Barbara Bush or Impounded

Barbara Bush: Presidential Matriarch

Author: Myra G Gutin

Wife of one president and mother of another, Barbara Bush was an outspoken first lady who looked more like her constituents than did her predecessors. A White House resident for only four years, she nevertheless became and remains one of the most admired women in the world.

This new look at Barbara Bush draws on recently opened records at the Bush library, the first lady's many speeches, interviews with the first lady's staff, and an exclusive interview with Mrs. Bush to impart a new appreciation for this beloved former first lady. And while other biographies—and her own memoir—have hinted at seeming contradictions in the Barbara Bush persona, Myra Gutin looks squarely at her White House years to set the record straight and show that she was more than "America's Grandmother" in faux pearls.

Gutin's portrait reveals a woman who was more of a success as first lady than her husband was as president—who in many ways was the public face of the George H. W. Bush administration. And while she wasn't an innovator as presidential wife, Gutin shows how the "Silver Fox" used her rich experience in politics to master the public relations side of first ladyship with as much skill as any White House spouse.

Gutin argues that Barbara was more politically astute than George—even though she denied any input into policymaking and maintained an apolitical image. In fact, she played an integral role in campaigning, fund-raising, and other activities that often blurred the line between the humanitarian and the political. Piercing through the first lady's public persona, Gutin reveals Barbara's backstage political skills in action—along with her closely held views onsocial issues like gun control and abortion.

From behind the faзade of an ideal American family, Gutin also includes frank accounts of George H. W. Bush's alleged adultery and of the death of the Bushes' daughter Robin. In addition, she lends new insight into Barbara's relationship with her mother, her role as entertainer, and her role in wartime.

Gutin gives us a vibrant woman who lent warmth to her husband's cool image and whose legacy lives in the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literary and several best-selling books. It is a richly textured narrative that depicts a woman of loyalty, candor, and common sense, who knew when and how to apply those qualities in the service of her husband.

This book is part of the Modern First Ladies series.

What People Are Saying

Gil Troy
A crisp and clean account of Barbara Bush's emergence as one of the most compelling first ladies of our time. . . . Well-written and well worth reading. (Gil Troy, author of Hillary Rodham Clinton)

John Robert Greene
A fascinating, impeccably researched, and long overdue biography by one of the nation's leading experts on the American first lady. Gutin shows that this wife of one president and mother of a second was hardly just a grandmother in pearls, but a shrewd, thoughtful, and humorous political partner to two presidents named Bush. This is political biography at its best. (John Robert Greene, author of The Presidency of George Bush)

Herbert S. Parmet
Savvy and insightful. (Herbert S. Parmet, author of George Bush: The Life of a Lone Star Yankee

)

Gil Troy

A crisp and clean account of Barbara Bush's emergence as one of the most compelling first ladies of our time. . . . Well-written and well worth reading. (Gil Troy, author of Hillary Rodham Clinton)

John Robert Greene

A fascinating, impeccably researched, and long overdue biography by one of the nation's leading experts on the American first lady. Gutin shows that this wife of one president and mother of a second was hardly just a grandmother in pearls, but a shrewd, thoughtful, and humorous political partner to two presidents named Bush. This is political biography at its best. (John Robert Greene, author of The Presidency of George Bush)

Herbert S. Parmet

Savvy and insightful. (Herbert S. Parmet, author of George Bush: The Life of a Lone Star Yankee)

Table of Contents:

Ch. 1 "No Man, Woman, or Child Ever Had a Better Life" 1

Ch. 2 "If I Said It, I Said It" 33

Ch. 3 "If You Couldn't Be Happy in the White House, You Couldn't Be Happy Anywhere" 58

Ch. 4 "If Everyone Could Read ... " 70

Ch. 5 "It Is the Darndest War" 100

Ch. 6 "The President Is Going to Win!" 120

Ch. 7 "There Is Life after Politics! Hurrah!" 146

Ch. 8 Conclusions 160

Notes 167

Bibliographic Essay 201

Index 211

Go to: Management of Tourism or All the Rage

Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment

Author: Dorothea Lang

"Unflinchingly illustrates the reality of life during this extraordinary moment in American history."—Dinitia Smith, New York Times

Censored by the U.S. Army, Dorothea Lange's unseen photographs are the extraordinary photographic record of the Japanese American internment saga. This indelible work of visual and social history confirms Dorothea Lange's stature as one of the twentieth century's greatest American photographers. Presenting 119 images originally censored by the U.S. Army—the majority of which have never been published—Impounded evokes the horror of a community uprooted in the early 1940s and the stark reality of the internment camps. With poignancy and sage insight, nationally known historians Linda Gordon and Gary Okihiro illuminate the saga of Japanese American internment: from life before Executive Order 9066 to the abrupt roundups and the marginal existence in the bleak, sandswept camps. In the tradition of Roman Vishniac's A Vanished World, Impounded, with the immediacy of its photographs, tells the story of the thousands of lives unalterably shattered by racial hatred brought on by the passions of war. A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2006. 119 photographs.

Publishers Weekly

When America's War Relocation Authority hired Dorothea Lange to photograph the internment of Japanese-Americans in 1942, they put a few restrictions on her work. Barbed wire, watchtowers and armed soldiers were off limits, they declared. And no pictures of resistance, either. They wanted the roundup and sequestering of Japanese-Americans documented-but not too well. Working within these limits, Lange, who is best known for her photographs of migrant farmers during the Depression, nonetheless produced images whose content so opposed the federal objective of demonizing Japanese-Americans that the vast majority of the photographs were suppressed throughout WWII (97% of them have never been published at all). Editors Gordon and Okihiro set this first collection of Lange's internment work within technical, cultural and historical contexts. Gordon (The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction) discusses Lange's professional methods and the formation of her "democratic-populist" beliefs. Okihiro (Whispered Silences: Japanese Americans and World War II) traces the history of prejudice against Japanese Americans, with emphasis on internees' firsthand accounts. But the bulk of the book is given over to Lange's photographs. Several of these are as powerful as her most stirring work, and the final image-of a grandfather in the desolate Manzanar Center looking down in anguish at the grandson between his knees-is worth the price of the book alone. 104 photos, 2 maps. (Nov.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.