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Summary: The Threat of Political Dynasties Revealed
Review: This is a troubling book.Kevin Phillips, a former Republican strategist and current media pundit, sheds a new light on the danger of the growing trend political dynasty in this country. Along the way, he delivers a devastation attach on the Bush family image. The author offers enlightening research and insights into the Bush family history. Yet it is his portrayal of a growing entanglement between what was once temporary elected office and the permanent government that is cause for concern. This trend, Phillips argues, would have horrified our founding fathers. It comes as no surprise to me. In a age that relies on media as opposed to personal contact, name recognition and branding play an important role in our elections. This trend goes deeper than the Bushes. In my own state of Connecticut, we are surrounded by this dynastic trend. Our senior Senator is the son of a former Senator. To our north in Massachusetts, family politics dominate the political scene and have spilled over into Rhode Island. To our west, the junior Senator from New York has positioned herself for a run for the presidency, a position her husband recently held. Other than a brief acknowledgement of this trend, the author illustrates his thesis using four generations of Bush leadership. He shows how an alliance between George Herbert Walker and Samuel P. Bush before World War I solidified the family position on the national scene with a single-minded focus on the critical areas of energy, intelligence and finance. He argues the Bush family has marshaled all of its resources to create a political dynasty that gained access to the White House and further its family and ideological agenda. The author's reputation adds to the power of the book. Kevin Phillips has authored at least three brilliant books: The Emerging Republican Majority, The Politics of Rich and Poor and Wealth and Democracy. Hardly a flamethrower, he offered clarity. These books represented my first exposure to emerging national trends. Trained as a lawyer, he delivers a skillful and thought-provoking indictment against dynastic leadership. The book is worth reading, whether you think you agree with its premise or not.
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Summary: Hereditary Office Holders and the Death of Democracy
Review: You can tell Kevin Phillips is still a Republican by his frequent references to the "moral depravity" of President Bill Clinton, and his "many scandals." Non-Republicans know that all the so-called "scandals" were media events orchestrated by the extreme right, Whitewater by President Bush the Elder himself. But Mr. Phillips calls the Walker-Bush families on their own amorality, from WWI arms dealing (to both sides), re-arming Germany in the 1930s for dough, and the current messes in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and central America. Mr. Phillips details the incompetance of George H.W. Bush over the period 1970 to 1992 in his CIA-related and Vice and Presidential roles in overthrowing democracies, propping up dictators like Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, the Taliban, and the strange relationship of the Bush family with the Reverand Moon of South Korea and the bin Ladins of Saudi Arabia. The dynasty factor is, as the title suggests, a major theme through this work. Phillips discusses the growing number of American "dynasties" that have been developing over the last century, not merely in politics (Bush, Kennedy, Roosevelt, Taft, Dulles, etc.) but in business and entertainment as well. He compares these with Europe's experience with dynastic leadership and determines many similarities: Religious justification and being God's own chosen monarch --er, President. Grudge matches against individual heads of state, carried out across generations. Carrying over the same set of family retainers through generations. Of great pertinence today is the observation that, while one man of extraordinary abilities may found a dynasty, his son will probably not be his match, and things decline rapidly thereafter, until finally, about all that's left in the succeeding generations is attitude and the expectation of privilege. Note that the current occupant of the White House is 4th generation, and it explains a lot of our current economic and political situation. This book doesn't merely deal with the Walker-Bush dynasties. It traces the development of the military-industrial-financial-government-intelligence complex over a hundred years in the US and Europe. A surprisingly small number of men (yes, they're all men) from a small group of families keep appearing at the top. It's logical, not conspiratorial, that companies involved in war-related industries would find common interest in lobbying the government, getting into the government, and getting major government contracts. But it's disturbing that our intelligence services (once again under attack) have made such a point of recruiting from such a limited pool of "talent": Yale graduates who were members of the secret "Skull & Bones" fraternity. No doubt about it, Mr. Phillips argues, that dynastization -- accepted and even welcomed by the American public, as a kind of "branding" -- is a threat to our democracy. And the unholy linking of the weapons business, finance, secret intelligence and the federal government has become increasingly disastrous to the world as a whole.
Rating: 
Summary: Difficult reading
Review: The book was very difficult to read. The author uses long, run-on, complex and compound sentences. Further, the book is more philosophical than historical or factual.
Rating: 
Summary: Bright Spots But Unenven
Review: Despite my otherwise favorable impression of this book, I have a few criticisms: First, it makes the rather obvious point that power and wealth are passed along in a way that resembles a dynasty. This hardly requires stating. The sons and daughters of the rich go to the best schools; the rich are networked in such a way as to ensure family and friends get special privleges and jobs. As a result of all this, insiders know how to work the system. Bush happened to have the best network and team of machiavellians during the Florida elections, so he won. Second: I am very happy to have books that do in-depth evisceration of our current President, George W. Bush. While books by Al Franken, Molly Irvins, etc, have their place, their works read like a series of journalistic clippings. "American Dynasty" attempts to go in-depth but ends up spreading itself too thin, going back decades to trace the familial political/economic legacy of George W Bush. The author should have devoted one chapter exclusively to this, and then let it go. The book starts to hit stride, in my opinion, around Chapter 5 (the Enron-Halliburton Administration). This chapter, as well as the Chapters on Armaments, and the Religious right serve as useful introductions to these topics and his bibliography points the reader to books and websites for further research. Good book, but the reader should not get bogged down in "Dynasty" argument of the first part of the book; instead concentrate on the last two parts.
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Summary: Disappointing (Political Drivel)!!!
Review: This book is especially disappointing when considering how insightful and brilliant book his book the Emerging Republican Majority is. Unfortunately, Mr. Phillips book fails in three ways; he has long been unobjectly biased against conservates, number two he believes that political power is limited to only those in a position of wealth, and third he fails to ignore the misdeeds of other prominant political family's. Unfortunately his objectivity was also missing from his other recent work Wealth and Democracy : A Political History of the American Rich he argues that "politics is a hostage of money". He conveniently ignored declining turn out at the polls, and the fact that the American political system does possess political mobility. Instead he conveniently blames the wealthy for controlling the political system. One meerly needs to look at the elections of 1992 and 2000 to see the importance of average voter. For Unlike ancient Rome, the right to vote and participate is universal in this country and is available to all regardless of wealth, power, or inherited title. Second he ignored the fact that persons from average backrounds can rise from obscurity and relative poverty (Ronald Regan, Bob Dole, Bill Clinton etc.) and rise to the summit of political power.
This books one-sided portrail ignores the many misdeeds of Clinton's, Kennedys, Roosevelts, and Gore's who in effect used their own connections, charisma, and/or wealth in their own pursuit of wealth and power. This book is utterly unobjective and fails to rise above being a hachet job. It deserves to be included with other political drivel such as Michael Moore's Dude, Where's My Country.
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Summary: Michael J. Edelman, please read this book before reviewing!
Review: Michael J. Edelman (a top 50 reviewer?) claims that Phillips didn't mention the Kennedys or the Roosevelts. Statements like this come when you don't pick up a book and read it. All of us who actually read the book know very well that Phillips explicitly talks about the Kennedys, the Roosevelts, the Adamses, and a host of European dynastic families. Not only that, we know that Phillips also says that if Hillary Clinton were to win the presidency in 2008, that also would count as a dynasty. Had Mr. Edelman actually read the book he would have found that he focused on the Bushes for the simple reason that they, and not the Clintons or the Kennedys, who have had two separate family members to hold the nation's highest office (not to mention Preston Bush who was a senator or Jeb Bush who is a governor). Furthermore, they are intimately connected with the industrial military intelligence community that Eisenhower tried to warn us about. This is not "an election year potboiler" by any conceivable stretch of the imagination. It is an extraordinarily well researched, sober, nonsensationalistic, and academic student of many strains of American political life over the past century. More and more I think that Amazon should institute a pop quiz of some sort to separate reviewers who have read books from those who have. It is all too easy to write a vague, imprecise, foggy review of a book that one neither owns nor has read. But I think reviews like Mr. Edelman's are harming Amazon.com as a whole. It reduces the whole thing to a platform for partisan bickering. Surely none of us want that?
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Summary: Another cog in the "Hate Bush" wheel.
Review: I can not believe that I actually wasted my money on this dribble. I thought it was going to be a factual commentary on the Bush family. I couldn't finish it because of the author's poor writing This seems to have been written with an agenda in mind. It's just another cog in the wheelof people who hate George Bush. I truly have a hard time believing it's a best seller.
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Summary: Nonsensical
Review: Phillips' thesis is, at its core, that the Bush family has subverted democracy by devoting a good deal of its wealth and effort to obtaining government offices. He goes to great lengths to draw inferences that, he says, show a pattern of using influence to gain wealth. But what he doesn't mention is also recealing. He doesn't mention how the Kennedys or Roosevelts have used their far greater wealth and power to influence government. Nor does he mention how Al Gore's faather's Senate seat was obtained largely through the efforts and finaincial help of Armond Hammer, who, we learned after the fall of the USSR, was working largely in the interests of the USSR- or how Al himself continued to benifit from the help of Hammer. Or a thousand other examples of corruption among candidates in his preferred party. What Phillips has written is an election year potboiler, full of accusations and attemmpts to show guilt by association. Given the Republicans are for more likely than Democrats to have actually spent some time in the business world, as opposed to having spent their entire life in government, it's easy enough to show associations and claim this is proof of collusion. It's much harder to prove collusion is actually occuring, and this Phillips fails to do.
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Summary: Boring!
Review: As an independent minded voter, I generally like and support the Bush adminstration. I purchased the book to get what I hoped would be a well concieved argument against another four year year term in order to gain perspective on both sides of the issues. What I read was simply a regurgitation of classic DNC talking points. This is a boring book that I had to force myself to read at night until I was finally done.
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Summary: Thought provoking and nuanced
Review: American Dynasty is a thought-provoking and well-researched book. Unlike the polemical works by Al Franken or Michael Moore (or their conservatives counterparts such as Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh etc.), Phillips presents a nuanced and deeply disturbing look at American politics today. Phillips points out that no one, on either the Right or the Left, is completely clean and that our political system has become extremely corrupt and tilted toward special interests. But Phillips (a Republican) reserves his greatest criticism for the Bush family which he says has engaged in a disturbing and deeply consistent pattern of deceit and deception. Reviewers who charge that Phillips is unfair and that he engages in character assassination against Bush cannot have read this book very closely. Phillips points out similarities in behavior between Bush, Clinton, Johnson, Nixon, Kennedy and Reagan. His point, however, is that the Bush family has engaged in more egregious and more consistent patterns of deceit than these other presidents (he provides specific and very detailed evidence for this). He also acknowledges that dynasties are becoming more common in American politics overall but he argues, and convincingly so, that the Bush family has been more aggressive (and more successful) in building and maintaining a family dynasty than the Kennedys, the Clintons and other political American families. In general, the book is well-written, although a bit dry. It's not a book which you will read in one sitting. However, the chapter divisions make this an easy book to pick up and put down. The best chapters were, I think, the chapters on Texas economics and the growth of the Religious Right. The Texas economics chapters is frightening-here is a state and culture which boasts some of America's richest citizens but where there is a reluctance to share or spread the wealth. The results are disastrous-Phillips doggedly demonstrates the impact poor health care, poor schooling and a lack of social services have had on the state of Texas. Reading this one can only hope that Texas does not set a pattern for the rest of the US. The Religious Right chapter was equally chilling. Overall, the discussion of George H.W. Bush was the most illuminating. Bush created and maintained deeply misleading stories about who he is and what he has accomplished with his life. The myth of the Bush family presents a sharp contrast to the reality. My one complaint: I wish that there had been a greater discussion of the ties between the Bush family and the Saudis. I appreciate the discussions of the Bush connections to Enron etc. and there was some discussion of the connection between the Saudis and the Bush family but this needs to be discussed in greater detail. As an historian, I also had some minor quibbles with his discussions of monarchies and their restorations (specifically his discussion of the Stuart Restoration).
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