Goldwater (Hardcover)

~ Barry Goldwater (Author), Jack Casserly (Collaborator)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The former senator from Arizona writes that he is content to let others assess his 30-year career, although he's willing to admit accomplishing a thing or two as chairman of both the Senate Intelligence and the Armed Services committees. Of the former, he tells of repairing some of the damage to the CIA wrought by the 1975-76 Church Committee, and of the latter he claimsunconvincinglythat "the only god-damn thing I've done in the Senate that's worth a damn" was his part in the 1986 Defense Reorganization Act. Goldwater's charm and sense of humor are in evidence throughout this plain-talk autobiography, written with Casserly ( The Ford White House ), and so is his orneriness. Former defense secretary Robert McNamara comes in for a drubbing over his numbers-game approach to the Vietnam war, for instance, and the senator pulls no punches in his discussion of Richard Nixon's "long record of political treachery." Nor has he forgotten Bill Moyers's anti-Goldwater ads during the 1964 presidential campaign, calling them "the beginning of 'electronic dirt.' " The media, he grumbles, has since then become the fourth branch of government. Goldwater has little use for "the present crowd of glory hogs" in Congress, and proceeds to skewer many of them by name and particulars. Photos. First serial to Play boy; BOMC featured alternate.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 414 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1 edition (September 12, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385239475
• ISBN-13: 978-0385239479
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,617,132 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Very Good Read, August 31, 2005

By	Robert Fishman (Long Island, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Though I read this book some time ago, I remember it as one of the most interesting political memoirs that I have ever read. Goldwater offers a refreshingly candid look at his long career in public life, as well as his prescriptions for the future of conservatism (it was written back in the late 1980s, but I think that his thoughts on this subject have been on-target). His advocacy of a broad-based conservative movement is the best example of this.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Still Relevant, August 12, 2008

By	Robert Szarka (Norwich, CT USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Goldwater (Paperback)

As with most political memoirs, the charm comes not from great writing but from Goldwater's first-hand perspective on his career. Not all his recollections remain significant, but I found Goldwater's comments about the religious right nearly as relevant today as they were twenty years ago.