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Summary: Hilarious Entertainment written by the best
Review: This non-fiction book will give you a relief from biographies that feel like textbook. Shadw refers to the last five presidents of our nation: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George bush, and Bill Clinton. It talks about the scandals each had to face and how they coped with them. After Nixon resigned from office, Ford had to pull the ountry back from he Watergate scandal which was agreat challenge for him, and this book shows what lengths he went to. Woodward talks about how carter worked to end the Iran hostage crisis and how he would win the peoples' acceptance, Reagan's scandal with the Iran-contra cover-up and how he coped with that, George Bush's Gulf War, and the most famous scandal of all from the last decade: Clinton's scandal with Monica Lewinsky. But don't let that turn you away if you think you know everything. Woodward writes this nonfiction book as if it were fiction. It's entertaining and amusing to see what each president wen through, and it never feels like a straightforward textbook. Just remember that this is definitely not a history book; Woodward even says that this is an examination of the most important moments of the last five presidents.
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Summary: Its Not what it appears!
Review: This book is not what it appears. It is a defense of Woodwards assesment of Nixon and watergate and attempts to imply that this is what brought down Clinton. THAT IS NOT THE CASE as Clinton was not only a lier but clearly immoral. There is no way Mr. Woodward can cover his Political leaning with this type of story. When you read this book it clearly is 50% Clinton and defending his and Hilary's actions under Whitewater and the Clintons' misconduct in the Whitehouse as President. In all fairness to Mr. Woodward this book is far below his standard of fair and honest reporting. Let admit it, this is no more than a defense of his reporting on Clinton and Nixon.
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Summary: Magazine article with a hard cover
Review: This moderately interesting book should have been kept as a magazine article. The author makes some good observations (with a decidedly liberal bend) but they did not warrant an entire book. Sunday New York Times would have been a better placement.
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Summary: Great Investigative Work
Review: Another solid investigative work by Bob Woodward. Well researched and documented, and strongly written. Really shows how the acts of Richard Nixon nearly 30 years ago impacted the administrations of the next five Presidents. Great read for any political junkies.
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Summary: An interesting historical study
Review: In this book, Woodward attempts to take one of the pivotal events of American politics-the resignation of Richard Nixon--and analyze how it has affected the Presidencies of those following Nixon. An ambitious assignment, to say the least, but one that Woodward does not necessarily fulfill. Woodward's biggest problem is that he does not start out with a clear thesis, which makes it difficult to follow how the phenomenal amount of information presented fits together. The only clear point that Woodward makes throughout the book is a rather obvious one: that Watergate has significantly impacted the Presidencies of Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. After reading the book, I would draw the conclusion that the enduring reason for this affect, beyond the increased skepticism of the President by members of the media, is the Independent Council provision, which Woodward suggests has caused endless scrutiny of peccadilloes by investigators who feel they have to bring charges to justify their investigation. If this was indeed Woodward's point, I think he would have been better served to make it clear in the beginning of the book and show throughout the book how his evidence supported this thesis.
However, the storytelling in the book makes it worth reading. You may forget why you're reading it, but Woodward uses his numerous high-level sources to give a fascinating retelling of many of the scandals that have lurked in the media through the last thirty years. He pays close attention to detail, trying to help readers who are unfamiliar with the events surrounding various investigations understand what was happening and who was involved. Because of this, I would still highly recommend this book, despite its occasional lack of a cohesive argument.
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Summary: Power of the Independent Council
Review: Well-written acoount of how the Independent Council came about after Watergate and how it has affected the Presidency from Ford on through Clinton, becoming less independent and more partisan with each passing administration and culminating into the ridiculous Ken Starr investigation into Whitewater. Woodward points out how the Council has gotten too powerful and it and how it has abused it's power. The authuor has used extensive sources and interviews to come up with a story that is both eye-opening and head-shaking at the same time. He also comes up with examples that show just how corrupt and powerful the Council is. Very fast-paced and entertaining.
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Summary: Not impressed
Review: The content didn't bother me. The writing was poor.
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Summary: Half A Great Book
Review: Woodward claims to be writing about the "legacy of Watergate," and what reporter is better qualified to do so? But he has a hard time sticking to that goal, and his efforts to justify each juicy tidbit with historical significance are increasingly herniating as the book plods on. Really, this is Woodward's book about the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment events of 1998. He does a workmanlike job of that, but others have done better with the same information. He tries to make the book about "five presidents," but Clinton's travails get more than half the book to play around in. The first half of the book is excellent, though. There, Woodward concisely handles the scandals faced by Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush -- remember the Bert Lance Affair? me neither -- and shows how an ever-more-suspicious media and public influenced each White House's handling of the same. For the first 200 pages alone, the book is worth the read by students of the presidency. But if you're just looking for Clinton dirt, dig elsewhere.
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Summary: [....]
Review: Now, the idea of the book itself is not that bad. It is quite a look into the presidental lifes of these presidents ... pros & cons. My problem lies with the author, who is obviously biased and molds each of these great presidents to fit his theory of a "Nixon curse." I mean, give it a break! The book is given a cover of politcal intrigue but instead delves into the author's very UN-political paranoia. Read it once, and don't bother reading it again.
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Summary: A Book That Vacillates Between Bias and Niavete
Review: This book is admirable for the ambition of its scope, covering as it does each presidential scandal since Watergate and how each president dealt with those scandals. The chapters prior to the last half of the book, which is all on Clinton, turned out to be much more interesting than the chapters on Clinton's scandals. I bought the book mainly for the Clinton chapters, but found the chapters prior to be much more enlightening and engrossing. Woodward's handling of Reagan and Iran/Contra was very fair I thought and avoided getting weighted down by speculation or uninteresting minutiae. This part of the book was very well done and I thought Reagan came off quite well in these chapters, mainly because of Reagan's efforts to take the necessary steps to get to the bottom of the scandal. Conversely, Reagan's denial that this was an arms for hostage deal was alarming. But Woodward shows Iran/Contra to have been bad policy, well-intentioned though it may have been, more than it was intentional wrongdoing by the president or those close to him. The chapters on the first George Bush were a little unfair and didn't adequately convey the injustice of Lawrence Walsh's indictment of Casper Weinberger for withholding of evidence, nor the real justification behind Bush's subsequent pardon of Weinberger. This indictment was largely the result of a screw up on Walsh's part resulting from his searching in the wrong place for Weinberger's subpoenaed personal papers, papers which Congress, not Weinberger, were in possession of. Woodward deals with this exculpatory information inadequately. The sections on Clinton I found both naive and perhaps a bit biased. Woodward whitewashes Whitewater and the early Clinton scandals, seeming to wave a dismissive hand at them. He omits important information that points to Clinton's culpability in these scandals. The most serious Watergate-like aspect of the early Clinton scandals is touched on at best lightly and Woodward seems to see nothing suspicious in this activity, that being the massive pay off of the Clinton crony who knew the most about where the Clinton bodies were buried so to speak, former associate Attorney General Webb Hubbell. Hubbell immediately went silent after receiving these pay offs, even reneging on his just completed immunity deal for cooperation with the independent counsel. Woodward even underplays the amount of money given Hubbell by various Clinton associates such as the Lippo Group and others. With the Lewinsky scandal, Woodward again overlooks pertinent facts pointing to Clinton's being guilty of impeachable offenses, and is at best dismissive of the seriousness of the charges against Clinton, even at times defending Clinton against charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Woodward does a great deal to overlook Clinton's subversion of the judicial process and tries to portray it as nothing more than a sex scandal and an act of poor judgment on Clinton's part. Woodward refuses to see the deeper Constitutional and ethical issues that were at the heart of this scandal, rather than just the sexual aspects of it. I found it troubling that the chapters about the impeachment and then subsequent Senate trial seems to spend more time reviewing the arguments of the defense, while minimally reiterating the evidence expounded by the House Impeachment Managers and others attempting to hold Clinton accountable. Woodward is even so naive in the epilogue as to claim that Clinton never conspired with anyone to cover up the truth nor asked anyone to lie. He seems to forget the little coaching session Clinton had with Betty Currie, a future witness, in which Clinton encouraged her to remember things that were not true. But further, Woodward just assumes that Clinton and his confidante Vernon Jordan never had any conversations about how to buy Lewinsky's perjury as Jordan's subsequent and extraordinary actions in trying to secure a job for Lewinsky and get her legal help indicate. It's amazing that Woodward would simply accept that these activities occured in a vacuum and that Jordan and Clinton did these things merely out of the goodness of their hearts and with no purposeful orchestration. How could a nose with the journalistic skeptism of Woodward's not sniff out the fishiness of one of Washington's biggest power players, Vernon Jordan, being enlisted into the service of a former White House intern who hadn't worked there in over 18 months and in whom Clinton had shown no further interest after that time, that is until she showed up on the Jones trial witness list? Further, Woodward is obviously very disdainful of Ken Starr, even at times taking unnecessary personal cheap shots at Starr. Michael Weisskopf's book "The Truth at Any Cost" is a much more balanced and fair treatment of Ken Starr and his investigation. Starr is much more believably portrayed in that book than the inaccurate characture Woodward draws in this book, one seemingly drawn based on a anti-religious bent on Woodward's part. While Woodward's writing is always very well done and his ability to ply insiders for information is unparalled making his books fascinating reading, this book would have benefitted from a little more journalistic detachment and a little less editorializing.
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