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Title: The Perfect Wife: The Life and Choices of Laura Bush by Ann Gerhart, Gerhart ISBN: 0-7432-4383-8 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.94 (31 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: An uneven effort redeemed by good reporting
Comment: Ann Gerhart set the bar for herself very, very high by titling this book "The Perfect Wife." After reading this book twice, I feel that a better moniker would have been "An Almost-Perfect Life." Deft reporting redeems much of the book's unevenness: It's as fine a book as might be expected, given the extended Bush clan's passion for spin control. Penetrating the facade of the Bush family's interactions would try the patience of a skilled Kremlinologist. One gets the impression that Gerhart just got worn out and wrapped things up in fewer than 200 pages. This is especially unusual brevity for a biographical subject that the author actually has covered, met, and interviewed, as Gerhart has for The Washington Post.
The few factual errors are quite surprising, given their on-the-recordness: for example, Barbara Bush Sr. is not a "Smith graduate," as Gerhart avers, having dropped out to marry, and Mrs. Bush Sr.'s surviving daughter is identified as "Doro[thy] Koch Bush."
Gerhart begins with a trip to Midland, Texas, yielding a finely nuanced report of life in the '50s and '60s for affluent white kids like Laura Welch, a sheltered and adored only child. Her status in town did a great deal to protect her from the uglier consequences of killing a classmate, the town's golden boy, Mike Douglas, in a traffic accident when both were seventeen. (Laura's driver license was not even suspended.) Has this tragedy been the "turning point" in Laura's life that some claim it to be? If so, Laura herself changes the subject rapidly whenever it is raised.
Gerhart also does a fine job summarizing and filling out previously known data (about Laura and George W.'s whirlwind courtship, for instance). There's disappointingly little new information to share with readers, though it's nice to learn about Mrs. Bush's band of lifelong friends, and the fact that Laura voted for McCarthy in 1968. Even in face-to-face reported conversation with Gerhart, this undeniably smart woman comes off as surprisingly inarticulate and repetitive--probably due to her unceasing efforts at self-protection.
However, there are other facts (not opinions, facts) about the Bush family--including Laura on an intimate level--that a Google search can find in seconds. The author makes much of the issue that both Mr. and Mrs. Welch and Laura and George W. had looked into adopting children from what Gerhart calls "the Gladney home" in Fort Worth. (George and Laura abandoned this quest when she became pregnant with twins.) That's a poignant story. However, The Gladney Center is a well-known donor to Bush candidacies, and George W.'s brother Marvin and his wife Margaret, who speaks frequently as an adoption advocate, adopted two children from Gladney. There's a salient connection, missed in this book.
As an avid reader, I was keen to find out what Laura Bush actually reads during all those stints on the couch with a surreptitious cigarette. However, what Laura claims to read might have been concocted by a focus group--The Bible, Zora Neale Huston, "The Willie Mays Story." It was an endearingly personal touch to learn that Laura had chosen mystery writers Mary Higgins Clark and her daughter Carol as the two females, among five writers, to lead a literary conference.
The section of this book that has drawn the most attention is Gerhart's depressing retelling of the antics of the sullen Bush twins. Their mother has publicly commented upon their actions (including multiple arrests) by saying, even after the girls turned 21, "They just want to do what other teenagers do." Gerhart implies that since the twins' gestation and birth was difficult, their mother has always viewed them as little miracles regardless of the tackiness of their actions.
Apart from reporting on the poshness of the travel and accommodations of various Bush family gatherings--Kennebunkport, The White House, the Vice-President's Mansion, various governors' mansions--Gerhart tells very little about Laura Bush's interactions with her in-laws, except for her formidable mother-in-law. Marvin, Neil, Jeb, and Doro are scarcely mentioned, though the index contains twelve lengthy references under "Bush family, politics as business of."
Four stars to Ann Gerhart for doing as good a job as she has, under the circumstances.
Rating: 5
Summary: Less Than Meets the Eye
Comment: Let me admit up front that I am not a George W. Bush fan (does an American exist who does not have a strong opinion of him one way or the other?). But I thought there must be a deeper, more complex Laura Bush.
Ann Gerhart's book is well-written and I could not stop reading it once I started. There are lots of interesting tidbits (Laura Bush smokes cigarettes, but never in public) and revealing anecdotes and interviews. The chapter on the twins is ruthless. In another chapter, Gerhart describes in detail the tragic car accident that Laura Bush caused when she was only seventeen, and what a traumatic experience it was for all concerned.
So how does a woman who voted for Eugene McCarthy, who hangs out with liberal friends, and who loves her work, meet a guy who is running for congress on a Republican ticket and marry him six weeks later, giving up forever a career she has wanted since she was in second grade? I was certain that there was more to Laura Bush than meets the eye. After reading The Perfect Wife, I am convinced that there is less.
Perhaps she could not abide the thought of staying single into her thirties. I don't doubt that she loves George and that he loves her. It is obvious what George gets out of the deal. Less obvious is what Laura gets. One (male) interviewee suggested to Gerhart that George was irresistibly handsome and sexy. Please.
There is little evidence that Laura Bush is an introspective person. She reads a lot and knows what she thinks, even if the rest of us don't. But if she ever does evaluate her life and her decisions, I wonder how she will come to grips with having left the desperately important job of teaching at-risk children to raise a pair of self-centered and inconsiderate girls. And further, to lend support to a man who is dismantling the most important social programs this nation has. Will she ever speak out?
Gerhart leaves a lot of questions unanswered, but by the time you finish The Perfect Wife, you will have enough information to form your own opinion about Laura Bush.
Rating: 1
Summary: The author of this book is awful!
Comment: Don't waste your time or money on this book. I am a big fan of the President and the First Lady, but it is clear that the author is not. I lost interest after the first two chapters. Not only does the author patronize the First Lady, but she also patronizes the President. While some of the information MIGHT be valid, the author offers her opinion and describes Texas in a demeaning way. I couldn't stand to read much more.....note to the author>>>Put your pen down and take up a new hobby. If you can't say something nice about people, you shouldn't say anything at all.
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Title: Ten Minutes from Normal by Karen Hughes ISBN: 0670033057 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 30 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: The Faith of George W. Bush by Stephen Mansfield ISBN: 1585423092 Publisher: Jeremy P. Tarcher Pub. Date: 01 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.99 |
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Title: Reflections: Life After the White House by Barbara Bush ISBN: 0743223594 Publisher: Scribner Book Company Pub. Date: 20 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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Title: George W. Bush: On God and Country by George W. Bush, Tom M. Freiling, Tom Freiling ISBN: 1591609186 Publisher: Allegiance Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $12.99 |
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Title: George and Laura : Portrait of an American Marriage by Christopher Andersen ISBN: 0066213703 Publisher: William Morrow Pub. Date: 29 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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