No Way to Treat a First Lady, Christopher Buckley
No Way to Treat a First Lady, Christopher Buckley
List: $14.95 | Sale: $10.47
Club: $7.47

No Way to Treat a First Lady

Author: Christopher Buckley

Narrator: Tim Matheson

Abridged: 6 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/08/2002


Synopsis

Christopher Buckley, the bestselling author of the comic classics The White House Mess and Thank You for Smoking, returns to the funniest place in America: Washington, D.C.

Elizabeth Tyler MacMann, the First Lady of the United States, has been charged with killing her philandering husband, the President of the United States. In the midst of a bedroom spat, she allegedly hurled a historic Paul Revere spittoon at him, with tragic results. The attorney general has no choice but to put the First Lady on trial for assassination.

The media has never warmed to Beth MacMann (her nickname in the tabloids is “Lady Bethmac”), and as America girds for a scandalous, sensational trial, Beth reaches out to the only defense attorney she trusts, Boyce “Shameless” Baylor, who charges $1,000 an hour and has represented a Who’s Who of scoundrels: murderous running backs, society wife-killers, Los Alamos spies, and national-security sellouts.

Why Boyce Baylor? Because Beth loved him once, when they were law students. Boyce wanted to marry her, but Beth chose the future President instead. Now, after all these years, Boyce has a second chance. To what lengths will a shameless lawyer go to win the Trial of the Millennium and regain the love of his life?

Buckley has been described by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as “one of the best and surest political humorists in America” and by Entertainment Weekly as “a superb writer of politically incorrect satire.” No Way to Treat a First Lady is flat-out hilarious. And furthermore, it’s a love story for our time.

About The Author

Christopher Buckley is the author of eight previous books, including Thank You For Smoking and Little Green Men. That would make this his, what, ninth? He is editor of Forbes FYI magazine and has contributed over 50 “Shouts and Murmurs” to The New Yorker. He is also credited with bringing about lasting peace in the Middle East and with alerting NASA to significant problems with its Space Shuttle Automatic Re-entry Guidance System (SSAEGS), thereby sparing several square blocks of Raleigh, North Carolina a very unpleasant surprise. He is a regular contributor to Martha Stewart’ s Inside Trading magazine and informally advises the government of Argentina on debt re-scheduling. He is the 2002 recipient of the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence, but has yet actually to receive it. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his saintly and long-suffering wife Lucy, two children and faithful Hound Jake.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Mal on April 06, 2017

Funny Ha-Ha, and Funny Strange Humor is a funny thing. Not long ago I introduced Christopher Buckley to an audience of about 100 people in Berkeley. (No, I didn’t go to Yale with him. This was solely on the strength of having given favorable reviews to several of his novels.) Buckley spoke off the cu......more

Goodreads review by Amos on October 15, 2008

Laugh out loud funny throughout. A great send-up of politics in the 90's, ala the Clinton sex scandals- with a little murder for spice. So glad I finally picked up one of his books.......more

Goodreads review by Angie on August 24, 2016

Entertaining and clever but also often off-color and in poor taste......more

Goodreads review by Brian on February 16, 2016

Having read most of Christopher Buckley's novels, I can attest to "No Way to Treat a First Lady" being one of his best. In one of his shorter novels Buckley ironically delivers some of the best characterization of his career and also avoids one of (what I consider to be) his most salient weaknesses,......more

Goodreads review by Mark on February 06, 2020

As the political atmosphere seems to get worse and worse by the day, it feels almost quaint to recall the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. Bill and Hillary! Bob Dole! W! Al Gore! Novelist Christopher Buckley does an excellent job conjuring up that era in his 2002 novel No Way to Treat a First Lady. In......more


Quotes

"Unspeakably and endlessly funny. Unless you're a former president…Wicked humorist Buckley shoots fish in a barrel and makes them dance."
-Kirkus (starred)

"The lurid sexual excesses of the late 90's provide plenty of comic fodder for Buckley's latest satire, which doubles as a legal thriller…The political humor is first-rate as usual, as Buckley has plenty of fun with the slimy, silly mess that is Beltway politics. This is one of his better efforts, which should keep Buckley on the "A' list of American satirists."
-Publishers Weekly (lead review)