In THE FAMILY , biographer Kitty Kelley once again practices her own brand of page-turner journalism that helped make best sellers of her bios of Frank Sinatra, Nancy Reagan, Jackie Onassis, and the Windsors--all of which made news because of their sometimes stunning and embarrassing revelations. Kelley is often damned both for her tabloid style and for a lack of identified sources. Yet her readers find her narrative skills and prodigious research clearly evident. For them, she simply has a gift for digging out the dirt, and the courage to tell it. And like a fat lady at a salad bar, she piles it on! In this 600-page investigative report, Kelley treats the entire Bush clan in a group portrait that examines nearly a full century in the lives of the Bush-Walker-Pierce family tree: the accumulation of wealth and status, the political aspirations, and the petty behavior and little scandals (and coverups). What ties everything together seems to be the Yale connection, through which three generations have leveraged access to high office. Kelleys portrait of Barbara Bush is not flattering; she seems to take delight in the revelations about a reported mistress of George Herbert Walker Bush. She also discloses supposedly new facts about George W., including his adolescent hijinks, his National Guard experience, and his reported alcohol and drug abuse. (Even Laura is accused of being a drug-dealer at her college.) Either a celebrity tell-all with aspirations to being a serious study of power, or a lengthy account of a tawdry family of privilege, Kitty Kelleys THE FAMILY...piles it on!