Bush’s Books

by

Lev Raphael

Karl Rove recently published a report in the Wall Street Journal about a book competition that he says he and President Bush have had running for the last three years. It’s one that he jocularly says he’s won each year, but the jist of his essay isn’t celebrating in the literary end zone. What he apparently has set out to do is prove that President Bush “loves books, learns from them, and is intellectually engaged by them.”

My first thoughts took me back to early in Bush’s first term when we were breathlessly informed by his own staffers that President Bush “asks a lot of questions!” That a claim like this needed to be made was unintentional damning with faint praise. But since then we’ve learned from insiders who've left the administration that nothing could be further from the truth: President Bush is and has been deeply incurious. Do people like that read? Perhaps if motivated by a rather puerile competition. How embarrassing, if it’s true, that Mr. Rove and President Bush acted as if they were in elementary school, the last time I remember being challenged to read more books than someone else. If Bush really loved books, would he need a competition to get him reading?

So what kinds of books is the president said to have read? Mostly history and biography, according to Rove, including works like Team of Rivals (which took me more than two weeks to get through, and I wasn’t commander-in-chief). But among the ninety-five books the president “tackled” in 2006 were eight Travis McGee novels, and thrillers by Michael Crichton, Vince Flynn and Stephen Hunter. I’ve written mysteries myself and reviewed mysteries and thrillers for years for the Detroit Free Press.

Ninety-five books a year is almost two a week. When I reviewed almost full-time for a National Public Radio show and the Detroit Free Press as well as freelancing for the Washington Post, the Jerusalem Report, and the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, I read an average of two or three books a week. Are we seriously meant to believe that any president of the United States has the time to read that much?

It’s not impossible that President Bush read the books listed. After all, some were mysteries and they read fast, one was apparently a young adult book, ditto. Did he learn anything from them? Did they affect his thinking? Did they change his world view? On the basis of his speeches, interviews and press conferences, which have been remarkably consistent for eight years, reading doesn’t seem to have much impact on the President—or if it has, he hasn’t shared that impact with the world.

These books, including Team of Rivals, certainly don’t seem to show up in his conversation—with anyone other than Karl Rove. Has anyone anywhere reported having discussed a book with President Bush at any length? Truly engaged readers can’t stop talking about books they enjoy, and sometimes books they disliked. At meetings of world leaders, the president is widely known to ask about his colleagues’ flights, and if they slept on the plane. His small talk is reported to be extremely limited. He never brings up books that he read, when that would be a perfect opportunity, especially if his favorite topics are history and biography. Evidence of the President’s reading from an unbiased source would be far more convincing than tallies from a personal friend and former advisor.

The saddest part of the whole story is that reading doesn’t sound remotely enjoyable as Karl Rove describes it, and if it were intellectually engaging, why would the president have needed to compete with Rove or anyone? Rove reports that “We kept track not just of books read, but also the number of pages and later the combined size of each book’s pages—its ‘Total Lateral Area.’”  So the number and size of pages apparently meant as much to Rove and Bush as what was on them.

The mind reels. Whatever happened to unapologetically reading for fun and relaxation? Or for expanding one’s horizons? Or for anything other than proving you can read more than someone else? Books aren’t meant to be notches on somebody’s belt—are they? Should we be proud of a president and his staffer whose approach to reading was assessing whose book, and whose book list, was bigger? Is this how we want our children to think of books?

Even when we share what we've read, reading itself is a private, personal act—a voyage, not an advertisement; a refuge, not a race. It should inspire contemplation, not envy. Unless you’re an author thinking, “Boy, I wish I’d written that.”


Lev Raphael grew up in New York but got over it and has lived half his life in Michigan where he found his partner of twenty-four years, and a certain small fame. The author of nineteen books in many genres, and hundreds of reviews, stories and articles, he’s seen his work discussed in journals, books, conference papers, and assigned in college and university classrooms. Which means he’s become homework. Who knew? He has reviewed for the Washington Post, Boston Review, NPR, the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, Jerusalem Report, and the Detroit Free Press where he had a mystery column for almost a decade. He also hosted his own public radio book show for a year and a half where he interviewed Salman Rushdie, Erica Jong, Julian Barnes among others. Lev’s books have been translated into close to a dozen languages, some of which he can’t identify, and he’s done hundreds of readings and talks across the U.S. and Canada and in France, England, Scotland, Austria, Germany and Israel. My Germany will be published April 2009 by the University of Wisconsin Press and in September 2009 by Parthas Verlag in Berlin. You can learn more about Lev and his work, and also contact him through his website.