OREOS AND DUBONNET, REMEMBERING GOVERNOR NELSON A ROCKEFELLER --- signed --

A behind-the-scenes look at one of New York's most colorful and influential governors.

A unique figure and an outsized personality, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was a man whose character, personal style, and (of course) wealth shaped both his goals and how he pursued them. Although many stories about Rockefeller have been published over the years, many more remain to be told, and in Oreos and Dubonnet, Rockefeller's former advance man and personal assistant Joseph H. Boyd Jr. and former political reporter Charles R. Holcomb bring together scores of behind-the-scenes anecdotes, accounts, and observations from a wide variety of people who worked with and for Rockefeller in various circumstances. Some of them (and even the title itself, which refers to the two things that Rockefeller asked to have in his hotel room at every campaign stop) add amusing or telling detail to the mosaic of this complex and creative man. Others illustrate the personal approaches or techniques he relied on to persuade, cajole, or otherwise get his way in the rough-and-tumble world of gubernatorial and presidential politics. And all of them add to our understanding of one of New York's most lively and influential governors.

Joseph H. Boyd Jr. (1938-2013) joined Nelson Rockefeller's first campaign for governor of New York in 1958 while still a student at Colgate University. After graduation, he served the governor during all four terms in office--as personal aide, campaign staffer, assistant to the governor, advance man, chief of advance, appointments officer, and legislative liaison. In 1972, he ran unsuccessfully for Congress from the east end of Long Island, subsequently returning to the Rockefeller administration. Later Boyd was a lobbyist for the northeastern region for Pfizer Corp. Charles R. Holcomb covered the Rockefeller administration for a decade as a legislative correspondent and political reporter in Albany, New York for the Gannett Newspapers. He began his newspaper career as a reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun before moving to Gannett's Rochester Times Union. Later he served as publisher of the Ithaca Journal and then as Director of Communications to Governor Hugh L. Carey during his second term in office. He subsequently worked at a New York financial public relations firm, Adams & Rinehart, before establishing his own firm, Holcomb Associates. He and his wife, Joan, live in Huntington, New York.