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Résumé
Résumé
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States, has authored a personal biography of his father, George H. W. Bush, the 41st President.
Forty-three men have served as President of the United States. Countless books have been written about them. But never before has a President told the story of his father, another President, through his own eyes and in his own words. A unique and intimate biography, the book covers the entire scope of the elder President Bush's life and career, including his service in the Pacific during World War II, his pioneering work in the Texas oil business, and his political rise as a Congressman, U.S. Representative to China and the United Nations, CIA Director, Vice President, and President. The book shines new light on both the accomplished statesman and the warm, decent man known best by his family. In addition, George W. Bush discusses his father's influence on him throughout his own life, from his childhood in West Texas to his early campaign trips with his father, and from his decision to go into politics to his own two-term Presidency.
Critiques (2)
Critique du Publishers Weekly
Former president Bush brings an unassuming and straightforward delivery to the audio edition of his new biography of his father. The title provides a unique vantage point of public life and the presidency, as a son draws on his own later experiences in providing context for a dad's journey. Bush has never been known for polished oratory or diction, and his delivery of certain phrases may not always flow together seamlessly. Yet his easy personal manner consistently projects warmth and approachability. The stirring presentation of the father-son bond during the joy of electoral victories and the pain of defeats is especially memorable. Listeners discouraged by the current climate of partisan polarization in Washington will appreciate the conciliatory tones toward the family's political rivals, including a touching correspondence between the elder Bush and Geraldine Ferraro, the late congresswoman and 1984 vice-presidential nominee. These types of exchanges-while not denying the spirited and competitive nature of modern American politics as practiced by the Bush family-offer a measure of grace and civility that will appeal to a wide spectrum of history buffs and political junkies. A Crown hardcover. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Critique du New York Review of Books
AS THE WINTER of 2012 approached, nearly 20 years after he had left the White House, former President George H.W. Bush checked into a Houston hospital with a bad cough that worsened by the day. Despite increasing pain, he retained his fuddy-duddy sense of humor. "It's not the cough that carries you off," he joked one day to his visiting son and daughter-in-law. "It's the coffin you go off in." But as November turned to December and the cough turned to pneumonia, it sounded less like a joke. His oldest son, former President George W. Bush, began reviewing state funeral plans and thinking about a eulogy. The family gathered in the hospital expecting the end. The ailing president reached out to touch the swollen belly of his pregnant granddaughter, Jenna Bush Hager. "There's death," he said, "and there's new life." As it happened, the old life was not yet done. Bush rallied and eventually left the hospital. It was not his time. But two years later, his son has now essentially delivered the eulogy anyway in the form of a biography of the 41st president, one that extols the successes and treads lightly over the shortcomings of the aging patriarch of one of America's most prominent political dynasties. Indeed, the younger Bush rushed to finish "41: A Portrait of My Father" to ensure it came out while his dad, now 90 and suffering from a condition similar to Parkinson's disease, was still alive. The author makes no pretensions to objectivity and, in truth, this is more Hallmark card than biography. Bush's conversational storytelling makes for engaging reading, even if the stories have been told before in interviews, profiles and books like "George Bush: The Life of a Lone Star Yankee," by Herbert S. Parmet, and "The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty," by Peter Schweizer and Rochelle Schweizer. That gives "41" the feel of a greatest-hits collection from family reunions at the famous oceanside compound in Kennebunkport, Me. The book takes readers through the familiar touchstones of an extraordinary life - the youngest Navy pilot for a time in World War II, shot down over the Pacific; the transplanted Texas-by-way-of-Connecticut oilman turned congressman and failed Senate candidate; the presidential courtier who served in quick succession as ambassador to the United Nations, Republican National Committee chairman, envoy to China and director of central intelligence; and finally, the loyal vice president to Ronald Reagan, patiently waiting his turn. Beyond his father's well-known résumé, the book offers a sense of the toll a public life takes on a family, even one as accustomed to the spotlight as the Bushes. One day while the two men were fishing in Maine, the sitting president suddenly seemed ready to give it all up. "Son, I'm thinking about not running again," he said. Asked why, he cited the unfavorable scrutiny of another son, Neil, who sat on the board of a failed savings and loan. "I know it's tough," George W. recalls telling his father, "but you've still got work to do and the country needs you." The younger Bush was hardly immune to the pressure, even before taking office himself, and he tells a story harking back to his more hotheaded days. In a Dallas gym one day, he overheard a stranger evidently mistake him for Neil: "There's the president's son - he's about to get indicted." Bush marched over and confronted the man. "I'm not about to get indicted, and neither is my brother," he told him, "and I'd appreciate it if you'd get your facts right instead of spreading gossip." Getting the facts right, at least as he sees them, seems to be the reason for this book - facts not just about his father but about himself. He has said he wanted to write "41" to encourage a historical reassessment of his father's presidency, and in the process seems to be seeking some of that for his own as well. The deep affection and respect for his father suffuses the narrative, but along the way, Bush dissects what he sees as mistakes and the lessons he drew for his own presidency. It was "shortsighted," he says, not to defend more robustly the 1990 budget deal that broke the president's "read my lips" anti-tax pledge, although he places the blame on "the White House" rather than on his father directly. From the elder Bush's Supreme Court nominations of David Souter, who became one of the court's most liberal justices, and Clarence Thomas, whose confirmation turned up an embarrassing sex scandal, Bush writes: "I learned that it is essential for a president to fully vet nominees." When his father asked him to nudge out the White House chief of staff, John Sununu, Bush wondered why he did not do it himself. "The experience taught me a lesson," he writes: When he was president he either made personnel changes himself or had "a close confidant (not a family member)" do it. Patrick Buchanan's primary challenge to his father in 1992 taught him "the importance of consolidating the base," and in 2004 he "reached out early" to "disgruntled factions of the party." SOME OF THIS conveniently rewrites or omits parts of his own record, of course, and unsurprisingly, Bush admits to none of the father-son tensions that so many others have diagnosed over the years, which he so often scorns as psychobabble. As always, he dismisses the notion that he went to war in Iraq to finish what his father started and argues that 41 was right not to push on to Baghdad in 1991 just as he was right to do so 12 years later. He recycles scenes from his last book, "Decision Points," telling us again that his father supported his decision to invade and that he did not ask for advice because the former president had not been briefed the way an incumbent president was. He does not reflect on his lifetime of efforts to prove himself by following in his father's footsteps, nor does he dwell on any frustrations in trying to measure up. He even sands off the harsh edges of stories hinting at resentments that may have built up over time. When he recounts, for instance, the famous tale of his youthful drunken drive home, smashing into a neighbor's trash can, he writes simply that his father said nothing and that was rebuke enough. Other versions of the episode over the years have suggested a more confrontational tenor, with the son challenging his father, "You want to go mano a mano right here?" For a deeper look into this fascinating relationship, we will probably have to wait for presidential historians, like Jon Meacham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer whose long-awaited biography of the elder Bush is due out next year, and Mark K. Updegrove, the director of the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, who is writing a book about the two Bush presidents. For now, we have a son's loving testimonial. With the former president fading into winter, the younger Bush's book feels like a release of sorts, finally getting rid of whatever baggage has been there for so long. A son sits at the hospital bed, at last coming to terms. George W. Bush has nothing more to prove. His argument at this point is not with his father but with history. George W. Bush has essentially delivered a eulogy to his father in the form of a biography. PETER BAKER, the chief White House correspondent for The Times, is the author of "Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House."