George W. Bush’s Memoir ‘Decision Points’ - Review - The New York Times The New York Times Books |In Bush Memoir, Policy Intersects With Personality Search Books | Books of The Times In Bush Memoir, Policy Intersects With Personality Photo President George W. Bush in 2007. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times George W. Bush ’s memoir “Decision Points” could well have been titled “The Decider Decides”: it’s an autobiography focused around “the most consequential decisions” of his presidency and his personal life from his decision to give up drinking in 1986 to his decision to invade Iraq in 2003 to his decisions regarding the financial crisis of 2008. It is a book that is part spin, part mea culpa, part family scrapbook, part self-conscious effort to (re)shape his political legacy. A dogged work of reminiscence by an author not naturally given to introspection, “Decision Points” lacks the emotional precision and evocative power of his wife Laura’s book, “Spoken From the Heart,” published earlier this year, though it’s a considerably more substantial effort than Mr.

Bush’s perfunctory 1999 campaign memoir, “A Charge to Keep.” Certainly it’s the most casual of presidential memoirs: how many works in the genre start as a sort of evangelical, 12-step confession (“Could I continue to grow closer to the Almighty or was alcohol becoming my god?”), include some off-color jokes and conclude with an aside about dog poop? The prose in “Decision Points” is utilitarian, the language staccato and blunt. Mr. Bush’s default mode is regular-guy-politico, and his moods vacillate mainly among the defensive and the diligent — frat boy irreverence, religious certainty and almost willful obliviousness. Continue reading the main story The Bush who emerges from these pages will be highly familiar to readers of Bob Woodward’s quartet of books on the administration or Robert Draper’s 2007 “Dead Certain”: a president fond of big ideas and small comforts (like a daily run); a chief executive known for his optimism, stubbornness and lack of curiosity.

At the same time “Decision Points” — sometimes deliberately, sometimes inadvertently — gives the reader an uncanny sense of how personality and the fateful interplay of personalities within an administration can affect policies that affect the world. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Along the way Mr. Bush acknowledges various mistakes. On his administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina he says, “As leader of the federal government, I should have recognized the deficiencies sooner and intervened faster.” On Iraq he says he regrets that “we did not respond more quickly or aggressively when the security situation started to deteriorate after Saddam’s regime fell,” that “cutting troop levels too quickly was the most important failure of execution in the war,” and that he still has “a sickening feeling every time” he thinks about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Still, he insists that “removing Saddam from power was the right decision”: “for all the difficulties that followed, America is safer without a homicidal dictator pursuing WMD and supporting terror at the heart of the Middle East.” In the course of this book Mr.

Bush hops and skips over many serious issues raised by critics, including the cherry-picking of intelligence by administration hawks in the walk up to the invasion of Iraq; the push for aggrandized executive power by the White House in the war on terror; and the ignoring of advice from the military and the State Department on troop levels and postwar planning. The former president does not address the role that the decision to divert resources to the war in Iraq played in the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, instead arguing that “the multilateral approach to rebuilding, hailed by so many in the international community, was failing.” He tries to play down the problems of Guantánamo Bay, writing that detainees were given “a personal copy of the Koran” and access to a library among whose popular offerings was “an Arabic translation of ‘Harry Potter.’ ” And he asserts that “had I not authorized waterboarding on senior al Qaeda leaders, I would have had to accept a greater risk that the country would be attacked.” Mr. Bush does not grapple with the role that his deregulatory, free market policies played in fueling the economic meltdown at the end of his second term.

Nor does he take any responsibility for the fierce partisanship and political divisiveness that took root in his administration. Photo Credit Jake Guevara/The New York Times Several times in the book Mr. Bush uses the term “blindsided” to describe his feelings about a crisis that his advisers and cabinet seem not to have filled him in on. He says he felt “blindsided” over Abu Ghraib: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld “had told me the military was investigating reports of abuse at the prison, but I had no idea how graphic or grotesque the photos would be,” he writes. “The first time I saw them was the day they were aired on ‘60 Minutes II.’ ” Mr. Bush says he told advisers he “never wanted to be blindsided like that again,” after a showdown between the White House and the Justice Department over a secret surveillance program. And he says “we were blindsided by a financial crisis that had been more than a decade in the making”: his focus, he writes, “had been kitchen-table economic issues like jobs and inflation.

I assumed any major credit troubles would have been flagged by the regulators or rating agencies.” Many books by reporters and former insiders have delineated the Bush administration as given to improvisatory decision making, wary of the traditional processes of policy review and inclined to favor loyalty over expertise. In “The Assassins’ Gate,” the New Yorker writer George Packer quoted Richard N. Haass, a former director of policy planning in the State Department, saying that a real weighing of pros and cons about the Iraq war never took place. And in “The Next Attack” Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon wrote that planning efforts for the war were often not coordinated, that many officials were working out of channels, “issuing directives without ever having their plans scrubbed in the kind of tedious, iterative process that the government typically uses to make sure it is ready for any contingency.” Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy In many respects this volume ratifies such observations. Mr.

Bush, famous for being a “gut player,” writes that in assessing candidates for administration jobs, he looked at “character and personality” in an effort to create a culture that “fostered loyalty — not to me, but to the country and our ideals.” In 2006 an aide told him that “several people had spontaneously used the same unflattering term to describe the White House structure,” he writes. “It started with ‘cluster’ and ended with four more letters.” And he writes about “squabbling within the national security team” and how “nothing worked” to cool these turf battles, including his own talks with Mr. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Vice President Dick Cheney and the national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Despite the eagerness of Mr. Bush to portray himself as a forward-leaning, resolute leader, this volume sometimes has the effect of showing the former president as both oddly passive and strangely cavalier. For instance Mr. Bush writes about the failures to contain deteriorating security conditions in Iraq, continuing fights between the Pentagon and State Department, and his frustrations with Mr. Rumsfeld.

But while he says that he had “planned to make a change at Defense as part of a new national security team” in 2004, he adds that he simply couldn’t come up with a replacement for Mr. Rumsfeld. He considered and rejected the ideas of putting Ms. Rice or Senator Joseph I. Lieberman in the job, and was rebuffed by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, who “was enjoying his retirement.” The situation in Iraq continued to deteriorate over the next two years with more and more soldiers and civilians getting killed and wounded, and in the spring of 2006 a group of retired generals spoke out against Mr. Rumsfeld. “While I was still considering a personnel change,” Mr. Bush writes, “there was no way I was going to let a group of retired officers bully me into pushing out the civilian secretary of defense. It would have looked like a military coup and would have set a disastrous precedent.” And so Mr. Rumsfeld stayed on in the job until an old friend of Mr. Bush’s from high school and college (whom he had appointed to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board) suggested Robert M. Gates as a replacement.

“Why hadn’t I thought of Bob?” Mr. Bush wonders. Mr. Bush’s portrait of Mr. Cheney reaffirms many reporters’ depiction of him as a steamrolling force for military intervention in Iraq. And Mr. Bush’s description of the momentum toward war echoes that found in Mr. Woodward’s book “Plan of Attack,” in which there was building pressure for action: Mr. Bush says that the Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, told him “the uncertainty was hurting the economy,” and that Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia told him “the Middle East wanted a decision.” But while many books like “The Bushes” by Peter Schweizer and Rochelle Schweizer and “The Bush Tragedy” by Jacob Weisberg have emphasized the differences between George W. Bush and his father — and No. 43’s need to differentiate himself from No. 41 — the younger Bush takes pains in this memoir to underscore his closeness with his dad.

He says that during family Christmas celebrations in 2002 his father said: “You know how tough war is, son, and you’ve got to try everything you can to avoid war,” and then added, “But if the man won’t comply, you don’t have any other choice.” Later, after Bush the Younger gave the order to go to war, he says that his father sent him a note saying: “You are doing the right thing. Your decision, just made, is the toughest decision you’ve had to make up until now. But you made it with strength and with compassion.” Mr. Bush says he left office satisfied that “I had always done what I believed was right.” Since then, he says, he’s comfortably settled back into ordinary life. Shortly after moving to Dallas, he writes, he took his dog Barney for an early morning walk: “Barney spotted our neighbor’s lawn, where he promptly took care of his business.

There I was, the former president of the United States, with a plastic bag on my hand, picking up that which I had been dodging for the past eight years.” DECISION POINTS ‘Decision Points’ Tour Puts Bush in Spotlight - The New York Times The New York Times Media |With Book, Bush Is Back in Spotlight Search Continue reading the main story George W. Bush will end a self-imposed silence about his presidency in an NBC prime-time special on Monday, the eve of the release of his memoir, “Decision Points.” That the interviewer will be Matt Lauer, the co-host of the “Today” show, reveals calculations by Mr. Bush and his advisers, as well as a campaign by NBC. In the past, the first interview of a controversial ex-president would be expected to go to the nation’s top evening news anchor, currently NBC’s Brian Williams. By choosing the top morning anchor instead, both sides are essentially endorsing the soft power of Matt Lauer. “He’s an extraordinarily fair interviewer,” said Jim Bell, the executive producer of “Today” and of the prime-time special.

“We’re living in a time when some of television news is partisan, and Matt and the ‘Today’ show are decidedly not so.” That was a selling point for Mr. Bush and his advisers, who decided that “the first interview should be in a news context, with a network news anchor,” said David Drake, a senior vice president of Crown, the publisher of “ Decision Points .” Continue reading the main story For NBC, the interview — which was taped over the course of two days in Texas late last month — is a major coup. “They talked about every subject under the sun,” said Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, who observed that Mr. Bush “has things he wants to get off his chest.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story But critics of Mr. Bush — and there are many, with polls showing that most Americans still hold an unfavorable view of him — who would like to see a televised confrontation over issues like the Iraq war may come away disappointed. The tone of the prime-time special is conversational, not prosecutorial, and for that reason, “Lauer/Bush” is not likely to join “Frost/Nixon” in the public imagination. Mr.

Bell pointedly called the special “a conversation with President Bush about his book,” not just his presidency. Many tough questions are asked, and the word “torture” is used, Mr. Bell emphasized, but it comes down to tone. Dana Perino, who was a White House press secretary while Mr. Bush was in office, said that tone was an important consideration for the TV book tour. “He’s not interested in having a debate about the policies,” Ms. Perino said of Mr. Bush. She elaborated later: “There’s been plenty of debates about the decisions he has made. Now he’s trying to explain what he was going through, and the conditions he was working under.” Doris Kearns Goodwin, the presidential historian, said Mr. Bush’s televised interview was not likely to deviate from the words in his memoir. But “there is some value in seeing his mood,” she said, including his attitude about the memoir itself. (Ms. Goodwin was a paid contributor to NBC until 2008.) To get the first shot at the Bush interview, each major television network pieced together its best proposal — a “package,” Mr.

Drake said — and at least one other offered a prime-time special like NBC’s. He declined to share specifics, but said “it was a close decision.” The NBC interview is the start of a book tour like almost no other. Mr. Bush will sit down with Oprah Winfrey and Rush Limbaugh, as well as with all three prime-time hosts on the Fox News Channel this week. There will be print interviews, too, but the only one announced so far is with AARP The Magazine. Andrew Tyndall, who publishes a newsletter about the television news business, The Tyndall Report, said he suspected that Mr. Bush and his aides were striking a balance by selecting Mr. Lauer for the first interview. “On the one hand, you’re looking for comfort,” Mr. Tyndall said. “On the other hand, you don’t want the interview to be perceived as a series of softballs.” Photo Matt Lauer of “Today” interviewing George W. Bush in his first one-on-one interview since leaving the White House. The special will be shown on Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern time. Credit Peter Kramer/NBC NBC executives privately agreed with that assessment, and said they thought that Mr.

Bush would not have felt as comfortable with the network’s other top interviewers. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Asked whether Mr. Williams or the “Meet the Press” moderator David Gregory pursued the interview, Mr. Capus said “I’m sure they did,” but that “Matt was the official push from NBC News and I’m thrilled that we got it.” Mr. Capus said that Mr. Lauer had a “rapport” with Mr. Bush in prior interviews. Along with comfort, audience size was important. “Today” is both the top-rated morning show and a highly sought-after outlet for authors. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy The Bush interview will be the biggest showcase in the 30-year career of Mr. Lauer, and it is certain to be one of his most scrutinized. (He declined an interview request last week; a “Today” spokeswoman said he wanted the interview to speak for itself.) Until now, Mr. Tyndall said, arguably Mr.

Lauer’s biggest interview was in 1998, when he spoke with Hillary Rodham Clinton and she introduced “vast right-wing conspiracy” into the lexicon. “I think it made his reputation as a hard-news man,” he said. Mr. Lauer has co-hosted “Today” for 13 years, and in that time the center of gravity at the network news divisions has shifted to the morning from the evening. Television executives say that he is now perched at or near the top of the A-list interview hierarchy, along with Ms. Winfrey and the correspondents on “60 Minutes.” Some say “The View,” Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters and Katie Couric all also belong in the same breath. “When you look across the playing field right now, you see Larry King stepping down; you see Oprah’s show going away. Matt’s really at the top right now,” Mr. Bell said. In 2006 Mr. Lauer signed a five-year contract extension, which would have expired in early 2011, though it has reportedly been extended beyond that date. To bolster his chances in the interview chase, Mr. Lauer had a letter delivered to Mr.

Bush on the day of President Obama’s inauguration. Mr. Lauer and NBC kept pitching. Although one of Mr. Bush’s daughters, Jenna Bush Hager, is a part-time correspondent for “Today,” that had no effect on the booking, Mr. Bell said. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Early excerpts of the NBC interview have already made news, including Mr. Bush’s statement that he was a “dissenting voice” in the run-up to the Iraq war and that Kanye West calling him a “racist” was “one of the most disgusting moments in my presidency.” After the prime-time hour, called “Decision Points” like the book, Mr. Bush will return to NBC on Wednesday for a live interview on “Today,” in part to react to the initial interviews. Later, NBC’s cable arm, MSNBC, will both repeat the prime-time special with Mr. Lauer and show an additional hour of interview excerpts. Asked if that crossed the line into outright book promotion, Mr. Capus said: “That’s not our role. We’re there to do a journalistic interview.” Each Bush interviewer gets a special bite of the apple this week and next. Ms. Winfrey, whose taped interview will be shown Tuesday, visited Mr.

Bush’s parents in Kennebunkport, Me. Mr. Limbaugh will have the first live interview with Mr. Bush around noon on Tuesday. Sean Hannity will interview Mr. Bush on the radio Tuesday afternoon and on television Tuesday night. Of the other Fox hosts, Bill O’Reilly’s turn is Thursday and Greta Van Susteren’s is Friday. Ms. Van Susteren is the only interviewer to visit Mr. Bush’s archives at Southern Methodist University. Later on, there will be interviews on “CBS Sunday Morning,” with his wife Laura; on CNN in prime time, with his brother Jeb; on “Fox & Friends”; and, on Nov. 18, on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.” Even last week’s release of Bush interview excerpts by NBC and by “The Oprah Winfrey Show” was tightly controlled to whet the appetite of book buyers. Ms. Perino, who has been working for Crown since June on the book rollout, said Mr. Bush’s solitude since leaving office had heightened anticipation about the memoir and the interviews. “Had he been out there talking and opining regularly, then there probably wouldn’t be as much interest,” she said.

A version of this article appears in print on November 8, 2010, on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: With Book, Bush Is Back In Spotlight. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe Press Release: Decision Points by George W. Bush To Be Published By Crown November 9, 2010 - The Crown Publishing Group The Crown Publishing Group Books Authors Communities Features Reader's Guides Press Releases Contact Us Feature Sites Featured Title Books by Category History House & Home Humor Interior Design Job Hunting Literary Fiction Music Mystery & Thrillers Pets Photography Politics Science Self-Help Spirituality and Religion Sports Writing Books by Imprint Press Release: Decision Points by George W. Bush To Be Published By Crown November 9, 2010 Contact: FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH’S MEMOIR, DECISION POINTS, TO BE PUBLISHED BY CROWN ON NOVEMBER 9, 2010 — Publisher Unveils Book Jacket — [RAW] [/RAW] New York, NY (April 26, 2010) — Decision Points, by George W.

Bush, will be published on November 9, 2010, by Crown Publishers. This groundbreaking new brand of memoir will be centered on the fourteen most critical and historic decisions in the life and public service of the 43rd President of the United States. The book will be released simultaneously in the U.S. and Canada in hardcover, e-book, and audio formats. The announcement was made today by Tina Constable, Vice President, Publisher, Crown Publishers, who also unveiled the book jacket, which is available at CrownPublishing.com/category/press-releases . Since leaving the Oval Office, President Bush has given virtually no interviews or public speeches about his presidency. Instead, he has spent almost every day writing Decision Points, a strikingly personal and candid account revealing how and why he made the defining decisions in his consequential presidency and personal life.

In gripping, never-before-heard detail, President Bush brings readers inside the Texas Governor’s Mansion on the night of the hotly contested 2000 election; aboard Air Force One on 9/11 in the gripping hours after America’s most devastating attack since Pearl Harbor; inside the Situation Room in the moments before launching the war in Iraq; and behind the Oval Office desk for his historic and controversial decisions on the financial crisis, Hurricane Katrina, Afghanistan, Iran, and other issues that have shaped the first decade of the 21st century. The former President offers intimate, unprecedented details about his decision to quit drinking, his discovery of faith, and his relationships with his family. He writes honestly and directly about his flaws and mistakes, as well as his historic achievements in reforming education, providing life-saving treatments for HIV/AIDS and malaria for millions of people in Africa, safeguarding the country from another terrorist attack, and other areas. Decision Points will carry a suggested retail price of $35. A cloth-bound, signed, and numbered limited edition of 1,000 copies, priced at $350, is also planned.

At publication, the former President will embark on a national book tour, details of which will be announced in the coming months. Crown Publishers is an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., whose parent company is Bertelsmann AG. George W. Bush's 'Decision Points': 'Competent, readable and flat' George W. Bush's 'Decision Points': 'Competent, readable and flat' Gallery By George W. Bush Crown. 497 pp. $35 All is sweet reason in " Decision Points ," George W. Bush 's account of his eight-year presidency and some of the events -- quitting drinking, serving as governor of Texas -- that preceded it. To be sure there are a few hints of the pugnacity Americans came to know so well -- barbs directed at the press, the professoriate, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a few other sitting ducks -- but Bush as he presents himself here is calm, deliberative, reasonable, open-minded, God-fearing, loyal, trustworthy, patriotic. This should come as no surprise.

The presidential memoir as it has evolved, especially in the wake of recent presidencies, is not a memoir as the term is commonly understood -- an attempt to examine and interpret the writer's life -- but an attempt to write history before the historians get their hands on it. Yes, from time to time mistakes must be acknowledged -- on the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction , for instance, "I had sent American troops into combat based in large part on intelligence that proved false," or on Katrina , "The problem was not that I made the wrong decisions. It was that I took too long to decide" -- but the clear purpose of these non-apologies is to humanize the person making them, and to make us like him better for making them. The presidential memoir is a creature of relatively recent invention, a product of the post-World War II era and one that has, to all intents and purposes, no older precedent. Only two memoirs by former presidents are worth reading today. The first, Ulysses S. Grant's two-volume " Personal Memoirs " (1885-86), is almost entirely about his military career and makes only passing reference to his two terms in the White House. The second is Harry S.

Truman's memoirs, also two volumes: "Year of Decisions" (1955) and "Years of Trial and Hope" (1956). Both of these books were written in hopes of rescuing their authors from dire financial circumstances (both succeeded in that regard, though the beneficiary of Grant's hefty sales was his widow, Julia), and both were actually written by the former presidents. They had research assistance, but the hand holding the pen was the president's own. Both memoirs, it also should be added, are works of genuine distinction, Grant's most particularly. Of the postwar presidents who lived long enough to assemble their autobiographies, not a single one produced a book of any real merit. It's not so much that they're bad books as that they're dull ones, reducing flesh-and-blood presidents -- all of them interesting men, no matter how one may feel about them politically or ideologically -- to cardboard figures representing Virtue in various forms, described in prose that for the most part appears to have been put together by committee, or a computer on autopilot. "Decision Points" is no exception. It's competent, readable and flat.

The voice in which it is written is occasionally recognizable as that of George W. Bush -- informal, homespun, jokey -- but more often it's the voice of a state paper, impersonal and dutiful. As anyone who reads The Post in print or online is fully aware by now, "Decision Points" contains no "news" of any real significance. Going to war over the WMDs that Iraq didn't have was a blunder, but that has been acknowledged for a long time by many veterans of the Bush administration, all of whom continue to insist, as does Bush himself, that "the world was undoubtedly safer with Saddam gone," a claim that, in light of Middle Eastern events post-"shock and awe," certainly merits challenge. The shipboard display of triumphalism under the "Mission Accomplished" banner was "a big mistake," to put it mildly. So, Dick Cheney volunteered to withdraw from the ticket in 2004. Doesn't just about every vice president do that, as a pro-forma courtesy? As for Hurricane Katrina, it was handled clumsily at best, but we all knew that. And so forth.

Bush is smart enough to understand that a memoir asserting nothing except achievements and victories would have serious credibility problems -- especially a memoir dealing with a presidency as polarizing as that of Bush II, though of course he doesn't give the subject anything approximating the attention it deserves. When he does raise the subject, it is with a mixture of candor and self-delusion. He is absolutely right to say that "the breakdown in bipartisanship was bad for my administration and bad for the country, too," and doubtless it's true that some Democrats "never got over the 2000 election and were determined not to cooperate with me," but saying that "no doubt I bear some of the responsibility as well" doesn't begin to tell the tale. During his White House years, Bush liked to characterize himself as "the decider," a self-portrait that he continues to paint (hence its title) in "Decision Points." A lesson he "took from [Theodore] Roosevelt and Reagan," he writes here, "was to lead the public, not chase the opinion polls. . . .

As I told my advisors, 'I didn't take this job to play small ball.' " Whether this is the real person or a calculated persona is impossible to say, at least for anyone outside Bush's inner circle, but in presidential practice it took the form of a pugnacity toward the opposition -- especially as engineered by Cheney in the vice president's office and Karl Rove in the White House -- that virtually asked for a breakdown in bipartisanship. Surely the transformation of George W. Bush from a genuinely bipartisan governor of Texas to a fiercely partisan president of the United States has more than a little to do with the kind of advice he got when he rose to the higher office. There are hints here of the president he could have been if he had paid closer attention to the example of his father and less to the bellicose neoconservatives whose voices he heeded so often and to such unhappy effect. As governor of Texas he had personal knowledge of the need for immigration reform and free-trade treaties, and he tried hard to pursue both as president, against much opposition within his own party as well as among Democrats. What he says on the matter is important: "The failure of immigration reform points out larger concerns about the direction of our politics.

The blend of isolationism, protectionism, and nativism that affected the immigration debate also led Congress to block free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. I recognize the genuine anxiety that people feel about foreign competition. But our economy, our security, and our culture would all be weakened by an attempt to wall ourselves off from the world. Americans should never fear competition. Our country has always thrived when we've engaged the world with confidence in our values and ourselves." He's right, as he is when he says a bit later: "Free and fair trade benefits the United States by creating new buyers for our products, along with more choices and better prices for our consumers. Trade is also the surest way to help people in the developing world grow their economies and lift themselves out of poverty. According to one study, the benefits of trade are forty times more effective in reducing poverty than foreign aid." This has been especially true in recent years in Latin America, a part of the world to which Bush, to his great credit, gave considerably more attention than most presidents.

It will not be surprising if, when the passions of the present day have faded and history has a chance to examine the Bush presidency, his efforts to improve immigration laws and cut through trade barriers are recognized as among its most laudable aspects. These are, to me, the most interesting and appealing parts of "Decision Points," but unfortunately they are very brief. Bush wants to clean up the record on Iraq, Afghanistan, stem-cell research, Katrina and all the other major controversies that shaped, and bedeviled, his administration. This is understandable. No one who has been at the very epicenter of world affairs for a full eight years wants to be judged unkindly by history, to which in the end every president turns his attention and his hopes. It's a pity, though, that in the process of presenting himself before the bar of history he didn't make a good book out of it. In the light of precedent, that was to be expected. Yardley is The Washington Post's book critic.

© 2010 The Washington Post Company Memoir by George W Bush to be published in November | World news | The Guardian World news Memoir by George W Bush to be published in November Former US president writes about 'never-before-heard detail' of 9/11, his alcoholism, and mistakes and achievements while in White House Sunday 25 April 2010 20.36 EDT First published on Sunday 25 April 2010 20.36 EDT Close This article is 6 years old The autobiography of George W Bush will go on sale in November, offering the former US president's take on the September 11 terrorist attacks, as well as personal issues such as his battle with alcoholism. The cover of the book, entitled Decision Points, features Bush standing alone in the White House's rose garden colonnade holding a presidential briefing book. Bush has said the book will not be a memoir but an account of key decisions in his presidency and personal life.

According to Crown Publishers, it will offer "gripping, never-before-heard detail" on 9/11 and the 2000 presidential election as well as his decision to quit drinking and insights into his family life. "Since leaving the Oval Office, President Bush has given virtually no interviews or public speeches about his presidency," Crown said in a statement. "Instead, he has spent almost every day writing Decision Points." A publishing industry source said Bush had completed a first draft and was editing the manuscript at his office in Dallas. A former White House speechwriter, Chris Michel, is helping. The source was unsure whether Bush had compared notes with his wife, Laura Bush, whose memoir comes out 4 May. Bush was known for not acknowledging errors, but Crown said he "writes honestly and directly about his flaws and mistakes, as well as his historic achievements." The former president will promote Decision Points through a tour of the US. The tome will sell for $35 (£23). One thousand signed, clothbound copies will also be available for $350 each. Book review: 'Decision Points' by George W.

Bush - latimes YOU ARE HERE: LAT Home → Collections → George W Bush Book review: 'Decision Points' by George W. Bush The former president delivers an unexpectedly engrossing rehash of what he considers to be the pivotal moments of his eight years in office. November 10, 2010 |By Tim Rutten | Los Angeles Times Former U.S. President George W. Bush waves while signing copies of his new… (Tom Pennington / Getty Images ) The first great American autobiographies both appeared in the 19th century, were born of conflict and written by public men — "The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass" and "The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant." Since then, what we might call the publishing-industrial complex has turned the reminiscences of our public men and women into a never-ending stream. As former President George W. Bush — barely two years out of office — points out in the acknowledgement of his memoir, "Decision Points," virtually every member of his extended, very political family has published a bestseller, including his parents' dogs. Where does Bush's account of his astonishingly eventful eight years rank in such company?

Probably far higher than many of his detractors expected. As Bush writes in "Decision Points," he enjoys surprising those who underestimate him. As the title suggests, the former chief executive elected to abandon the usual chronological approach to these volumes (except for a brief, obligatory foray into childhood and school years) in favor of his recollection of his presidency's key choices and the personal decisions that Bush says prepared him to make them. Foremost among the latter were his conversion to active Christianity, which he attributes to an after-dinner talk that evangelist Billy Graham gave to the extended Bush family at their Maine compound, and to participation in his male friends' Crawford, Texas Bible study group. According to Bush, he continued to read the Bible every morning of his presidency — like his daily run, a comforting habit. Bush credits his religious awakening, along with a growing sense of obligation to his wife and daughters, with his other foundational personal choice: the decision to quit drinking after a night of boorish overindulgence in celebration of his Laura's 40th birthday. It's a change Bush credits with making possible his subsequent public life. Leaks and an active publicity campaign of television and radio appearances have made many of the substantial points Bush makes rather familiar.

Essentially, "Decision Points" confirms many of the better nonfiction accounts of his presidency published while he was in office, particularly Bob Woodward's four volumes and Robert Draper's "Dead Certain." The Bush White House may not have been given to doubts or its chief executive to indecision, but it did have a penchant for ad hoc deliberation, stubborn persistence in the face of failure — as in Iraq up to the surge — excessive personal loyalty and for being "blind-sided" by events beyond the unforeseeable tragedy of 9/11. Nearly midway through "Decision Points," Bush writes that, "History can debate the decisions I made, the policies I chose, and the tools I left behind. But there can be no debate about one fact: After the nightmare of September 11, America went seven and a half years without another successful terrorist attack on our soil. If I had to summarize my most meaningful accomplishment as president in one sentence, that would be it." For that reason, Bush is singularly unapologetic and clear about the fact that he personally ordered the torture of key Al Qaeda members, who CIA interrogators were convinced held information of other planned terrorist attacks.

(Bush also continues to insist that waterboarding is not torture.) When then-CIA Director George Tenet asked whether he had permission to waterboard Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind, Bush replied, "Damn right." Bush writes that about 100 "terrorists" were placed in the CIA interrogation program and that about a third "were questioned using enhanced interrogation"; three were waterboarded. All, according to Bush, gave up usable intelligence that thwarted other acts of terrorism. Other reports have contradicted that assertion, but Bush is firm on the point. Similarly, he writes that his stomach still churns over the fact that he and the rest of the country were misled by faulty intelligence concerning Saddam Hussein's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, but that the nation and world still are better off with the Iraqi dictator deposed. His only real regret, in fact, is that he failed to act more rapidly and decisively when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. Many readers will be surprised by Bush's warm account of his cooperative relationship with the late Sen. Edward Kennedy and his disappointment that they were unable to push through comprehensive immigration reform, which both felt was within a vote or two of their grasp.

Given the contentious political use Karl Rove and other Bush aides made of abortion, readers also may be interested in the former president's unfailingly respectful discussion of the abortion-rights advocates with whom he disagrees. (There's also something amusing about Bush's account of urging the late Pope John Paul II not to waver in his pro-life convictions.) George W. Bush to release memoir on November 9 George W. Bush to release memoir on November 9 George W. Bush to release memoir on November 9 NEW YORK (Reuters) â George W. Bush, whose presidency was marked by the September 11 attacks and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will release a memoir on November 9, his publisher said on Monday. The book, "Decision Points," will center on 14 decisions Bush made in his eight years as president, including "his flaws and mistakes, as well as his historic achievements," The Crown Publishing Group said in a statement. Bush will do a national tour to promote the book, which will sell for $35, said Crown, a Random House imprint, which is part of the German media giant Bertelsmann AG.

The former Texas governor left the White House in January 2009 with one of the lowest presidential approval ratings in history, with the unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the financial crisis weighing on his legacy. "President Bush brings readers inside the Texas Governor's Mansion on the night of the hotly contested 2000 election; aboard Air Force One on 9/11 in the gripping hours after America's most devastating attack since Pearl Harbor; inside the Situation Room in the moments before launching the war in Iraq," said the publisher. Bush also writes about "his historic and controversial decisions on the financial crisis, Hurricane Katrina, Afghanistan, Iran, and other issues that have shaped the first decade of the 21st century." The book will also discuss Bush's decision to quit drinking, his discovery of faith and family relationships. by Anonymous reply 1 04/26/2010 As if he wrote a single word of that memoir himself. He probably wasn't even in the room when it was written. by Anonymous reply 3 04/26/2010 Like Hillary Clinton, he will be careful never to have read it so he can't be held responsible for the lies that are in it.

by Anonymous I think the DL should rewrite it for him. by Anonymous 04/26/2010 Dear Diary, Dick told me he teaches people real life. He said, real life sucks losers dry. You want to fuck with the eagles, you have to learn to fly. I said, so, you teach people how to spread their wings and fly? She said, yes. I said, you're beautiful. by Anonymous That will be a one-sentence chapter. "It was September 14th before I got to finish [italic]My Pet Goat[/italic]. by Anonymous reply 7 04/26/2010 I can't wait to read the part about how he destroyed the economy and handed the keys to the country over to his fat-cat cronies in the financial sector with complete disregard to the welfare of the American people. What chapter do you you think that will be? by Anonymous I hope they shelve it in the Fiction section. by Anonymous 04/26/2010 [italic]Decision Points?[/italic] What a lame title.

He should have called it [italic]The Decider![/italic] Or [italic]The Misunderestimator.[/italic] by Anonymous reply 10 04/26/2010 I wonder how many of the 14 "Decision Points" will be "historic achievements" and how many will be "flaws and mistakes"? My guess: historic 12; mistakes 2. by Anonymous 04/26/2010 [quote]I hope they shelve it in the Fiction section. It would be fun to move it there when in a bookstore. The same goes for any book by Horsey Coulter. by Anonymous My nephew already read the review in "Highlights" magazine. He told me not to bother. by Anonymous "patriot"; "terror"; "family"; "homeland"; "God"; "evildoer"; "freedom" by Anonymous 04/26/2010 He's still trying to cash in on 9/11. He's SO proud of his work. Yes I realize he's releasing it on 11/9 if you look at the date in US standards but it's obvious what he's doing.

by Anonymous Unfortunately, it will be on the bestseller lists. Oh how I wish it was a huge embarrassing failure, not unlike his presidency. He should be arrested, not applauded. by Anonymous reply 16 04/26/2010 I'm sure it was ghost written by a religious nut like Palin's book. It'll be full of "Jesus' bullshit. by Anonymous reply 17 04/26/2010 I can't wait until some interviewer asks him specific questions about things that are in "his" book and he has no idea what they are talking about because he's never even read it let alone wrote it. by Anonymous Who buys these books? His wife just wrote a book as well. Seriously, who buys them? reply 19 04/26/2010 I hope some bookseller has a two-fer sale. Buy Bush's memoir and get "The Pet Goat" free (or vice versa). by Anonymous EDB plans on buying it and salivating over every page. by Anonymous The same people that voted for him r19 by Anonymous Amazon should offer the book with "My Pet Goat".

by Anonymous reply 23 04/26/2010 I hate George W. for all the evil that he has caused. I wish nothing but the worst for him. His Presidency led to the complete fuck that is the Obama administration. by Anonymous reply 24 04/26/2010 Indecision Points: How I Fell Asleep at the Wheel Thus Allowing Al Qaeda to Attack the USA, Hurricane Katrina to Reek Havoc in the Gulf, And the Wall Street Fat Cats to Rob America Blind and Take Europe Down with Them by Anonymous I'm not for buring books, but I'll make an exception for this one! by Anonymous [quote] including "his flaws and mistakes, as well as his historic achievements," Recession accomplished! 04/26/2010 First look at George Bush's memoirs The former US president's memoirs are to be published in November, and will consist of an account of his key decisions. Below is an exclusive preview from the first draft . . .

Tim Dowling; guardian.co.uk, Monday 26 April 2010 20.00 BST [bold]Point 1[/bold] One of the biggest decisions of my life was the day I decided not to be an alcoholic any more. I don't remember any decisions before that. [bold]Point 2[/bold] Everybody remembers where they were on September 11, 2001. And everybody remembers where I was, including me. I was in a school in Florida, listening intently as some children read a story called The Pet Goat. It was about a little girl who had a goat that ate everything. Her parents wanted to get rid of it. At some point my chief of staff, Andrew Card, whispered to me that America was under attack. Immediately I made the decision to carry on listening to the children. I've faced some criticism for that, but I knew then that I was facing the hardest day of my presidency, with some tough choices ahead of me. I would need all my powers of concentration and judgment, and I couldn't afford to be distracted by wondering how the story ended. I had to find out what happened to that goat.

[bold]Point 3[/bold] The decision to invade Iraq was not taken lightly. At the time I thought Saddam and Bin Laden were working closely together on terrorism; in fact I was under the impression that they were somehow related, but that turned out not to be true. Even so, I was not sure I wanted to commit American troops to an invasion. I remember the day I took Cheney and Rumsfeld into the Oval Office and told them what I had decided: that they must decide. In an executive position it's very important to delegate, and I've never for one moment regretted the Iraq war not being my fault. [bold]Point 4[/bold] Not every choice I made was the right one. Sometimes when I have made a decision to choose someone to make decisions, that person has let me down. That's what happened after Hurricane Katrina, but of course I was still the president, so I had to take responsibility for the terrible mistakes of others, even though I was on vacation. Looking back, that seems totally unfair. [bold]Point 5[/bold] Occasionally one has to make split-second decisions. There's no time to think, you know, should I lean to the left or right on this one?

You just move â any which way! â and if you're lucky, the shoe flies over your head. That's also how I did my Supreme Court nominations. by Anonymous

Question: Whose memoir 'Decision Points' was published in late 2010?
Answer: George W Bush