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Title: The American Presidency by Gore Vidal ISBN: 1-878825-15-1 Publisher: Common Courage Press Pub. Date: October, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $8.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.67 (12 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Total waste
Comment: This book is comprised of meaningless antecdotes and other useless information. I usually am incredibly impressed by Vidals wit and his ability to expose the "truth," but unfortunately, this time I was very disappointed.
Rating: 4
Summary: Unforgiving, to the point, and funny
Comment: The book/pamphlet is unusual. It is quick reading and very amusing and funny. It does not try to be completely historically detailed and is not written in the scholarly style but rather goes through the key American presidents in order and gives a brief description of their character, accomplishments, and the problems they faced/solved/created.
In my opinion, Gore Vidal can be considered an elite insider of the US system. He pretty much writes as one blatantly and I believe he is making a point: here is someone on the inside who knows many of the presidents, politicians, the rich, and the media editors and is presenting history through such a perspective and in such a mode. He is a traditional republican and conservative (in the original sense of these words, hence the lower case use): foreign adventures/interventions, domestic political repression, economic polarization, and increasing corporate control are things he speaks against vehemently. For these reasons, this is a very refreshing book to read.
In addition, the book raises and deals with important questions about the presidency as an institution: what are its limitations and powers? How did this historically lead to its use and abuse for particular ends by various characters? What types of people were the various presidents and how did they change this institution?
Finally, Gore Vidal sees the US in the process of a slow but steady downfall, particularly since the Cold War years (1950s): politically, culturally, and economically (since the 1980s). The costs of being imperial master, with attendant crushing stifling of dissent at home, the huge military spendings and deficits, and foreign interventions and the loss of foreign and US life in the process, etc. are reviewed quite negatively in this book. Whether you believe this or not is something else, and the facts he produces are suggestive only (but then again,
the book is quite short).
In short, I recommend the book. As long as read properly, it provides quite some insight into American history. If you're looking for detailed history, facts and figures, and precise arguments, go elsewhere. If you're looking for a quick overall and consistent viewpoint and history viewed in broad burshstrokes, this book really hits the spot.
Rating: 3
Summary: Entertaining, but ultimately disappointing
Comment: I have been a fan of Gore Vidal's for a very long time, so very few of his views on American presidents listed in this book are really new. But it is interesting to see them collected in one single volume and without the subtlety of earlier writings. Thus Vidal says plainly that presidents are either military dictators (Lincoln and FDR) or servants of Big Business. Truman and Eisenhower never considered the Soviet Union any real threat but invented the Cold War to please the military-industrial complex - a game that JFK, a cynical in everything else, believed in and wanted to win, almost causing World War III. And the Clintons are, of course, naïve idealists who never had any idea of how the US works until they tried to defy Corporate America with their health care plan which would have brought happiness to all. And so on and so forth.
Of course one should not accept at face value the conventional version of any country's history - not only the United States'. Vidal's historical novels, especially "Burr", are excellent in pointing that out. But although "The American Presidency" is useful as a readable and entertaining summary of American history which does sometimes make you think, it is also extremely simplistic - almost a caricature of Vidal's early writings on that subject. It made me sad, in a way.
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Title: Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta by Gore Vidal ISBN: 1560255021 Publisher: Nation Books Pub. Date: December, 2002 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace by Gore Vidal ISBN: 156025405X Publisher: Nation Books Pub. Date: 10 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: Decline and Fall of the American Empire by Gore Vidal ISBN: 1878825003 Publisher: Odonian Press Pub. Date: October, 1992 List Price(USD): $8.00 |
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Title: The Last Empire : Essays 1992-2000 by Gore Vidal ISBN: 037572639X Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 11 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Inventing A Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson by Gore Vidal ISBN: 0300101716 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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