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Zusatztext “Hard-hitting. . . . A shrewd! nuanced view of Bush. . . . Smith embeds this portrait in a lucid! highly readable narrative! balancing rich detail with clear delineation of the larger shape of policy through the chaos of politics. This is a superb recap and critical analysis of Bush’s controversial administration.” Informationen zum Autor Jean Edward Smith taught at the University of Toronto for thirty-five years! and at Marshall University for twelve. He was also a visiting scholar at Columbia! Princeton! and Georgetown. He is the author of Bush ! a biography of the 43rd president; Eisenhower in War and Peace ; FDR ! winner of the 2008 Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians; Grant ! a 2002 Pulitzer Prize finalist; and John Marshall: Definer of a Nation . Zusammenfassung George W. Bush, the forty-third president of the United States, almost singlehandedly decided to invade Iraq. It was possibly the worst foreign-policy decision ever made by a president. The consequences dominated the Bush Administration and still haunt us today. In Bush , “America’s greatest living biographer” (George Will), Jean Edward Smith, demonstrates that it was not Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, or Condoleezza Rice, but President Bush himself who took personal control of foreign policy. Bush drew on his deep religious conviction that important foreign-policy decisions were simply a matter of good versus evil. Domestically, he overreacted to 9/11 and endangered Americans’ civil liberties. Smith explains that it wasn’t until the financial crisis of 2008 that Bush finally accepted expert advice, something that the “Decider,” as Bush called himself, had previously been unwilling to do. As a result, he authorized decisions that saved the economy from possible collapse, even though some of those decisions violated Bush’s own political philosophy. Bush is a comprehensive evaluation of the Bush presidency—including Guantanamo, Katrina, No Child Left Behind, and other important topics—that will surely surprise many readers. Controversial, incisive, and compelling, it is thoroughly researched and sure to add to the debate over Bush’s presidential legacy. ...
