Publisher's Weekly Review
Unger's follow up to House of Bush, House of Saud tracks George W. Bush's ascent to power, helped by Christian fundamentalists and neoconservative policymakers who themselves rise to unprecedented influence in Washington after years in the political wilderness. Bush embraces both groups with the fervor of a new convert--and with, Unger claims, devastating results on America's foreign policy. This is an exhaustively chronicled but by now familiar story of the Bush presidency, and Unger revels in the details, especially the Byzantine backstabbing and emasculation of Colin Powell and Condelezza Rice by Cheney and Rumsfeld, and the tensions between Bush Sr. and Bush Jr.'s inner circles. In Unger's narrative, the Iraq War emerges as a fait accompli in search of an appropriate trigger, provided by September 11 and the alleged weapons of mass destruction. The historical nuggets surrounding the rise of the neocons and the Christian right are intriguing, and Unger includes some eyebrow raising revelations, but overall he leaves readers who have been awake for the past seven years with that "it's deja vu all over again" feeling. (Nov.) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.
Booklist Review
Former president George H. W. Bush and his son, the current president, have a discreet, sub-rosa conflict that rivals that of the Greek tragedies, according to Unger. Out of respect for the office, they never speak of politics or the war in Iraq. Only through intermediaries, most notably the Iraq Study Group, has the elder Bush made his opinions known to his son. The result is a painful relationship that colors the son's actions and reactions to Iraq, a nation in which the father distinctly decided against getting too deeply embroiled during his administration. Unger explores the cultural and political differences between father and son and the family dynamics that have been affected by the presidency. He also explores the history of the Christian Right and the birth of the neocons and their intersection with the political career of George W. Bush. Unger, author of House of Bush, House of Saud (1980), again offers insight into one of the nation's political dynasties and the enduring impact on the country of a philosophical separation between father and son.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2007 Booklist
Kirkus Review
A sobering examination of the twin fundamentalisms that shape the current administration internally--to say nothing of the one it's supposed to be fighting. Compassionate conservatism? Nice, disarming rhetoric, writes Unger (Center on Law and Security/New York Univ.; House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties, 2004, etc.)--but merely a way of reframing the argument so that "the entire political spectrum--everyone from hardcore theocrats to liberal secularists--supported policies that would aid the Christian Right." The gloves came off as soon as Bush II entered the White House and turned operations over to the very neoconservatives whom his father had largely frozen out of power, writes Unger in a bit of psychodrama at the opening of the book, giving the son's repudiation of the father appropriately tragic undertones. The neocons--most of them former leftists and most of them without any apparent religious beliefs--made unlikely allies for the Christian right-wingers who entered government in droves on Bush's ascension, but they had many interests in common, including pressing the battle against Islam and advancing the American empire. Most of these fundamentalists, religious and political, notes Unger, have been idealists without much grounding in the real world--one reason, perhaps, that all band together in detesting Henry Kissinger, that master of realpolitik. But, however ethereal their thinking, they have plenty of real-world effects. Unger works much the same territory as Kevin Phillips did in his American Theocracy (2005), and he turns in plenty of news. One interesting bit: Katherine Harris, the Florida secretary of state so instrumental in putting Bush in office in 2000, was an acolyte of the same fundamentalists who pushed Jerry Falwell and company into secular politics--and, as an aside, she helped see to it that more than a quarter of the votes cast in Florida were not recounted, contrary to law. What next? Fundamentalists and neocons alike have been thoroughly discredited--but, Unger hints, there's still plenty of damage yet to come. Armageddon, anyone? Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Unger reenvisions the conflict in the Middle East as a battle between fundamentalists (Islamic, Orthodox Jewish, and Christian evangelical) and the post-Enlightenment world. With a three-city tour. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
