Rating: 
Summary: Wrting style detracts, low on detail
Review: It took twice as long as it should have to read this book due to long sentences filled with useless qualifying phrases. Also, from birth to White house in 50 pages, many of which have full page photos? Rumsfeld is surely more interesting than that. Lacks even a respespectable level of detail.
Rating: 
Summary: Awful
Review: Let me start by saying I certainly am no fan of Rumsfeld or his policies. Still, I wanted to read something about him that would give me a better understanding of who he is, what drives him and what events shaped his life.
Unfortunately, this book offered none of the above. From the first chapter it becomes abundantely clear that the author is a starry-eyed sycophant. Sure, it's an intimate portrait, one no doubt that's supposed to be flattering to the subject. I knew that going into it. But there is not even an attempt at objectivity anywhere in the book, and the ending about his endearing quality being "masculinity" is truly horrendous. Any controversy or criticism Rumsfeld experienced is glossed over, refuted or chalked up as some kind of liberal smear campaign. He receives credit for planning the Iraq war, yet when the author grudgingly acknowledges that the aftermath has not gone as planned, she says it's something "certain policymakers" never predicted. Uh, hello, the key "policymaker" was Rumsfeld, yet she never comes out and associates his name with underestimating the aftermath.Also, the book is poorly sourced, relying on a smattering of quotes from Rumsfeld and an occasional colleague. But there are ample citations of material that ran in other publications or on TV.
Sorry the review is so harsh, but I'm just not sure what audience this book is trying to reach. Venturing a guess, I'd say the same pre-teen girls who read Tiger Beat.
Rating: 
Summary: Original and insightful
Review: Midge Decter's blessedly compact and fascinating study of Donald Rumsfeld tells the story of how a 70 year-old guy became a sex symbol and how his appeal is tied to his Midwestern values and old-fashioned manliness. It's really great and a very good-looking book.
Rating:
Summary: Glamorizing America's War Criminal du Jour
Review: Midge Decter's paen to the current Secretary of Defense us a new low for the bought-and-paid for neo-conservative champions of George Bush and his minions.
Rating:
Summary: Stick to the bagels, Midge
Review: Midge Decter, matriarch of the celebrated Podhoretz bagel factory, here tries her hand at hagiography. It doesn't work -- particularly now that Rumsfeld's role in Iraq has been exposed. Still, some readers will enjoy her penchant for erotic prose. Example -- "He drew me down to the bed, panting and gasping. At that moment, I knew that our hearts would be one, and that I had finally found the master I had been seeking." Personally, I find this all a bit too much, and wish Midge would go back to her day job.
Rating:
Summary: Yup, Rummy is a warmonger
Review: Now that Donald Rumsfeld has admitted that he has never seen any strong evidence linking Saddam Hussein with Al Qa'ida, perhaps Midge Decter will acknowledge that it was always a lie. If there was never a link, did Rumsfeld tell Bush that there was? Then he was lying to the President, and lying the USA into an unnecessary war. Did he tell Bush that here was no such link? If he did, why did Bush say that there was, and take the USA into a war with no basis?
Anyway, why would a secular ruler like Saddam trust Al Qa'ida, who see him as a traitor to Islam? Why would Saddam risk everything, to give WMD (which he hadn't got) to his mortal enemies? Al Qa'ida attacked the USA; Saddam never did. So the right US response was to counter-attack against Al Qa'ida. They should have put ground troops into the areas of Afghanistan where bin Laden and his cronies were hiding, surrounded them and killed them. Instead of which, fool Bush attacked Iraq, where bin Laden wasn't! Doh. All the warmongering lies are now unravelling, and ordinary GIs and the Iraqi people are paying the price. Faith-based policies never work.
Rating:
Summary: irrelevant and unbalanced
Review: Now that Rumsfeld's perceived integrity and reputation is in the toliet, with litte chance of ever being rescued, this fawning book is pretty much irrelevant. I didn't think this book was terribly written, but now that Rumsfeld will go down as one of the worst Secretaries of Defense in this country's history, not very balanced.
Rating:
Summary: explaining Rumsfeld, but explaining us, too
Review: Reviewers have been unduly critical of this book. Yes, Decter's treatment of Rumsfeld is glowing and not always deep; this is not, nor is it intended to be, a work of objective biographical/historical analysis. It is, as the title says, a "personal portrait." It is "personal" in that it deals with a person but also in that it is Decter's own portrait--a work by a person who admires Donald Rumsfeld. And portraits only and quite literally scratch the surface of a person; they can capture only certain details and, if lucky, convey a hint of the subject's essence (not to mention that portraits contain more than a little of the creator). As a personal portrait, then, this book works quite well, and Decter does capture at least part of Rumsfeld's essence.
Decter is not so much interested in necessarily explaining why Rumsfeld does this or that as she is in why he became so popular during the Afghanistan War. To explain this, she chronicles his life--from his childhood outside Chicago to the present, including stops at Princeton, the Navy, Congress, the White House (as head of OEO and Chief of Staff), the Pentagon, and the private sector. Rumsfeld's unique management style draws from his entire career, but his popular appeal, Decter suggests, results from elements that were present from the beginning and that appear throughout his life: his midwestern, Middle American values (especially those specific to Chicago) and his old-fashioned manliness. He is a straight talker, who tells it like it is, in speech peppered with wit and colloquialisms ("Gosh!"). He exudes the values of the heartland--a family man devoted to protecting family and country. He seems to be full of vim and vigor.
I think Decter more than adequately explains why Rumsfeld has garnered celebrity status. Certainly, 9-11 contributed to it, by bringing war and by making people desire such a leader as Rumsfeld (among others). But the terrorist attacks and the war on terrorism can't explain everything. After all, others rose to prominence in the aftermath of 9-11 but didn't gain quite the dimension Rumsfeld did. So it seems to make sense that something else was at play--his values and manliness, as Decter argues--in generating his "sex appeal" and popularity. More in-depth biographies will no doubt follow in the future, ones that will explain why Rumsfeld did what he did and does, but Decter has done good work here, giving us a better picture of Rumsfeld and, indeed, a better picture of ourselves.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting subject, lousy writing style
Review: Rumsfeld is one of the most interesting individuals in politics in recent years. But this book is so poorly written it is worthless. It is certainly no critical analysis, and is very shallow. Rumsfeld is obviously a much more complex man than this cutesy book would indicate. The writing style is so distracting I keep losing the purpose of the book. Save your money and hope for a better biography of Rumsfeld in the future. I gave the book two stars because I think Rumsfeld is an extremely interesting subject. I would give the author a zero minus.
Rating:
Summary: A job for the psychoanalysts
Review: Simpering... fawning.... worshipful... grotesque... deranged... a few of the adjectives that immediately come to mind upon finishing this book, "Rumsfeld: A personal portrait" by Midge Decter. I originally endeavored to read this through for the sake of a larger editorial project. Ultimately, I found Decter's embarrassingly obsessive hyperbole to be profoundly distasteful. If you're looking for a balanced and objective analysis of this most controversial figure of today's charged and polarized political climate, this book is definitely not it. A hagiography of this magnitude addressed to any living being is revolting enough; but for the subject to be a man indirectly responsible for the life, death, and welfare (or lack thereof) of countless millions can only be a work of either gargantuan cheek, or befuddled dementia. And for this work to have been written by a 70-something minor player in the nasty neocon and Kissinger-esque world of assassination, coup d'etat, Weapons of Mass Distraction, and Orwellian doublespeak is truly disturbing. Perhaps this poor woman is experiencing a much-delayed second (or third) childhood and Donald Rumsfeld awakens in her the kind of turbulent and pubescent obsession that she once swooned out for her father or Elvis Presley. You can wring this book out like a sponge and be delivered of at least 2-1/2 gallons of saccharine necon whitewash and laughable spew. How this author can regard herself in the mirror or look her subject in the face is a question best left to the phalanx of psychoanalysts mandated to puzzling her out.
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