{"id":384,"date":"2018-12-31T12:04:30","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T12:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=384"},"modified":"2018-12-31T12:04:30","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T12:04:30","slug":"lone-star-book-reviewsby-michelle-newby-nbcccontributing-editor-39","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=384","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book ReviewsBy Michelle Newby, NBCCContributing Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span>Michelle Newby<\/span> is contributing editor at Lone Star Literary Life, reviewer for Foreword Reviews, <\/span>freelance writer, member of the National Book Critics Circle, and blogger at www.TexasBookLover.com. Her reviews appear or are forthcoming in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, World Literature Today, South85 Journal, The Review Review, Concho River Review, Monkeybicycle, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, <\/span>and The Collagist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lone Star Book Reviews
of Texas books appear weekly
at LoneStarLiterary.com<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n
\n

POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY<\/p>\n

Jon Meacham<\/span><\/p>\n

Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Random House<\/p>\n

Ebook, 978-0-81299-820-7 (also available in hardcover, large print paperback, as an audio book, and on Audible), 864 pgs., $17.99<\/p>\n

November 10, 2015<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/a><\/span><\/span>When George Herbert Walker Bush was five years old<\/span> his school report cards included the category \u201cClaims More Than His Fair Share of Time and Attention in Class.\u201d His parents didn\u2019t worry about this category. Bush\u2019s nickname was \u201cHave-Half\u201d because he split everything he had with friends. Eighty-five years later he is much the same.<\/p>\n

Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush<\/span><\/a><\/span> is Jon Meacham\u2019s<\/span> account of the life of the forty-first president, \u201ca child of one generation\u2019s ruling class, the head of another\u2019s, and the father of yet a third.\u201d Meacham presents Bush as a man of humility and compassion as well as ambitious and deeply competitive, a believer in compromise, diplomacy, and the power of personal relationships.<\/p>\n

A well-balanced account, Destiny and Power<\/span> progresses briskly and never belabors a point. Meacham provides insightful analysis of family dynamics in Bush\u2019s formative years, a recitation of the facts liberally leavened with anecdotes, and a good mix of formal and candid photos. Meacham had access to Bush\u2019s diaries that he spoke into a hand-held recorder which provides a sense of immediacy\u2014Bush\u2019s thoughts in real time.<\/p>\n

Meacham is fond of his subject and writes thrillingly of the \u201cdazzling, epochal news\u201d of the fall of the Berlin wall and chillingly of Iraq\u2019s invasion of Kuwait. Bush\u2019s diary allows us to watch his thinking develop as he struggles toward \u201cThis will not stand.\u201d But Meacham doesn\u2019t mince words regarding controversies such as Iran-Contra, deemed \u201cunworthy of [Bush\u2019s] essential character.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meacham reinforces the point throughout the book that \u201cwith Bush one got both hardball and high-mindedness, with the former being played in order to give him the power to put the latter into action.\u201d However, Meacham doesn\u2019t address the damage done to American political discourse resulting in polarization. Bush\u2019s personal story is the larger story of how the Republican Party moved to the right in Texas and nationally.<\/p>\n

Meacham explores the relationship between Bush and George W.\u2019s presidency, including personal correspondence between them as George W. prepares to invade Iraq, as well as what Bush thought of \u201caxis of evil\u201d rhetoric and his estimation of Dick Cheney\u2019s vice presidency. Bush \u201creturned on several occasions to the subject of Dick Cheney, whom he believed . . . had his own empire there.\u201d Cheney, upon reading the transcript, smiled and said, \u201cFascinating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bush\u2019s legendary life is conveyed with profound details such as telling his diary on the eve of Operation Desert Storm, \u201cThe face of war looks at me,\u201d and Gorbachev\u2019s gift to Bush Christmas morning, 1991, when he called \u201cto announce the end of the experiment in Communism born in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.\u201d Meacham humanizes that legendary life with charming details: Bush\u2019s \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d socks, his staff stocking hotel rooms with pork rinds and Dr. Pepper, and the occasional shower with Millie, the springer spaniel.<\/p>\n

Bush may be, as Meacham says, \u201cthe last gentleman\u201d who used \u201cprivilege to build, not to consume or to coast.\u201d If so, the nation will be poorer for it.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michelle Newby is contributing editor at Lone Star Literary Life, reviewer for Foreword Reviews, freelance writer, member of the National Book Critics Circle, and blogger at www.TexasBookLover.com. Her reviews appear or are forthcoming in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, World Literature Today, South85 Journal, The Review Review, Concho River Review, Monkeybicycle, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}