Destiny and power

Published in , &#;Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush&#; by Jon Meacham is the most recent full-scale biography of the 41st president. Meacham is a presidential historian and author whose biography of Andrew Jackson won the Pulitzer Prize. He has also written about Thomas Jefferson and Franklin Roosevelt and is currently working on a biography of James and Dolley Madison.

With pages of text and nearly pages of notes and bibliography, &#;Destiny and Power&#; is not a light read. Yet this meticulously-researched (and largely sympathetic) biography feels more sprightly than it appears. In his customary style, Meacham has written a thoughtful, well-informed and exquisitely articulate life-and-times.

It is uncommon for a biographer and his or her subject to meet&#;and even more extraordinary for an author to receive the type of cooperation Meacham received from George H. W. Bush. For more than a decade, Bush sat for numerous interviews, provided access to his personal diaries and encouraged the cooperation of his family and political colleagues. This is one of the book&#;s greatest strengths &#; but also one of its latent weaknesses.

As a result of this intimacy between biographer and subject, the reader is treated to a degree of familiarity which cannot be captured in most presidential biographies. In many respects, Meacham&#;s biography often feels like the memoirs Bush 41 never wrote&#;but with a professional patina.

Bush&#;s pre-presidency takes up just over half the book while one-third of the biography is allocated to his single term in the White House. The final sixty pages are spent reviewing Bush&#;s retirement with an emphasis on his relationship with Jeb, George and Bill Clinton.

The earliest decades of Bush&#;s life are nicely covered but seem to pass too quickly, particularly since the author had a unique opportunity to explore his subject&#;s years at Andover,

Drawing on President Bush's personal diaries, on the diaries of his wife, Barbara, and on extraordinary access to the forty-first president and his family, Jon Meaghan paints an intimate and surprising portrait of an intensely private man who led the nation through tumultuous times. From the Oval Office to Camp David, from his studies in the private quarters of the White House to Air Force One, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the first Gulf War to the end of Communism, Destiny and Power charts the thoughts, decisions, and emotions of a modern president who may have been the last of his kind. This is the human story of a man who was, like the nation he led, at once noble and flawed.

His was one of the great American lives. Born into a loving, privileged, and competitive family, Bush joined the navy on his eighteenth birthday and at age twenty was shot down on a combat mission over the Pacific. He married young, started a family, and resisted pressure to go to Wall Street, striking out for the adventurous world of Texas oil. Over the course of three decades, Bush would rise from the chairmanship of his county Republican Party to serve as congressman, ambassador to the United Nations, head of the Republican National Committee, envoy to China, director of Central Intelligence, vice president under Ronald Reagan, and, finally, President of the United States. In retirement, he became the first president since John Adams to see his son win the ultimate prize in American politics.

With access not only to the Bush diaries but, through extensive interviews, to the former president himself, Meaghan presents Bush's candid assessments of many of the critical figures of the age, ranging from Richard Nixon to Nancy Reagan; Mao to Mikhail Gorbachev; Dick Cheney to Donald Rumsfeld; Henry Kissinger to Bill Clinton. Here is high politics as it really is but as we rarely see it.

From the Pacific to the

book by Jon Meacham

Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush is a book by Jon Meacham about George H. W. Bush.

Critical reception

The New York Times wrote that the book "reflects the qualities of both subject and biographer: judicious, balanced, deliberative, with a deep appreciation of history and the personalities who shape it."Kirkus Reviews called it "meticulously researched but perhaps overlong," writing that "Meacham does his best with this 'underwhelming' but noble subject."Publishers Weekly called Destiny and Power "a vivid, well-written account that doesn't quite come to grips with its subject's pivotal place in history."

References

External links

• Presentation by Meacham on Destiny and Power, November 8, , C-SPAN
• Discussion with Jon Meacham and George W. Bush on the life of George H.W. Bush, November 8, , C-SPAN
• Presentation by Meacham on Destiny and Power at the Miami Book Fair, November 21, , C-SPAN
• Presentation by Meacham on Destiny and Power at the National Book Festival, September 24, , C-SPAN