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16 August 2005

George W. Bush's Summer Reading List. (via Bookslut)
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post by: matteo at: 17:20 | 15 comments

According to the White House, Bush chose to read on his five-week vacation three nonfiction books:

"Salt: A World History" by Mark Kurlansky

"Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar" by Edvard Radzinsky

"The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History" by John M. Barry.

posted by matteo 16 August | 17:24

Good for him. I've actually been wanting to take a gander at "Salt".

But I must say: a five week vacation? I have no health insurance and he gets five weeks of vacation?

posted by Specklet 16 August | 17:36

I assume he takes these books with him, hands them to an aide and then asks them to verbally summarise them the next day. Well apparently that's how he reads the papers...

Anyway I have Bush down as more of a Grisham man or maybe Andy McNabb.

posted by dodgygeezer 16 August | 17:48

speaking of vacations-how was yrs, matteo?

(and as if he really reads them--how long did he carry around that Charlotte Simmons thing? 4 months?)

old Reagan joke, but more applicable to Bush anyway:

Hey, did you hear the Presidential Library burnt down? Both books burned, and he hadn't finished coloring one of them yet.

; >

posted by amberglow 16 August | 18:24

amberglow, that is a quote from a new zealand politician. Memory escapes me as to the actual person, however.

posted by gaspode 16 August | 18:31

Google tells me it is Jonathan Hunt (1938- )

posted by gaspode 16 August | 18:32

really? oh...we used that one for years, and i'm sure we'll use it again for future presidents.

posted by amberglow 16 August | 18:37

do you mean Jebby or Jenna?

posted by matteo 16 August | 19:09

NotJenna, probably.

posted by amberglow 16 August | 19:23

Wonder if the book list was put together by the same aide that wrote his supposed ipod list.

posted by jrossi4r 16 August | 19:49

As you all know, the furniture in the White House is quite old. If the most important residential office in the United States had a number of wobbly tables, chairs and sofas, and the fate of the Free World was at stake, you can be quite certain those books would be handy.

posted by Smart Dalek 16 August | 20:20

Re Kurlansky: He should read the Basque history one, then the cod one, then the salt one. There's an order to these things, like the Alexandria Quartet. Each sets up structures that are re-examined and reaffirmed in the next.

Seriously, you learn more that way. And I think anyone would do well to read them all, not just the current jive turkey in the White House.

[That said, Salt is the weakest of the three.]

posted by Hugh Janus 17 August | 09:04

And from this list we can infer that
1) the bird flu is going to kill us all after all
2) Bush is dumb enough to start a land war in Asia and/or he's pondering instituting serfdom on the populace.
3) Guantanamo bay prisoners are going to be transferred to the salt mines.

posted by mygothlaundry 17 August | 10:55

...Who exactly is Bush trying to kid?

A man who still can't pronounce "nuclear," a man who thinks "misunderestimate" is an English verb, a man who once singled out the C-students at Yale graduation and declared encouragingly, "You too can be president of the United States" - this man wants America to believe he's reading a densely researched history of the troubled reign of the tsar who ruled Russia from 1855 to 1881, translated from the original Russian?

Without a bunch of pictures to lighten the literary load? ...

posted by amberglow 20 August | 01:34

maybe a history of nineteenth century Russia with puppets?

posted by matteo 20 August | 01:37

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