In retirement he became the first president since John Adams to see his son win the ultimate prize in American politics. 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. He married young, started a family, and resisted pressure to go to Wall Street, striking out for the adventurous world of Texas oil. Born into a loving, privileged, and competitive family, Bush joined the navy on his eighteenth birthday and at age twenty was shot down on a combat mission over the Pacific. This is the human story of a man who was, like the nation he led, at once noble and flawed. 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.

Drawing on President Bush's personal diaries, on the diaries of his wife, Barbara, and on extraordinary access to the forty-first president and his family, Meacham paints an intimate and surprising portrait of an intensely private man who led the nation through tumultuous times. #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK * NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST In this brilliant biography, Jon Meacham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, chronicles the life of George Herbert Walker Bush.

Jon meacham and there was light review