Ten Minutes from Normal by Karen Hughes (2004)

“The rule of thumb in any White House is that nobody is indispensable except the president,” said The New York Times, “but Karen Hughes has come as close to that description as any recent presidential aide.” Karen Hughes has worked beside President George W. Bush since, as she says, “the motorcade was only one car and he was sometimes the one driving it.” As counselor to the president, she brought the working mom’s perspective to the White House, often asking of President Bush’s policies, “What does this mean for the average person?” Yet the move from Texas to Washington was hard on her family, and in a controversial, headline-making decision that reverberated across America, she chose to place family first and quit the nation’s capital to return to Austin. There, Hughes continues to advise the president, where the kitchen wall calendar marks the State of the Union message side by side with her son’s orthodontist appointments. In this disarmingly down-to-earth, warm, often funny, and f