Reviews

Commander in Chief: How Truman, Johnson, and Bush Turned a Presidential Power Into a Threat to America's Future by Geoffrey Perret

liberrydude's review against another edition

2.0

The author comes across as a professional critic whose cynical, negative rants against every person who has occupied a position of power and responsibility in American history since WW II will render the reader exhausted and numb. His condescending, omniscient manner is like that of a sports fan doing the Monday morning quarterbacking. He even denigrates the senior Bush by stating about his WW II service as a torpedo bomber pilot that "it was what happened to fliers who were not good enough to handle fighters, but steady and competent enough to fly a less-demanding warplane." It's this combination of damning with faint praise and strident character assasination that begin to gnaw at you. He attacks Dubya, Truman, and Johnson for their emotional leadership but he is guilty of the same crime in emotional rants against POTUS. It comes across as a condescending Ivy League rant on the less educated and racist leaders of our past.

His statements about the prosecution of the Falluja campaign don't tell the full story either-that the Marines did not want to attack the city because it would be seen as vengeance. He takes General Mattis' remarks about the fun of killing out of context too. If you read this book I don't think you will find anybody has done anything right in this country. Not much discussion of war powers and the Constitution but a diplomatic history of the US from WW II to present. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading a good portion of this book. I agree with lots of what he said but his tone and depressing conclusion were a major bummer.

huskerbee's review against another edition

2.0

It was written by a guy who has Fox News as a credit, so make of that what you will. It isn't right-wing, to be fair to him, but it isn't...much of anything either, beyond what seems like picking 3/44 (grover cleveland, people) and thinking 'ah yes let me dump everything I can find out about them'. As has already been picked out in the reviews there's not much of a theme, and even between the three Chosen Ones he still talks about the bearing that other presidents had on...whatever. American foreign policy, maybe? A lot of his writing seems too subjective to be fact, as well, and I had a hard time taking things at face value (as you might not be able to do in, say, a newspaper article, but ought to be able to do in a footnoted book, although of course as my history professors have drummed into me you should always check the notes). I'm sure there are far better books on these subjects out there.