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Destiny and Power
- The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush
- Narrated by: Paul Michael
- Length: 25 hrs and 10 mins
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Publisher's summary
Number One New York Times Best Seller
In this brilliant biography, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham chronicles the life of George Herbert Walker Bush.
Named One of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post and One of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Drawing on President Bush’s personal diaries, on the diaries of his wife, Barbara, and on extraordinary access to the 41st 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 18th birthday and at age 20 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.
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The Carter presidency was on life support. The Democrats, desperate to keep power and yearning to resurrect former glory, turned to Ted Kennedy. Camelot's End details the incredible drama of Kennedy's challenge - what led to it, how it unfolded, and its lasting effects - with cinematic sweep. It is a story about what happened to the Democratic Party when the country's long string of successes, luck, and global dominance following World War II ran its course, and how, on a quest to recapture the magic of JFK, Democrats plunged themselves into an intra-party civil war.
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Does character count in political office?
- By marwalk on 07-29-19
By: Jon Ward
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41
- A Portrait of My Father
- By: George W. Bush
- Narrated by: George W. Bush
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States, has authored a personal biography of his father, George H. W. Bush, the 41st president. Forty-three men have served as president of the United States. Countless books have been written about them. But never before has a president told the story of his father, another president, through his own eyes and in his own words. A unique and intimate biography, the book covers the entire scope of the elder President Bush’s life and career.
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Heartwarming and Honoring
- By Marie on 12-24-14
By: George W. Bush
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Believer
- My Forty Years in Politics
- By: David Axelrod
- Narrated by: David Axelrod
- Length: 19 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The man behind some of the greatest political changes of the last decade, David Axelrod has devoted a lifetime to questioning political certainties and daring to bring fresh thinking into the political landscape. Whether as a child hearing John F. Kennedy stump in New York or as a strategist guiding the first African American to the White House, Axelrod shows in Believer how his own life stands at the center of the tumultuous American century.
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Love letter to Obama
- By DaWoolf on 03-15-15
By: David Axelrod
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JFK's Last Hundred Days
- The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President
- By: Thurston Clarke
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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A revelatory, minute-by-minute account of JFK’s final days that asks what might have been. Fifty years after his assassination, President John F. Kennedy’s legend endures. Noted author and historian Thurston Clarke reexamines the last months of the president’s life to show a man in the midst of great change, both in his family and in the key issues of his day: The Cold War, Civil Rights, and Vietnam, finally on the cusp of making good on his extraordinary promise.
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In Depth and Beautifully Written
- By grace on 06-03-23
By: Thurston Clarke
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Three Days in Moscow
- Ronald Reagan and the Fall of the Soviet Empire
- By: Bret Baier, Catherine Whitney
- Narrated by: Bret Baier
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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In Three Days in Moscow, Baier explores the dramatic endgame of America’s long struggle with the Soviet Union and President Ronald Reagan’s central role in shaping the world we live in today. On May 31, 1988, Reagan stood on Russian soil and addressed a packed audience at Moscow State University, delivering a remarkable - yet now largely forgotten - speech that capped his first visit to the Soviet capital.
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Amazing!
- By Brian W. Barton on 05-20-18
By: Bret Baier, and others
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The Gatekeepers
- How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency
- By: Chris Whipple
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The chiefs of staff, often referred to as "the gatekeepers", wield tremendous power in Washington and beyond; they decide who is allowed to see the president, negotiate with Congress to push POTUS's agenda, and - most crucially - enjoy unparalleled access to the leader of the free world. Through extensive, intimate interviews with 18 living chiefs (including Reince Priebus) and two former presidents, award-winning journalist and producer Chris Whipple pulls back the curtain on this unique fraternity. In doing so, he revises our understanding of presidential history.
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Interesting, but lacking in political objectivity
- By Stephen Watson on 09-04-17
By: Chris Whipple
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The Path to Power
- The Years of Lyndon Johnson
- By: Robert A. Caro
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 40 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the story of the rise to national power of a desperately poor young man from the Texas Hill Country. The Path to Power reveals in extraordinary detail the genesis of the almost superhuman drive, energy, and ambition that set LBJ apart. It follows him from the Hill Country to New Deal Washington, from his boyhood through the years of the Depression to his debut as Congressman, his heartbreaking defeat in his first race for the Senate, and his attainment, nonetheless, at age 31, of the national power for which he hungered.
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The Best of all Biographies
- By David C. Daggett on 12-14-13
By: Robert A. Caro
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Counselor
- A Life at the Edge of History
- By: Ted Sorensen
- Narrated by: Ted Sorensen
- Length: 14 hrs and 24 mins
- Abridged
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Ted Sorensen, John F. Kennedy's closest advisor, recounts in full, for the first time, his experience counseling Kennedy through some of the most dramatic moments in American history. Rising from legislative assistant to speechwriter and advisor, the young lawyer from Nebraska worked closely with JFK on his most important speeches, as well as his book Profiles in Courage. Sorensen encouraged the junior senator's political ambitions and was later named special counsel to the president.
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Rare Insight
- By Robert on 05-10-08
By: Ted Sorensen
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Reagan
- The Life
- By: H. W. Brands
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 31 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Ronald Reagan today is a conservative icon, celebrated for transforming the American domestic agenda and playing a crucial part in ending communism in the Soviet Union. In his masterful new biography, H. W. Brands argues that Reagan, along with FDR, was the most consequential president of the 20th century. Reagan took office at a time when the public sector, after a half century of New Deal liberalism, was widely perceived as bloated and inefficient, an impediment to personal liberty.
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Very little about Reagan
- By Jack Merritt on 07-30-15
By: H. W. Brands
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FDR
- By: Jean Edward Smith
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 32 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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One of today's premier biographers, Jean Edward Smith, has written a modern, comprehensive, indeed ultimate book on the epic life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This is a portrait painted in broad strokes and fine details. We see how Roosevelt's restless energy, fierce intellect, personal magnetism, and ability to project effortless grace permitted him to master countless challenges throughout his life. Smith recounts FDR's personal battles and also tackles head-on and in depth the numerous failures and miscues of Roosevelt's political career.
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Interesting but flawed
- By Mike From Mesa on 09-15-13
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Bobby Kennedy
- The Making of a Liberal Icon
- By: Larry Tye
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 19 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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History remembers Robert F. Kennedy as a racial healer, a tribune for the poor, and the last progressive knight of a bygone era of American politics. But Kennedy's enshrinement in the liberal pantheon was actually the final stage of a journey that had its beginnings in the conservative 1950s. In Bobby Kennedy, Larry Tye peels away layers of myth and misconception to paint a complete portrait of this singularly fascinating figure.
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Absorbing
- By Jean on 01-18-17
By: Larry Tye
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what you weren't taught in school
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Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were the greatest leaders of “the Greatest Generation.” In Franklin and Winston, Jon Meacham explores the fascinating relationship between the two men who piloted the free world to victory in World War II.
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Delusions of Competence
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An Ordinary Man
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From the preeminent presidential scholar and acclaimed biographer of historical figures including George Washington, Herbert Hoover, and Nelson Rockefeller comes this eye-opening life of Gerald R. Ford, whose presidency arguably set the course for post-liberal America and a post-Cold War world.
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Beginning with “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do” and ending with “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” Meacham captures for the listener how these words epitomize Jesus’s message of love, not hate; grace, not rage; and, rather than vengeance, extraordinary mercy. For each saying, Meacham composes an essay on the origins of Christianity and how Jesus’s final words created a foundation for oral and written traditions that upended the very order of the world.
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Thank you, thank you, thank you!
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Impeachment
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Impeachment is a double-edged sword. Though it was designed to check tyrants, Thomas Jefferson also called impeachment “the most formidable weapon for the purpose of a dominant faction that was ever contrived”. On the one hand, it nullifies the will of voters, the basic foundation of all representative democracies. On the other, its absence from the Constitution would leave the country vulnerable to despotic leadership.
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May not scratch your personal itch, but read it anyway!
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From “The Star-Spangled Banner” to “Born in the USA”, Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw take listeners on a moving and insightful journey through eras in American history and the songs and performers that inspired us. Meacham chronicles our history, exploring the stories behind the songs, and Tim McGraw reflects on them as an artist and performer. Their perspectives combine to create a unique view of the role music has played in uniting and shaping a nation.
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President George W. Bush describes the critical decisions of his presidency and personal life. Decision Points is the extraordinary memoir of America’s 43rd president. Shattering the conventions of political autobiography, George W. Bush offers a strikingly candid journey through the defining decisions of his life. In gripping, never-before-heard detail, President Bush brings listeners inside the Texas Governor’s Mansion on the night of the contested 2000 election; aboard Air Force One on 9/11, in the hours after America’s most devastating attack since Pearl Harbor...
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Here is an intimate and revealing look at one of America's most private public figures. Although former president George Bush has been reticent in public, he has openly shared his private thoughts in correspondence throughout his life. This collection of letters, diary entries, and memos, along with Bush's commentary, provides an insightful portrayal of the forty-first president of the United States.
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It's the best
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An Unfinished Life
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An Unfinished Life is the first authoritative single-volume life of John F. Kennedy to be written by a historian in nearly four decades. Drawing upon firsthand sources, freshly unearthed documents, and never-before-opened archives, prizewinning historian Robert Dallek reveals more than we ever knew about Jack Kennedy forever changing the way we think about his life, his presidency, and his legacy.
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It’s abridged!!
- By Brad on 02-17-18
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Reagan
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More than five years in the making, based on hundreds of interviews and access to previously unavailable documents, and infused with irresistible storytelling charm, Bob Spitz's Reagan stands fair to be the first truly post-partisan biography of our 40th president, and thus a balm for our own bitterly divided times. Absorbing and richly detailed, it is a revelatory chronicle of the full arc of Ronald Reagan's epic life - giving full weight to the Hollywood years, his transition to politics and successful run as California governor, and ultimately, his iconic presidency.
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Pretty obvious this was written by a Democrat
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Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
- By: Jon Meacham
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In this magnificent biography, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Lion and Franklin and Winston brings vividly to life an extraordinary man and his remarkable times. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power gives us Jefferson the politician and president, a great and complex human being forever engaged in the wars of his era.
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A Man and Biography Relevant to Our Day
- By Darwin8u on 11-14-12
By: Jon Meacham
What listeners say about Destiny and Power
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Joseph Carucci
- 12-21-15
Amazing story, great narration
I loved this book and the performance. The one criticism I would level is that the author is a definite Bush apologist. Sometimes that helps you better understand Bush, but sometimes it's a little pandering. Overall it's one of my favorite books I've read this year.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Gregory E Benoit
- 04-17-17
Very engaging. Seems like a hagiography though.
Held my attention the whole way through. Gave me a new appreciation for a president i already respected a lot. Came across like a real hagiography though.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Drew Smith
- 02-16-19
Grace through power
This Biography brilliantly brings to life the 41st President’s life of service and his gracious manner in which he conducted himself. It also provides insight into the lives of the Bush family and many prominent American figures. This book is well worth the time investment so that you can unlock the beauty of the life of George H.W. Bush.
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- Walden
- 01-27-22
A terrific book
Loved this book. Didn't know much about George HW Bush before reading this, but was grabbed early on by the description of the Bush family and their tradition of public service. I'm not religious, but was struck early in the book by the quote from the Gospel of Luke: "to whom much is given, much is expected." This is an apt summary of HW's personal mantra. Despite his wealthy upbringing, he spurned the comfortable like of banking or other lucrative careers of many schoolmates, and volunteered for combat duty in the air force, seeing significant combat. His life was all about public service. It is notable that he was the only president to both serve as Director of the CIA and Commander in Chief. That the Agency's Langley headquarters bears his name is a testament to his legitimate commitment to public service, whereas many politicians only claim as much for the cameras. Meacham did a great job emphasizing Bush's astonishment losing to Clinton during his reelection bid, not because Bush believed himself entitled to another term - but because he couldn't believe the country could elect a draft dodger. While Clinton is not the only draft dodging politician, I felt the shame communicated that a new generation of Americans was more spellbound by a candidate who was charming and telegenic than one who was committed to serving his country; true servant leadership. This country would do well to take a page from an underrated president such as HW and prioritize characteristics of real public service, rather than the reality TV-esque superficial adoration that rules our current political climate.
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- Lisa Callihan
- 02-08-16
Human. Open and Warm.
More than the things you live through, explained by someone who saw it all. Personal thoughts shared in an interesting internal script style. Interconnections between leaders were often clarified. In particular, the book gave me an admiration for Mrs. Barbara Bush and her dedication to her family. I will remember George Herbert Walker Bush as a brave Naval serviceman, effective president, and all-around decent fellow.
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- Sa
- 02-19-16
One of the best written presidential bios
This perhaps is one of the best presidential biographies I have read, and it may be because of how little I truly knew about Bush 41 and his complexities. Certainly, he was not his caricature. Meacham puts this fascinating man's life in the greater context of his times, ethos, and dynasty. Well done and well worth the many hours/pages.
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- Michael R.
- 06-23-21
For those interested in the life and times I f our American presidents
John Meacham at his best! An excellent portrait of #41. The man and his life story, fascinating!
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- John B. Hoehn
- 02-02-21
Excellent book
I knew I had a vague liking for George HW Bush. Now I know why. His was an admirable life. A very readable, thorough, fascinating book.
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- G E Jeffries
- 12-23-18
Outstanding Biography
An outstanding biography of a very human president! He contributed greatly to the politics of the last 1/3 of the 20th century! Meacham has had remarkable access to the man and his family through his extensive diary and lengthy discussions with Bush 41! Beautifully written with outstanding documentation and a thoughtful approach! It is tremendously important to read or reread in the wake of President Bush’s recent death!
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- William S. Mccollum
- 06-06-16
Try Your Best
Incredible words from Bush 41's mother that resonate throughout the Bush family. What an incredible American and story.
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