By most accounts, I have had a very successful career. I have been blessed with the opportunity to not only serve as a police officer, but also to lead our country’s largest police department. Beyond that, I remain the only law enforcement person to have ever served in the cabinet of the president. In addition, I have had a very rewarding career in academia as a professor, lecturer and department head. All of my accomplishments were surpassed when I was given the opportunity to serve as mayor of Houston, the fourth largest city in the United States.

With over five decades of service to his country, Hal is certainly not a man to be easily detoured or dissuaded from his mission. This book is a real testament of how long-suffering, perseverance, loyalty, integrity, and patriotism. Hal's wit and humor which he never outgrew even until today, allowed him to associate with highly recognized and well-established people. His life really began after he was kicked out by his father. He had a bitter childhood that continued well into his teens, but everything changed after he became a member of the United States Marine Corps. His success was not given to him on a silver platter, it was definitely a roller-coaster adventure. He lived, he laughed, he cried, he loved, he fell, and he rose yet again. From an Outhouse to the White House, and Then Some, will show you just how he did it. Hal Davis is a distinguished US Marine (Ret.) with a career that spanned twenty-two years. In his heart, service is for a lifetime. He grew up in Morehead, Kentucky, and life back then was never easy. Deprived of all the good things that a childhood normally brings, he remained steadfast in reaching his goals. He became a Tennessee State Trooper, FBI Special Investigator, United States Secret Service Agent to two US presidents, and a Marine and Naval Criminal Investigator. He had a fulfilling forty-two-year career, but more than that, Hal is a loving husband to Susan and a father-hero figure to Allison, who's now their guardian angel in heaven.

A naive girl from the backwoods of Tennessee, finds her way to the big city of Las Vegas surrounded by corrupt politicians, celebrities & mobsters, with just her strength of character to guide her through historical moments in American Pop Culture. From the Outhouse to the White House is the hilarious, jaw dropping, and occasionally moving memoir of Franny "Black Cat" Marcum, the unworldly daughter of a Tennessee moonshiner who landed in Las Vegas during the 1970's boom period. Franny's gritty charisma and striking good looks, combined with her uncanny knack for keeping her mouth shut, quickly made her an invaluable resource in the crazy world of Sin City. This spitfire's take-no-prisoners attitude landed her in unfathomable situations as she made discreet PR arrangements for gangsters, celebrities and politicians alike. Notables such as John Gotti, Willie Nelson, Muhammad Ali, Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy, and many more all contribute to the hard-to-believe, page-turning adventures.

Contains the history of and musings about that most fundamental of structures.

Perhaps not southerners in the usual sense, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and Lyndon B. Johnson each demonstrated a political style and philosophy that helped them influence the South and unite the country in ways that few other presidents have. Combining vivid biography and political insight, William E. Leuchtenburg offers an engaging account of relations between these three presidents and the South while also tracing how the region came to embrace a national perspective without losing its distinctive sense of place. According to Leuchtenburg, each man "had one foot below the Mason-Dixon Line, one foot above." Roosevelt, a New Yorker, spent much of the last twenty-five years of his life in Warm Springs, Georgia, where he built a "Little White House." Truman, a Missourian, grew up in a pro-Confederate town but one that also looked West because of its history as the entrepôt for the Oregon Trail. Johnson, who hailed from the former Confederate state of Texas, was a westerner as much as a southerner. Their intimate associations with the South gave these three presidents an empathy toward and acceptance in the region. In urging southerners to jettison outworn folkways, Roosevelt could speak as a neighbor and adopted son, Truman as a borderstater who had been taught to revere the Lost Cause, and Johnson as a native who had been scorned by Yankees. Leuchtenburg explores in fascinating detail how their unique attachment to "place" helped them to adopt shifting identities, which proved useful in healing rifts between North and South, in altering behavior in regard to race, and in fostering southern economic growth. The White House Looks South is the monumental work of a master historian. At a time when race, class, and gender dominate historical writing, Leuchtenburg argues that place is no less significant. In a period when America is said to be homogenized, he shows that sectional distinctions persist. And in an era when political history is devalued, he demonstrates that government can profoundly affect people's lives and that presidents can be change-makers.