W: Revenge of the Bush Dynasty

Rating:
Summary: A Compelling and Insightful Biography
Review: As a Texan, I especially appreciated how well Mitchell evokes the Midland landscape and people. I also found myself drawn into the compelling dramas of the Bush family, especially the way the family seemed to rally around George Senior and feel protective of him. Mitchell writes with empathy when describing the family's losses, but she can be sharp too-- when she describes their distaste for reading, for example. I felt as if I really knew these people, their foibles and their charms. Now when I see George W. Bush on television, even when he seems to be doing his best to be bland, I think about specific and well-told anecdotes in Mitchell's book that demonstrate both his tendency to take credit for things he's not responsible for, and his generosity and sense of humor. (I have to take issue with the reviewer who questions the reporting--Mitchell's sources are reliable ones, and it's not clear where the reviewer has found his facts.) I highly recommend this book. Mitchell tells the story with such care and insight that one can imagine what George W. might be like as a president. Not all political writers can tell a story so well, in such elegant and engaging prose.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but not exactly the most focused.
Review: As opposed to some of the other George W. biographies, it wasn't readily apparent whether the author was a fan of the not-yet president-elect. This adds a bit to the objectivity of the book. I feel I could believe the author.

I did think that she spent a bit more time than necessary at times talking about his father George and his brother Jeb. It is understandable that they do have an influence on W (the book points out where some ideas and phrases were borrowed for the father's and the brother's campaigns while W was running for governor), but I think the author went into more depth on them than was necessary.

One of the major factors in W's credibility is that he was governor of Texas. I don't think that the author spend enough time there to really give us a good idea of how his actions in office match his objectives for his campaign. I thought this could have used a bit more coverage.

Not the best biography out there, but I would still recommend reading it. When rea

Rating:
Summary: Where's the beef?
Review: Mitchell chooses to focus on the early years of Dubya, bringing him up as one would in a full length biography from his boyhood years to his formative years in the oil business and stumping for his father's political campaigns. She seems to have an overall favorable impression of Dubya, although she points out the various indescretions along the way, including his fraternity days at Yale.

I suppose this information is helpful to those who want to get a more familiar picture of Dubya, but my interest was in his political aspirations, his first bid for a US Representative seat from Texas (1978) and his successful bid for Governor of Texas (1994). Mitchell gives this period suprisingly short shrift. She also brushes over his oil ventures and the partnership he helped form to buy the Texas Rangers. She is critical of the leading role he assumed in the baseball partnership, and in the Presidential campaigns of his father, but in both cases gives him the benefit of the doubt.

She builds up the relationship between father and son and how Dubya more or less patterned his life after his father, achieving success only after his father had failed in his re-election bid. She notes how Dubya was the natural-born campaigner, able to reach out to the people where his father wasn't, and how his re-affirmation in the church helped him to gain this constituency. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of meat to this book, it capitalized on the attention Bush got after seizing the White House. There have been much more thorough books written since this publication.