Bush

Jean Edward Smith, a historian known for his presidential biographies, turns his attention to George W. Bush, the forty-third president. He argues that Bush, not his advisers, made the decisive calls, and that the most consequential of them was the decision to invade Iraq, which many regard as among the gravest foreign-policy errors any president has made. The fallout shaped Bush's entire term and continues to be felt.

Smith contends that Bush personally seized control of foreign policy, leaving figures such as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice with less influence than is often assumed. He links this approach to Bush's religious convictions, which framed major international choices as a struggle between good and evil. At home, Smith says, Bush responded to the September 11 attacks with excessive force that put civil liberties at risk. He also shows that only during the 2008 financial crisis did Bush begin to rely on expert counsel, and that the measures he then approved, some at odds with his own political principles, helped prevent an economic collapse.

The book judges Bush's presidency as one that opened in controversy and ended with serious setbacks abroad and at home, leaving him with some of the lowest approval ratings of any modern president. Smith's prose is measured and authoritative, though his verdicts are harsh. Readers interested in American politics, the post-9/11 era and the inner workings of the White House will find it especially relevant.