it aside for a rainy day, figuring we'd write about it one of these days.

Well, it's raining.

The book is called "The Governor's Choice," and it's right up Dome's alley. The novel, by Winston-Salem attorney Weston P. Hatfield, centers on 34-year-old attorney Anna Widener, a "brilliant and beautiful North Carolina lawyer" who decides to become chief justice of the state Supreme Court.

In case that sounds like a snoozer, her methodology is a bit more interesting than the typical nonpartisan campaign.

As the book jacket describes it, "she heads straight for Governor Jeffrey Lofton." We'll leave that to your imagination. 

An Enormous Crime: Reagan's meeting

A former North Carolina Congressman claims that President Reagan ignored evidence that Vietnam still held MIAs in the mid 1980s.

According to the recently published "An Enormous Crime," then U.S. Rep. Bill Hendon writes that he told Reagan during a Jan. 9, 1986, meeting that he had heard a report that the Southeast Asian country had asked for $4 billion for the return of captured prisoners.

His source for the information was an unnamed Secret Service agent who said he overheard a discussion while stationed outside the Oval Office in 1981.

"Hendon asked Reagan, 'Respectfully, Mr. President, is it true? Did the Vietnamese offer to trade the prisoners back for $4 billion?"

Reagan said he didn't remember, according to Hendon's book. (In his diary, however, he wrote that Hendon was "off his rocker.")

More after the jump.

No Excuses: Edwards on gay rights

John Edwards had a visceral reaction when first asked about gay rights by a campaign consultant, according to a new book.

"No Excuses" is the biography of Robert Shrum, a one-time Edwards adviser who has been a consultant on more than 30 Senate races and several recent presidential campaigns.

In the book, Shrum recalls sitting in a conference room in Edwards' law firm while prepping for his 1998 Senate race with "the usual box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts."

He asked Edwards what his position was on gay rights.

"I'm not comfortable around those people," was how he began his answer.

The full story after the jump.

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