|
Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush | 
 enlarge | Author: Robert Draper
Publisher: Free Press
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy New: $3.11
You Save: $11.89 (79%)
New (44) Used (19) from $3.10
Avg. Customer Rating:  50 reviews
Sales Rank: 371459
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 480
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 0743277295
Dewey Decimal Number: 320
EAN: 9780743277297
ASIN: 0743277295
Publication Date: March 25, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: THIS BOOK IS NEW AND IN EXCELLENT CONDITION. MAY HAVE A SMALL PUBLISHER REMAINDER MARK ON THE TOP OR BOTTOM EDGE OF THE BOOK. SAME DAY SHIPPING WEEKDAYS BEFORE 3:00PM EST
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
In this ambitious work of political narrative, Robert Draper takes us inside the Bush White House and delivers an intimate portrait of a tumultuous decade and an embattled administration.Virtually every page of this book crackles with scenes, anecdotes, and dialogue based on access to every principal actor in the Bush administration, including six newsmaking interviews with the president himself.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 45 more reviews...
Great first draft of the history of the GWB presidency May 20, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Dead Certain is a fantastic first attempt to objectively judge the GW Bush years. That will not be an easy task for a decade or more. People will argue about Iraq, the deficit, Katrina, and so much more for decades to come. Yet Draper did a fine job of walking the tightrope of objectivity, so much as is possible. Well written with just enough new nuggets to make it worthwhile reading even for those who follow politics.
Good book April 27, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
Wolffe states in his review that "Here is a president who boasts of reading around 100 books a year, promotes reading standards and No Child Left Behind, graduated from Yale and Harvard, and is married to a librarian. Yet he thinks he can't learn lessons by reading. You can almost hear the critics scoff."
Perhaps Wolffe needs to learn to comprehend what he's read a bit better. Bush is correct: there are just some things one can't learn by reading; instead one has to learn by doing. Wolffe's failure to comprehend this renders anything else he has to say as unreadable, as, how can one trust a reviewer who doesn't understand what they're reading to begin with?
People should read this book with an open mind and no preconceived ideas about who George Bush is. Only in that way will they truly understand him.
Fills in some gaps about Bush's character April 19, 2008
As Mr. Draper stated, "Bush's virtues and his vices were one and the same." This statement pretty much sums it up for every person that has been our president. Mr. Draper has done a fine job of helping to make President Bush a more rounded character. However, I would not recommend the author's book as the definitive analysis of this controversial man. In fact, there is no such book that I am aware that can claim to be so. Mr. Draper's book has plenty of areas that could have been covered in more detail, but will have to be left to other historians. Ultimately, if you appreciate political books, you'll likely enjoy this one. The story moves along very well, is informative and quite entertaining.
Selective insights into Bush but a pleasant book overall April 1, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The Bush presidency still has almost a year to go, and already the stream of "definitive" books on his presidency is starting to trickle down.
In "Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush" (480 pages), author Robert Draper paints a very closely researched picture of the Bush presidency. It appears that Draper had unprecedented access to the President and those around him. Draper spends very little time on what it is that brought Bush to the presidency, his previous life as governor of Texas and owner of the Texas Rangers are being dealt with in a couple of pages. Even more questionable is why the 2004 general election and its aftermath, leading to the Supreme Court's decision in Gore vs. Bush, is taken care of in 1 paragraph! In contrast to that, the author brings in great details the brutal 2000 Republican primaries, in which McCain unexpectedly won New Hampshire (when the day before the election the Bush entourage found itself with an extra hour or two on its hands, they decide to go bob-sledding on the spur of the moment!). The author doesn't hide his criticism of the war in Iraq. The 4400 Project (which was to restore up to pre-war levels of electricity with 4,400 megawatts of electricity by Oct. 1, 2003) was one of the many failures, and later $18.4 billion emergency funding was requested to get supply up to 6,000 megawatts. The author notes dryly: "The money came. But the 6,000 megawatts never did. Not by June 2004.Or by 2005. Or 2006. Or 2007."
In all, this is a pleasant read. The author has done his home work even if for some reason he is selective in what episodes to cover or not to cover. But the book finishes in an open-ended way, not surprising since this book came out 16 months before the end of Bush's presidency.
 Fascinating reporting, but lacks range and depth March 2, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is an important book on the Bush presidency for one reason: Robert Draper was provided unprecedented access to the most secretive President in the history of the U.S. along with many of his aides that have been previously hesitant to leak or go on the record about their President. Therefore, this book will serve future historians well as a critically important secondary source of information and perspective on the topics and people covered. Its biggest weaknesses are the lack of topics and people covered coupled with the shallowness on all the reported topics with the exception of Bush's campaigns, which are well covered.
I especially enjoyed hearing his campaign operatives' dilemma in getting Bush elected in 2000 and reelected in 2004, where they succinctly defined amongst themselves in 2000 that "Things have never been better. Vote for Change" and in 2004, "Things have never been worse. Stay the course".
The sources in the book makes some astonishing claims where Draper fails to dig deeper to provide evidence on the veracity of those claims: e.g., number of books read by Bush in a year. Also the claim that the Big Thinkers of the Hoover Institute, including George Schultz, were impressed with Bush as a viable candidate that could administrate a successful reform agenda. This opinion as expressed by Draper has turned out to be laughably absurd, making me skeptical that Schultz et al. really believed this.
I do not recommend this book to the casual observer of the Bush Presidency. The topics that are addressed are extremely narrow in scope, with no depth yielding a surprisingly ineffective portrait of the President. For example, there is no reportage between the unprecedented success of the oil industry during the Bush presidency relative to their campaign contributions to him and his party, the Bush Energy Bill that subsidized their businesses during flush times, Bush's fight to keep those discussions confidential, Bush's public pronouncements in favor of alternative energy, and Bush foreign policy decisions that greatly aided the oil industry while greatly harming American soft power and the current and future well-being of the national economy. There are many other critical events during President's Bush's tenure that also go unmentioned. Vice President Cheney and his office are rarely discussed, along with Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld even though no two players were more critical to the Bush legacy beyond the President himself.
Draper also fails to address why Bush's National Security Council was and remains so dysfunctional, with a Defense Dept. seizing the responsibilities of the CIA and State and mucking them up big-time while Bush remains blissfully unaware that he and Rice, who was not unaware, can't even control their own underlings. This is the sort of managerial issue one would expect in a book of this nature, yet we get no perspective.
What Draper does do well is get President Bush and some of his aides on the record with their perspective regarding their reactions to events as they played out in the media. I was particularly interested and enjoyed reading of Andrew Card's service, who I've always viewed as a good man doing his best to serve his country and his President. We also get to hear the rationalization of virulently ignorant sycophants like Karen Hughes conducting incredibly incompetent foreign policy, like promoting the false idea to the leaders of other countries that Bush's dependence on pandering to the God vote is mandated by our Constitution which she falsely proclaims states "one nation, under God".
Probably the biggest question I have regarding President Bush is: What combination of his legacy is rooted in incompetency as opposed to corruption and blind ideology? I believe I could make an argument he was incredibly competent rather than incredibly corrupt. I can also argue the opposite. So where does the evidence lead us? Which factor is really the dominant factor and how much of a role did the other factors play? The facts laid out by Draper argue for a clear and I believe unbiased answer I won't provide here since I view that as a spoiler (I will in the comments section if asked). I do admire Draper for not attempting to answer that himself, instead letting his interview subjects hold the floor, including the President. However, since the range and depth of coverage is so narrow, I am not at all confident Draper provided enough information to allow the reader to make that judgment. So for me, the question is unfortunately left hanging where I continue to seek out a book that is able to answer this question.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
