The Oval
It's official: George W. Bush's entry into the ranks of presidential memoirs will be released Nov. 9.
Decision Points "will be centered on the fourteen most critical and historic decisions in the life and public service of the 43rd President of the United States," says the release from Crown Publishers.
Among those topics: The disputed 2000 election, 9/11, the Iraq war, the financial crisis, Hurricane Katrina, Afghanistan, and Iran. Bush also discusses his decision to quit drinking, his faith, and his celebrated and politically active family.
"He writes honestly and directly about his flaws and mistakes, as well as his historic achievements in reforming education, providing life-saving treatments for HIV/AIDS and malaria for millions of people in Africa, safeguarding the country from another terrorist attack, and other areas," says the publisher.
(Former first lady Laura Bush, by the way, has a book out on May 4)
Crown describes President Bush's book as "a groundbreaking new brand of memoir," though The Oval recalls a similar approach once taken by Richard Nixon.
In 1962, two years after losing the presidential race to John Kennedy and six years before his comeback election, Nixon released Six Crises, focused on the half-dozen biggest moments in his political career (to that time).
Bush's memoir is the latest in a string of White House tomes that extends back, oddly enough, to the president who saw the United States disintegrate on his watch.
James Buchanan, a one-termer who lost the 1860 election to Abraham Lincoln, felt compelled to defend his record in the wake of the Civil War. In 1866, he had published Mr. Buchanan's Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion. (Buchanan's defense hasn't done him much good in the court of history)
Nowadays, presidential memoirs are standard operating procedure, unless the White House occupant dies in office, as happened with Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
As a literary matter, Bush has his work cut out for him. Few presidential memoirs are high regarded, or remembered. And the best of the lot -- the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant -- deal with his success as a Civil War general, not his less-than-successful presidency.
Presidential books can sell well, however. And Crown has a good track record with these kinds of works. Its catalogue includes Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope, books by a politician who will no doubt write his own presidential memoir one day: Barack Obama.
Posted by David Jackson
USA Today
