The President's Gardens The President's Gardens The President’s Gardens: is a novel written by the Iraqi author Muhsin al-Ramli. Set during the last fifty years of Iraqi history, this novel tells the story of three friends, exploring how ordinary people have been affected by historic events such as wars, the blockade of Iraq and the invasion of Kuwait. It examines the gap between the lifestyle of those in power and ordinary citizens. During the chaos of occupation, one of them loses his life, like so many caught between loyalists of the old and new regimes. "The President's Gardens" helps the reader understand the
Madison Square and Madison Square Park relentlessly moving uptown, had reached the Madison Square area. Initially, the houses around the park were narrow, crowded and dark brownstone rowhouses with small rooms easily subject to becoming cluttered. Today, the only remnant of these brownstones is a single building at 14 East 23rd Street. Despite this beginning, through the 1870s, the neighborhood became an aristocratic one of brownstone row houses and mansions where the elite of the city lived; Theodore Roosevelt, Edith Wharton and Winston Churchill's mother, Jennie Jerome, were all born here. Madison Cottage was torn down in 1852 to make way for Franconi's Hippodrome, which lasted