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The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Flora Sheldon Bush was fuming..." (more)
Key Phrases: vesting order, presidential library, George Bush, New York, United States (more...)
3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (242 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Kitty Kelley, author of exhaustive and highly unflattering biographies of Frank Sinatra, Jackie Onassis, and the British royal family, among others, has never received much cooperation from her subjects. Likewise, none was given for The First Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty, and it's not hard to understand why. In the book, the family that has produced two presidents as well as an assortment of other politicians, businesspeople, and a number of lesser-known black sheep is portrayed as a powerful empire that leverages wealth and influence to grow ever stronger while stringently covering up numerous instances of drug abuse, infidelity, poor judgment, and scandal. While charges about George W. Bush, including that he snorted cocaine at Camp David while his father was president, garnered the most attention upon the book's release, Kelley's history goes back several generations, detailing the rise to power of Senator Prescott Bush and his son, the first President Bush. Those seeking a salacious peek at the inner sanctum of a wealthy and powerful family will not be disappointed by The First Family--Kelley always delivers on that count--and will likely devour allegations of Barbara Bush's sour temperament, George H.W. Bush's long-standing affair with aide Jennifer Fitzgerald, and George W. Bush's obnoxious drunken frat boy days that stretched, according to Kelley, well into adulthood. Those seeking a rock-solid and airtight indictment of the Bushes, however, will be disappointed, since Kelley leans on anonymous sources and rumors for some of the juicier bits. Interestingly, although it tells the stories of a family built on politics, The First Family mostly avoids the subject, clearing the decks of all political substance in order to put the style on wider display. --John Moe


From Publishers Weekly

Although hardly the most authoritative or the most carefully written, Kelley’s history of the Bush family nonetheless ranks among the most important books of the 2004 political season. A large part of Kelley’s influence comes, of course, from the success of her previous celebrity biographies, among them Jackie Oh!, The Royals and Elizabeth Taylor. But another part comes from her willingness to commit rumors to paper—in other words, to share DC cocktail-party gossip with the masses. Her book will come under a lot of fire for this practice, and with some reason. Many of her most incendiary comments—that Laura Bush was once a "go-to girl for dime bags," that George W. Bush snorted cocaine at Camp David—do appear to be poorly sourced. And as the book progresses from the 1860s to the 2000s, her moderate tone often rises with vividly expressed disgust and indignation. But readers who take Kelley’s dishy allegations with a grain of salt will still find plenty of hard evidence to support her portrayal of the Bush family’s political opportunism, economic privilege and shrewd flip-flopping. Case in point: when George H.W. Bush was chosen as Reagan’s running mate in 1980, he suddenly "dropped his support of the Equal Rights Amendment and vehemently changed his position on abortion." Kelley also takes shots at Democrats Edward Kennedy, Lloyd Bentsen and Lyndon Johnson, and generally laments what she sees as the Republican Party’s turn to the far right. But, overall, her real issues appear to be the same as in her previous books: the abuse of power, the adoption of a false public image, the secreting away of sexual and pharmaceutical peccadilloes. With its focus on these juicy issues, and its occasional nuggets of serious political history, Kelley’s book is sure to gratify her many fans.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 736 pages
  • Publisher: Doubleday; 3rd edition edition (September 14, 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0385503245
  • ISBN-13: 978-0385503242
  • Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (242 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #310,616 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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More About the Author

Kitty Kelley
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
Flora Sheldon Bush was fuming. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
vesting order, presidential library
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
George Bush, New York, United States, Prescott Bush, Barbara Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush, President Bush, Brown Brothers Harriman, National Guard, New Haven, Ronald Reagan, House of Representatives, Dorothy Walker Bush, Richard Nixon, New Hampshire, World War, State Department, Bill Clinton, Republican National Committee, Nancy Reagan, Prime Minister, United Nations, Dorothy Bush, Wall Street, George Walker Bush
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Customer Reviews

242 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.5 out of 5 stars (242 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
199 of 223 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly Good!!!, September 16, 2004
This book is MUCH better than I thought it would be. I particularly enjoyed Ms. Kelley's thorough grasp of the history of the 60's and 70's and her insight into the Nixon years.

For anyone who is interested in the history of the Texas Air National Guard Documents, Kelley has covered this exhaustively and well. When you read her careful research into this entire situation, you will wonder no more.

Also included is a very clear look at Bush's most closely held political beliefs as recalled by fellow students at Harvard and others who knew him well before he decided to go into politics.

There are 38 pages of citations included in the book-it is extensively and carefully documented.

I recommend it!
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72 of 79 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating - a story that needs to be told, September 14, 2004
By booklover "booklover" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
I've been burning through this book (unlike many who have "reviewed" it without, I'm sure, even picking it up.) It's awesome. Try as they might to besmirch the author's reputation, the critics can't knock the central truth of the book: that the Bushes have used and abused their wealth and privilege for their own benefit. Sure, they can quibble with this or that fact, but the big picture holds up. It's incredibly well-researched and well-sourced. Score one for the right to free speech -- although, with the way the Bush monarchy has been behaving, we will probably lose that freedom soon too.
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107 of 120 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Will the Media Finally Tell the Truth About Bush??, September 14, 2004
Finally, some truths about George W. Bush. The guy is the ultimate hypocrite, yet we have to wait until 4 years into his presidency before a book will talk about the way he paid his girlfriend Robin Lowman Garner to abort his baby in the early 1970s. The hypocrisy and greed of George W. Bush and his family members is mind-boggling. This book will provide you with an overview before you move on to the serious books and news stories that are finally dissecting Bush's inadequate National Guard record. Memos or not, detail upon detail is building a picture of extreme dishonesty. What kind of man, wanting his superiors to know where he is, fills out forms using his OLD addresses? Bush, of course.
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