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Sebastian Ritscher
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DESTINY AND POWER

Jon Meacham

The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush

In this brilliant biography, Jon Meacham, the Pulitzer Prizewinning author, chronicles the life of George Herbert Walker Bush. Drawing on President Bush's personal diaries, on the diaries of his wife, Barbara, and on extraordinary access to the forty-first president and his family, Meacham paints an intimate and surprising portrait of an intensely private man who led the nation through tumultuous times.
From the Oval Office to Camp David, from his study in the private quarters of the White House to Air Force One, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the first Gulf War to the end of Communism, Destiny and Power charts the thoughts, decisions, and emotions of a modern president who may have been the last of his kind. This is the human story of a man who was, like the nation he led, at once noble and flawed.

His was one of the great American lives. Born into a loving, privileged, and competitive family, Bush joined the navy on his eighteenth birthday and at age twenty was shot down on a combat mission over the Pacific. He married young, started a family, and resisted pressure to go to Wall Street, striking out for the adventurous world of Texas oil. Over the course of three decades, Bush would rise from the chairmanship of his county Republican Party to serve as congressman, ambassador to the United Nations, head of the Republican National Committee, envoy to China, director of Central Intelligence, vice president under Ronald Reagan, and, finally, president of the United States. In retirement he became the first president since John Adams to see his son win the ultimate prize in American politics.

With access not only to the Bush diaries but, through extensive interviews, to the former president himself, Meacham presents Bush’s candid assessments of many of the critical figures of the age, ranging from Richard Nixon to Nancy Reagan; Mao to Mikhail Gorbachev; Dick Cheney to Donald Rumsfeld; Henry Kissinger to Bill Clinton. Here is high politics as it really is but as we rarely see it.

From the Pacific to the presidency, Destiny and Power charts the vicissitudes of the life of this quietly compelling American original. Meacham sheds new light on the rise of the right wing in the Republican Party, a shift that signaled the beginning of the end of the center in American politics. Destiny and Power is an affecting portrait of a man who, driven by destiny and by duty, forever sought, ultimately, to put the country first.

Jon Meacham received the Pulitzer Prize for his 2008 biography of Andrew Jackson, American Lion. An executive editor at Random House, he is also the author of the New York Times bestsellers Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, American Gospel, and Franklin and Winston. Meacham, who teaches at Vanderbilt University and at The University of the South, is a fellow of the Society of American Historians. He lives in Nashville and in Sewanee with his wife and children.
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Published 2016-10-18 by Random House

Book

Published 2016-10-18 by Random House

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his riveting biography by the incomparable Jon Meacham gives George H. W. Bush his well-deserved place in history. Destiny and Power is full of surprises, revealing 41’s important role in scene after crucial historical scene of the past seven decades. President Bush used to say that he could never quite convey his “heartbeat” to Americans. Now, using a treasure of heretofore unseen diaries and other documents, as well as his own detailed interviews, Meacham takes us behind closed doors to show us what this sometimes misunderstood leader was really like.

What a spectacular and moving portrait this is—not only of a remarkably classy man but of the era that shaped him! It is hard to imagine a biographer more fitted than Jon Meacham to write what will surely be the definitive work on George Herbert Walker Bush.

Jon’s Interview with CNN’s Jamie Gangel: http://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2015/11/06/george-h-w-41-book-gangel-dnt-erin.cnn/video/playlists/bush-legacy/ PBS Interview with Judy Woodruff: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/bush-41-think-sons-presidency-new-bio-reveals/ Jon’s Interview on FOX’s America’s Newsroom: http://video.foxnews.com/v/4599884969001/jon-meacham-goes-inside-writing-george-hw-bush-biography/?intcmp=hpnav&playlist_id=938973798001#playlist_id=938973798001&sp=show-clips TODAY SHOW: http://www.today.com/video/fallout-from-george-h-w-bushs-new-book-builds-560779331917 TOM BROKAW INTERVIEW ON MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.com/andrea-mitchell-reports/watch/george-h.w.-bush-criticizes-sons-former-aides-in-new-book-561035843997

Jon Meacham, official biographer of President George H.W. Bush, reflects on Bush's nomination for Vice President in 1980 and how that changed the trajectory of his political career. Read more...

NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro speaks with presidential biographer, Jon Meacham, about the late George H.W. Bush and his impact. Read more...

The Bush family has announced that the 41st U.S. president, George H.W. Bush, has passed away. MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace & presidential historian Jon Meacham join to discuss. Read more...

Presidential biographer Jon Meacham discusses how those close to George H.W. Bush called him "Poppy." Andrew Card, the former White House Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush, emphasized the importance of Bush's letter writing: "Letters were a sign of respect to other people. He got elected president because he wrote letters to people. He didn't really have a political base. He had a base of friends that he wrote to." Read more...

The more time passes, the more the dust settles, the clearer it becomes that George H. W. Bush and the strengths of character he brought to his long service to this country deserve more attention and appreciation. And now comes Destiny and Power, Jon Meacham’s altogether fair, insightful biography of the forty-first president—a portrait made especially compelling by the author’s remarkable access to Bush’s private White House diaries. This is a timely, first-rate book!

Interview Read more...

Jon Meacham, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Andrew Jackson, put an enormous amount of work into this volume: nine years of interviews, full access to the diaries of George H.W. and Barbara Bush, and an open door to family members and friends. Add to this Meacham’s balanced journalism and smooth writing, and you have a fascinating biography of the 41st president.

This astonishing book is both timely and timeless. Based on candid interviews and intimate letters and diaries, it provides a deep insight into the character of George H. W. Bush, flavored with colorful anecdotes depicting his relationships with people ranging from Gorbachev and Reagan to his sons George and Jeb. The result is a fascinating and insightful portrayal of the life of an exemplary American citizen.

Jon Meacham’s timely and intimate biography of George Bush 41 is a welcome reminder of this modest president’s call to service, from the cockpits of World War II to the Oval Office and the end of the Cold War. Here you’ll meet a man of patrician manners, wartime heroics, Texas assimilation, party and personal loyalty, with a refined sense of power that carried him into history. Meet the George Bush you didn’t know.

George H.W. Bush Believed in the Essential Goodness of Americans. Read more...

Jon Meacham, a presidential historian and author of the George H.W. Bush biography "Destiny and Power," joins Willie Geist on Sunday TODAY to discuss the life and legacy of the former president who died on Friday at age 94. "Whenever he obtained ultimate power, he used it for a larger interest other than himself," he says. Read more...