Write It When I'm Gone is pleasant, if a little scattered. In 1974, a then Vice President Ford was finishing up an interview with 28 year old Tom DeFrank, a reporter with Newsweek, when Ford said "When I'm President...", and then swore DeFrank to silence. With the Watergate Investigations ongoing, and Nixon wounded by not defeated, his Vice President had to be a company man, 110%. The gaffe lead to an enduring friendship and a series of candid interviews, to be published after Ford's death in 2006.

The book is best when it talks about Ford the person. He seems to have been one of the better people to inhabit the Oval Office, an unprepossing midwesterner who genuinely cared about the people around him, who didn't let the position go to his head, and had good relationships with the press and other politicians. Ford's long and happy post-Presidency retirement, golf, swimming, corporate boards, family, charity, was a well deserved second act.

There also a lot of gossip. Ford, the consummate party man, never cared much for Ronald Reagan, who he saw as intellectually incurious, and who he resented for challenging him in the 1976 primary and not doing enough in the campaign against Carter. Ford also personally liked Bill Clinton, but thought the Lewinsky scandal was a blot on the Presidency. Cheney and Rumsfeld had their first taste of Presidential authority under Ford, and he supported both of his former staffers, but was skeptical of how they had handled the War in Iraq. Of course, by then he was approaching the end of his life.

Beyond the platitudes and light gossip, there's not much there about the Presidency, or Ford's role in history, particularly pardoning Nixon. Pleasant, and helped me some at a hard point in my life, but not a must-read.