The Bush Tragedy (Hardcover)

by Jacob Weisberg (Author)
Key Phrases: executive privilege, anti elitism, White House, United States, Bush Senior (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Framing the Bush administration as a Shakespearean tragedy, Weisberg provides an intriguing interpretation of Bush and his motivations thus far. Part armchair therapist and part literary critic, Weisberg chips away at the various public and private personalities Bush has presented over the years to demonstrate his insecurities. Examining his relationships to family and friends as well as isolating particular lines of dialogue as key insights into Bush's true nature, Weisberg keenly illustrates how Bush's insecurities have played out on a global scale. Weisberg also juxtaposes Bush within his family legacy, by drawing comparisons between his style of leadership with those on the Walker side of the family. In his deep voice, Robertson Dean provides an enjoyable performance that works well with Weisberg's prose. His deliberate cadence and well-placed emphasis makes the narration easy to follow and understand. Dean projects power and energy and is sure to have listeners looking for other audiobooks he reads that offer more narrative prose.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Product Description
This is the book that cracks the code of the Bush presidency. Unstintingly yet compassionately, and with no political ax to grind, Slate editor in chief Jacob Weisberg methodically and objectively examines the family and circle of advisers who played crucial parts in George W. Bush’s historic downfall.

In this revealing and defining portrait, Weisberg uncovers the “black box” from the crash of the Bush presidency. Using in-depth research, revealing analysis, and keen psychological acuity, Weisberg explores the whole Bush story. Distilling all that has been previously written about Bush into a defining portrait, he illuminates the fateful choices and key decisions that led George W., and thereby the country, into its current predicament. Weisberg gives the tragedy a historical and literary frame, comparing Bush not just to previous American leaders, but also to Shakespeare’s Prince Hal, who rises from ne’er-do-well youth to become the warrior king Henry V.

Here is the bitter and fascinating truth of the early years of the Bush dynasty, with never-before-revealed information about the conflict between the two patriarchs on George W.’s father’s side of the family–the one an upright pillar of the community, the other a rowdy playboy–and how that schism would later shape and twist the younger George Bush; his father, a hero of war, business, and Republican politics whose accomplishments George W. would attempt to copy and whose absences he would resent; his mother, Barbara, who suffered from insecurity, depression, and deep dissatisfaction with her role as housewife; and his younger brother Jeb, seen by his parents as steadier, stronger, and the son most likely to succeed.

Weisberg also anatomizes the replacement family Bush surrounded himself with in Washington, a group he thought could help him correct the mistakes he felt had destroyed his father’s presidency: Karl Rove, who led Bush astray by pursuing his own historical ambitions and transforming the president into a deeply polarizing figure; Dick Cheney, whose obsessive quest to restore presidential power and protect the country after 9/11 caused Bush and America to lose the world’s respect; and, finally, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice, who encouraged Bush’s foreign policy illusions and abetted his flight from reality.

Delving as no other biography has into Bush’s religious beliefs–which are presented as at once opportunistic and sincere–The Bush Tragedy is an essential work that is sure to become a standard reference for any future assessment. It is the most balanced and compelling account of a sitting president ever written.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Random House (January 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400066786
• ISBN-13: 978-1400066780
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (68 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #287,384 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

223 of 243 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most penetrating, and persuasive, explanation for Bush's failures, January 25, 2008

By	David Plotz (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In The Bush Tragedy, Jacob Weisberg does what most of President Bush's critics have never tried to do: Take him seriously. In doing so, Jacob paints a devastating portrait of a man haunted by his father, crippled by a fatal lack of curiosity, and driven by ego to pursue aggressive and ill-considered policies. His Bush is not the cartoon of ignorant evil imagined by many of the president's critics, but a deeply complex man whose intellectual and emotional shortcomings have made him a disastrous president. Jacob, who (full disclosure) is a colleague and friend, has unearthed extraordinary new details about Bush's religious conversion, ancestral history, and family dynamics. My favorite bit--check it out on page 90--is an anecdote about how the president, always willing to make his own reality, decided that a painting of a horse thief was actually a portrait of a brave evangelist minister.

49 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars America's tragedy, February 13, 2008

By	Jon Hunt "musician, teacher" (Old Greenwich, Ct. USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

It's hard to know how many books have been written about George W. Bush during the course of his presidency that skewer him on just about everything, but Jacob Weisberg's "The Bush Tragedy" is a welcome addition to that increasing number as the author looks at his subject from a standpoint different from many of the others....his family. Weisberg is dead-on on his assessments of our nation's forty-third president and from that vantage point, we get to know much more about this latest tragedy in a series of family members that were as dysfunctional as they come. And the current president is the worst of them all.

Growing up in Greenwich, Connecticut, I've always been well aware of the Bush family from the days when "W"'s grandfather, Prescott, served in the U.S. Senate. The Bushes, then, were known as the "respectable" Republicans...the kind that used to be identified with the east coast, and a point well reviewed in this book. Few in town these days want to be associated with the name "Bush"...at least the Texas kind. As the Bushes moved south and west they developed into another kind of family with George W. Bush taking the family name off the deep end, with the help of religious conservatives. If Bush #41 began a trend of the northeast toward the Democratic party, Bush #43 sealed the deal. Yet as Weisberg points out, "W", who had been a cajoler in his days as Texas governor and did his best to keep the name "Bush" as a uniter, turned out to be a divider as president. This is one of many aspects of "The Bush Tragedy" that Weisberg covers well.

Much of "The Bush Tragedy" features the ginning up of the war in Iraq...Bush's most notable and long-lasting failure. The author's accounts of the president's change of rationale for being in Iraq every eighteen months or so is terrific. Here, the Bush rhetoric comes under some intense scrutiny, all the better to remember those presidential miscues from a few years ago that now seem almost like scenes from another time.

George Bush has claimed to read a good deal of history and counts Teddy Roosevelt and Winston Churchill among his heroes. Weisberg brilliantly deconstructs this and the middle paragraph of a page not far from the end of the book sums up Bush to a tee. "The Bush Tragedy" is the most apt name for a book I've seen in a while. I highly recommend it and credit goes to Jacob Weisberg who reminds us that once in a while a really bad apple inhabits the White House.

43 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars EXCELLENT BIO; BUSH JR. IS LIKE THE WALKERS, BUSH SR. LIKE A BUSH, January 28, 2008

By	Sanford "Sanford" (New York) - See all my reviews

This is one of the best books about a Presidency in a long time. It is not so much about how Bush JR is obsessed with Bush SR, as some reviews have suggested, but an explanation of how and why Bush JR is like the Walker branch of his family, and his dad is like the Bush branch. It has a lot of new stuff including stunning detail about family politics. It tells us that Bush SR's dad Prescott Bush lived in a house bought by his father-in-law and worked at an investment bank owned by his father-in-law who was a Walker. Bush SR himself got his house in Kennebunkport ME by convincing the Walker widow who owned it to sell it to him. It also appears to show the George H. Walker branch of the family to be deceitful and dishonest (the current one worked at Goldman Sachs).

In other words, although the Bush family seems to sell hardwork and Yankee values, it has really lived on the hog of the Walker side. Bush JR was so obsessed with his richer cousins that he likes their brash style and adopted it for himself.

Of course all the psychoanalysis takes away from the book which reads as well and as seriously as any Presidential biography, even as good as David Mcculloch's John Adams. Few books this year have been so good