Helen Thomas relates a story in her 1999 book “Front Row at the White House: My Life and Times” about buttonholing General Colin Powell at a party to ask about his appointment to be Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State. “Powell kind of sighed, looked at the person standing on the other side of him, and said, ‘Isn’t there a war somewhere we can send her to?’”

It’s possible — nay, probable — that every president since John F. Kennedy has had that thought more than once during an interrogation from this sharp and tireless veteran dean of the White House press corps. But in her most recent book, “Listen Up, Mr. President: Everything You Always Wanted Your President to Know and Do” (Scribner), she’s quit asking the questions and started dishing out some answers. A book tour brings her to the Michigan Theater next week.

Born and raised in Detroit, Thomas knew early on that she wanted to be a journalist. She went straight to Washington after getting a degree in English from Wayne State University (no full-time journalism program was offered). She’d naively failed to consider that it might be hard for a woman to get a job at a newspaper in the early 1940s, but it was — yet she did. She started at The Washington Daily News until a strike was called and she, raised in the union tradition, walked out with her colleagues… and, like them, was summarily fired. She landed on her feet at United Press, however, covering just about everything Washington D.C. had to offer as the company merged with the William Randolph Hearst corporation International News Service to become the United Press International we know today.

The strictly gender-segregated National Press Club, however, cramped her style a bit. The men’s club got access to bigger, more powerful and harder-hitting guests than the Women’s National Press Club, and as the latter’s president, she set about to agitate for some parity. It was Nikita Kruschev, of all people, who finally gained the women temporary admittance into the club by refusing to make a 1959 appearance unless women could participate in it, although afterward both the Cold War and the boys-only status quo continued on.

When the first 24 women were finally admitted into the National Press Club in 1971, she was the first female officer, and the first female president four years later. The oldest journalistic organization in the country, The Gridiron Club, later followed suit by admitting Thomas as its first woman member, and by 1993 it too had the name “Helen Thomas” next to the spot in its historical annals reserved for its first female president.

So maybe it’s no surprise that when she settled into a life’s work, it had something to do with the biggest leadership office this country has to offer, although she hints in “Front Row” that her decision to become a White House reporter in 1960 also had at least a little to do with the magnetic president-elect who was about to take up residence there. (Whom, by the way, Thomas had previously assessed as “dull” after he gave her a ride home from a party at the Pakistan embassy, much to her later disbelief.) And 46 years after the last time John F. Kennedy graced the halls of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., she still shows up regularly.

Her up-close-and-personal view of the intricacies of the intervening 10 presidencies have given her a perspective shared by pretty much no one else. And yet we all need it — we elect these guys! Whether our president enacts policies that substantially improve our lives, runs amok all over the globe or sinks practically unnoticed into history’s oblivion, he’s ours. We’d do well to choose as wisely as possible. So for those of us who lack Thomas’ nearly superhuman drive to spend decades arriving at the press secretary’s office before he does, she and fellow journalist Craig Crawford dug deep into the institutional memory of the presidency to tell stories of past foibles, heroics, quiet grace and a few grave, grave errors.

Now, lest you think a brief review of the American History class you already slept through once in tenth grade is about as much fun as watching paint dry, let me reassure you that there’s plenty of William Taft’s broken bathtub and Jimmy Carter’s rabbit-wrestling to go along with the finer points of the Iran-Contra affair and Grover Cleveland’s uncelebrated corruption-busting. And her deep passion for both her job and ours is infectious.

She’s seen just about everything — attempted and successful assassinations, impeachment and resignation, unrewarded courage and lauded failures — and one might think it would be almost inevitable to give in to some jaded cynicism. Nope. Thomas is still taking the Obama administration to task for overzealous planning of town hall meetings and, at 89, demonstrating a better understanding of the far-reaching effects of YouTube than senators half her age.

This makes our own lackluster voting rates and sometimes alarmingly uninformed citizenry slightly embarrassing, a point she doesn’t shy away from in the last chapter: “Listen Up, Voters: It’s Up To You.” Yes, she says, it’s your job to know what’s historically made a good, bad and great president. It’s your job to know something about the people on the ballot. It’s even your job to know how your specific polling place works so you can be sure your vote is tallied as you intend it. The worst of presidents just gets to retire in eight years or less, but we’ve got to live with his mistakes.

Helen Thomas will be at the Michigan Theater at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 24 to discuss “Listen Up, Mr. President: Everything You Wanted Your President to Know and Do.” The event is cosponsored by Michigan Radio and the Ann Arbor District Library, and books will be available for purchase courtesy of Nicola's Books.

Leah DuMouchel is a free-lance writer who covers books for AnnArbor.com