Bush Books

An interesting insight into to the world of diplomacy and politics. Christopher Meyer's biting yet diplomatic comments on the behaviour of our leading politicians and their accolites, including our own Prime Minister and the President of USA, proved an absorbing read which I found difficult to put down!

This book has two strong points to recommend it.

First, with the poor quality and lack of depth in modern news reporting you don't know the story until the books come out.

Second, this book is written by a Briton who was closely associated with the Blair and Bush governments while the decision were being made regarding the war in Iraq. This is important because as a non-American Mr. Meyer doesn't have his own political axe to grind. He is neither a Bush hater nor a Bush lover who thinks that Bush can do no wrong.

One critical issue that he addresses is the decision to invade Iraq. Most of the Bush haters seem to believe that the president came to office with the intent of a war in Iraq. Mr. Meyer says no, but the details are too complex to list in a short review like this one.

All in all, this is a most interesting book that presents an outside view of the American presidential seen. It is well written, a fairly easy read, and seems fairly balanced.

Sir Christopher Meyer resigned as British ambassador in Washington just before the start of hostilities in Iraq. He has started a new career as chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, but his frequent appearances on television since he left the diplomatic service have been almost exclusively in connexion with his privileged insights into the origins of the war. The title of the book is a slight misnomer - most of it is indeed about his time as ambassador to the USA, but the first few chapters are partly concerned with his early life and career and partly with a personal issue that burns him up, namely his second wife's grisly experiences with German justice in obtaining access to her children from her first marriage.

In Britain the book has given rise to a good deal of comment for supposedly disparaging or even attacking prominent politicians, and I noticed that he had to appear before a parliamentary committee to respond to such points. These allegations are simply balderdash, and the politicians concerned have no business being so thin skinned in my own opinion. John Prescott's malapropisms are the stuff of legend, and the ones that Meyer records are not only relevant but vintage efforts too. They make Prescott look ridiculous, but nowhere near as ridiculous as his own over-reaction did. In any case Meyer's overall assessment of Prescott is fair and far from unfavourable, and he is not afraid to tell a similar story about himself - after three years of shuffling along presentation-lines he was overcome with a kind of catatonic amnesia, forgot his wife's name and introduced her to the puzzled grandees by various alternatives including `Christopher'. As for the other seemingly contentious matters, I find it difficult to imagine that even Jack Straw himself supposes he has very many groupies, and to find anything sensational about an account of seeing John Major partly dressed sets the qualifying-bar for sensation as low as I can ever recall. In fact the book seems to me conspicuously fair-minded in general. A British civil servant is required to be professionally neutral, but even when I knew him 40 years ago I never recall Christopher showing any particular political inclination. He has a strong streak of irreverence, but he is not a committed scoffer either. He has a fairly traditional sense of awe in respect of Churchill for instance, he was obviously impressed with Mrs Thatcher, and Blair's strongest opponents would be hard put to it to deny that he is what Meyer finds him to be - a bit of a genius in some ways.

The style of writing is light and informal, at least until we get to the really serious chapter entitled `War'. It is entirely free of the portentousness that one tends to associate with Whitehall mandarins called Sir Hector this and Sir Herbert that, but there was a time when no senior civil servant would have used `aftermath' to mean after-effect or `cataclysmic' to mean disastrous, just as there was a time when no eminent publishing house would have put a full stop in the name Harry S Truman. The early chapters are interesting in their own right, and the author comes across basically as the man I used to know all those decades ago, even looking 20 years younger than he is. I'm in no position to form an opinion about the clearly distressing issue of his wife's treatment by the German legal process, apparently supported by its British counterpart. Everyone seems to be wrong except Catherine, but for all I know that may be the truth of it. When it comes to the medical problem that he discloses near the end of the book, all I can do is to offer him my sincerest wishes for a full and speedy recovery.

The climactic section of the book is obviously the build-up to war in Iraq. Whatever one thinks of the ambassador's conclusions, this is an account such as nobody else could have given. This is the full-dress professional writing now, and the style changes noticeably. He sees reason to suspect that future historians will not deal very kindly with Bush and Blair over the issue, but however that turns out future historians will have a document to work on that they had no right to expect. Far from attacking the politicians I feel that Christopher gives them a good deal too much benefit of a good deal too much doubt. Be that as it may, he presents his evidence and his reasoning with scrupulous fairness and admirable clarity. He sees Blair as being convinced of the case for pre-emptive action before Bush was, he does not buy the usual caricature of Bush (nor do I), and he finds against allegations that war was decided on from the outset and the rest was lies. He fairly obviously believes that Blair's basic analysis is right but that the war was botched through haste. He was there and I wasn't, of course, but I wonder whether he has also - like the Blairs as he rightly says - been seduced by the proximity and glamour of America, to which he was a latecomer. Blair's stories about the WMD's take some explaining away, and it surely will not do to say that all the Washington hawks sincerely believed that Saddam was implicated in 9/11. What does `sincere' mean in this context? To me it means that they were letting their passions run away with their brains: a moment's rational reflection would surely have told anyone that Saddam was not likely to give assistance to an organisation that liked him little better than it liked America and that would give him problems he didn't need at a time when he didn't need them. I also wonder how this `sincerity' squares with the suspicion, stated some chapters earlier, that the attack on Iraq was displacement activity - Al Qaeda were elusive, so bomb someone and be perceived to be `doing something'. That is a view that seems more than persuasive to me.

This is the main section of the book, but there is a lot more to it, and the author's mindset makes his way of telling it all illuminating as well as highly readable. The squawks of outrage seem to have died down and I hope he took no notice of them. If Christopher has anything more to say on the Iraq war between adjudicating on press complaints, I shall be more than interested to hear it.

By which I mean it leans on occasion. The book's title originally led me to believe it was going to be a wholesale bashing of the Presidency of George W. Bush rather than a scholarly research piece. While the book ended up being well written and documented, I couldn't help but feel the author's claims and conclusions weren't at least a little bit biased against Bush. The author would often go out of his way to point out fallacies and mistakes in the Republican/Bush campaigns, while ignoring that the Democrat camps would often make mistakes that were just as egregious. Also, a very heavy reliance on the works of Bob Woodward raised questions. If you're looking for a strictly scholarly piece, this book is close, but no cigar. You can find much of the same valuable information in the book "Culture War" by Morris Fiorina, without the slant.

Gary Jacobson is a well-known student of American parties and elections. This book is fully up to his standards. The focus is the extent to which and the reason why President George W. Bush is "A Divider, and not a Uniter."

Jacobson notes that partisanship has been increasing in the United States for the past several decades. Little of what he has to say will be news to those who study elections and political parties in the United States, but he does a nice job of bringing different pieces of evidence together to explain why partisan divisions appear even greater than under Bush II (even more so than with Presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton). Among the factors: both parties in Congress have become more coherent and cohesive in their voting (that is, Rs voting with other Rs and Ds with other Ds) than three decades ago; Rs and Ds as candidates for office are more different ideologically from one another than in the past; the South having moved from Democratic controlled to Republican controlled has enhanced the party divide; activist partisans of both parties have moved further apart ideologically; even voters now differ by party more than they used to (although moderates still represent the plurality of voters). Jacobson mentioned others as well, but these provide a flavor.

Many tables abound to demonstrate the increasing partisan divisions. Throw in a President who mainly focuses on "appealing to the base" rather than reaching out to moderates or Democrats, and you end up with a divided public. Into this mix, the Iraqi War and Hurrican Katrina produce even greater polarization.

All in all, a good book to read for those interested in party politics and elections in the United States. It is also an interesting contrast to other books that claim that the mass of voters are not really so divided. Hence, interested readers might also take a look at Morris Fiorina, "Culture War?" for an alternative view.

We all know Bush is....well you know...And this book gives the documentation, not opinion, behind the title's premise. It's no surprise for most of us, but it's great to have the facts to back us up! The index is exemplary and zeros in wherever the reader may want to go quickly.

This a terrific book. It made the case for regime change with more reasons in fewer pages than any author I've read so far. It should be required reading for anyone who expects to go to the polls next November.

Great review of the Bush policies and their impact on us.

Most comprehensive review of the Bush policies that will help youch choose in November. No BS just facts and documented analysis!

"The Georse W. Bush Years" is both instructive and very amusing. The events which occurred during the period 2001 to 2007, the details of which are beginning to fade from memory, are set out in a matter-of-fact way in captions. Each caption is accompanied by one or more cartoons relating to the event described. The cartoons are witty and pointed. They seldom miss their mark. GWB, usually depicted in a helmet sporting the sign "Speak Slowly," comes in for a lot of ribbing, but so do other leaders, like Ahmadinejad, Blair and Bin Laden. I would highly recommend this book.

This is a fantastic collection of hard-hitting, laugh-out-loud [and sometimes cringe in shame!], highly informative political cartoons. Vadot's graphic style is completely original and engaging. This is a must-have, must-read for everyone from the completely uninitiated through to die-hard politicians. A solid reference of an unforgettable era, for years to come.

Given the plethora of Bush humor out in the wild, I expected a bit more savagery, droll humor, surgical dismemberment of the Bush psyche, and a truly withering assessment of this barely human life that has so despoiled our country and the world.

A very mild book that has the impact of a popcorn fart in a tornado.

A great collection of flying stories collected to span a period of aviation history in the far north. I enjoyed the book, and thought that the author did a good job of picking the stories to reflect not only humor, but some of the dangerous aspects of aviation. A very good collection and highly reccomended.
Another good read of a seldom mentioned segment of Northern aviation is Flying North South East and West: Arctic to the Sahara

This book is a collection of stories from veteran bush pilots who flew in Alaska from the 1930's through into the 1950's - both the early days and the "coming of age" of bush flying. Rather than trying to present a history of bush flying, the author as dedicated a chapter each to a number of different pilots and told their stories based on interviews with the pilots themselves and with people who knew them. The book's full of life and death adventure as well as what the routines of flying were like back then - which would give most pilots today a heart attack.

There's sure some interesting stories in the book - Mary Worthlake - the first licensed woman pilot in Alaska, Sig Wein (Noel Wein's brother), Bud Helmericks (who incidentally wrote a few books of his own, one of which, on the early days of bush flying in Alaska, is about to be republished apparantly). The author's self-stated goal was not to write biographies, but to create a series of portraits that would depict the early bush pilots in their own words. He only writes of pilots he could interview in person and he manages to cover about thirty of them. When he interview them, many were retired, some were octogenerians, a number that he would have liked to include had passed away. What the author wanted to do was tell their stories that up until this book, had usually only been told to friends and relatives and/or published as short accounts in a few local or regional papers and magazines.

He certainly succeeded in his self-appointed task. It's a great account which stirred my interest in the subject beyond a "that'd be interesting to know a bit more about" to "I really have to read a bit more on this subject." The book's got a reasonable selection of b&w photo's included as well - all in all, well worth reading.

The author was a commercial floatplane pilot himself who knew some of the pilots whose stories he tells before he started writing the book. The forward to the book is by Noel Merrill Wein, the son of Noel Wein - the founder of Wein Alaska Airlines - which says a little something all by itself. Overall, the book is highly readable, the accounts are well-told, interesting, some of them downright scary if you've ever flown in small planes over rugged country and can picture to yourself what it was like. After I started reading this, I found it hard to put down and now find myself looking out for more books by or about the bush pilots of that time.

I just finished this book and hated to put it down. I will buy a copy for a friend who flew in Alaska from 1951 to 1995 and who now flies in the Pacific Northwest. Many of the planes are somewhat familiar to me. I did not fly except as a passenger on a few flights in Alaska when I was there in the Air Force for 20 months in 1951 and '52. The Authors' descriptions of accidents and near accidents point up the difficulty of the combination of limitations of aircraft, landing options (or lack of), hazardous terrain and uncompromising weather. The surviving bush pilots used the most amazing skills to make a success of flying in such a formidable and hostile environment. Excellent book!

Forget the Constitution, the idealist views from high school textbooks, and what politicians tell you. This book tells how politics works and how things get done in Washington, D.C. It is an expose on the day-to-day operations in government. The information is honest and backed up with numerous examples.

I was so impressed with the material that I used the volume in my high school American Government classes.

Mr. Peters goes through many of his experiences in civil service and how Washingtonians perpetuate a system that does not work for the common man. This book brings insight for those who have not ever been or worked in our Nations capitol.

I've talked about this book with other people who have read it and the consensus is that it is a cynical book that doesn't educate the reader. But personally, I would rather read a book that is skeptical and willing to explain the problems of Washington to the reader than pretend that everything is fine and dandy while the problems fester. I agree with Mr. Peters that the bottom line is that there is a lack of accountability in the nation's capital. Mr. Peters understands that human beings are rational, intuitive creatures. The thing that was so crucial to the constitution and its success was its ability to get people to work in their own interests but channel that energy into constructive ends. What struck me after reading this book was that our current institutions act in the same rational manner but they have been misdesigned to reward unconstructive ends. America doesn't face a crisis, mind you. I dislike it when people raise alarm needlessly. But I feel that without an intelligent discussion about what our government can an should be, we face the prospect of national stagnation or worse.

The book is a jewel and must read for all aviation enthusiasts. It also covers a vast rich history of Alaskan wilderness rural life in the middle to late 20th century. Rudy aquaints the reader with many early aviation pioneers and insite to the contributions for the war effort the civilian pilots made during WWII in Alaska.
When starting to read this great true life adventure, prepare yourself for first class entertainment and a view into a segment of interesting recent American History.

Grif Hamilton

Rudy Billberg's experiences from from barnstorming to bush piloting as told to Jim Rearden portray a uniquely rich and exciting era of American history. I felt as though I was riding in the cockpit with Rudy buzzing everything from golden wheat fields in the midwest to brave grizzly bears in the Yukon. Bill Rohovit (bill_rohovit@we.xerox.com

Very entertaining story about a man and his desire to go in the opposite direction of the trend and experience his life as he wants to. This is a chance for the rest of us to get a taste of what it must be like to step into a life that our fears would otherwise keep us from ever doing. The courage of men like Rudy Billberg, help humankind to push the envelope of the human experience and continue the pushing for new challenges.

We are about to read Roy's book for the 2nd and 3rd times. It is excellent reading even for "San Juan Islanders" (those born on the island) who know the people, places and events that Roy encounters. But, even if you are a stranger to the islands, this book will capture you -- it will be hard putting it down before you are finished! This is a "keeper" and we have bought the book.
The Burtons, 6/2008

This book is 300+ pages of true stories from an aviation pioneer who started and ran the oldest surviving commuter airline in the US. Beginning shortly after WWII, Franklin went to work for a small flying outfit in the San Juan Islands of Washington State, ferrying passengers and freight from these small islands to the mainland and back again. Eventually, he bought the company and ran it until the late 70s, establishing the local airport which now bears his name in the process. You'll read stories of the unique people Franklin encountered along the way, together with tales of near misses, business troubles and the captivating beauty of these formerly isolated islands. The author's warmth and humor come through on every page, making the book seem like a conversation with a favorite uncle. It's a great read, and I heartily recommend it.

This is a wonderful book of aviation adventures in a remote area. Franklin is an amazing pilot and entrepreneur. He is also a man who had the steadfast dediction to make a living for his family in a risky and uncertain business. Franklin's hard work, love of flying and generosity come through on every page. I couldn't put this book down. I live in the San Juan Islands, and it's fascinating to hear about what Island life was like, and how much it has changed over the last 50 years.

This book probably should not be your introduction to jazz guitar; I would expect it to have more value to somebody who already knows some things and wants to be acquainted, as the title says, with styles. I did not buy the book for that reason; I bought it because I wanted to learn jazz guitar and my limited fretboard and theoretical knowledge kept me from understanding the WHY of WHAT I was playing. I can't recommend a good starting point but unless you have an advanced knowledge of the fretboard and/or jazz guitar, this is not it.

Anyone who is truly interested in expanding their jazz perameters must have this book in their music library. It is destined to become an integral part of any jazz musician's reference materials, if that musician aspires to the "higher ground."

As an avid musician and student, I found this instructional book with included CD, to be of phenomenal importance to my array of practicing. This is perhaps the greatest work of Jazz guitar pedagogy in the modern to post 60's Jazz/Rock era.
The book includes, detailed instructions covering a wide degree of material in a relative manner. This includes such aspects as single note soloing, chord voicing, cluster voicing, quartal harmony, and an array of odd meter times and exercises.
There's also a section on the history of effects and how they were applied to Jazz music. Plus a list of note worthy musicians was provided, with a detailed summary of their accomplishments in the Jazz guitar world.
A great deal of material is provided in this book. The included CD includes easy aural access to nearly all the exercises in this book. If you're interested in learning the endless possibilities of modern jazz, then this book is for you.

My neice checked this book out of her school library for a project. I scanned through it and was hooked! The techniques are simple but effective. Some of the moves are similiar to what I had been doing to relieve sinus and neck pain. Nice validation! Many can be done on your own, which is great for us single people. I immediately ordered my own copy!

i chanced upon this book and i'm so glad i bought it because i've seen only one other copy. at the time i bought this book i had just been newly practising the art of massage (on my very grateful boyfriend), and i found this a very useful step-by-step guide. the only reason i rated this four stars is because i haven't read enough massage books to make a definitive comparison. for beginners, i'd definitely recommend it.

The two reasons I bought this book were the striking photography and the ease of use. I was not disappointed. The routines are simple and can be done anywhere, which is great. I highly recommend it.