The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neil - Hardcover

Ron Suskind

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786265329 ISBN 13: 9780786265329

Publisher: Thorndike Press, 2004

Synopsis

A #1 New York Times Bestseller
A Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist

This vivid, unfolding narrative is like no other book that has been written about the Bush presidency. At its core are the candid assessments of former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, for two years the administration's top economic official and a principal of the National Security Council. The result is a disclosure of breadth and depth unparalleled for an ongoing presidency.

About this title

Review:

The George W. Bush White House, as described by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, is a world out of kilter. Policy decisions are determined not by careful weighing of an issue's complexities; rather, they're dictated by a cabal of ideologues and political advisors operating outside the view of top cabinet officials. The President is not a fully engaged administrator but an enigma who is, at best, guarded and poker-faced but at worst, uncurious, unintelligent, and a puppet of larger forces. O'Neill provided extensive documentation to journalist and author Suskind, including schedules with 7,630 entries and a set of 19,000 documents that featured memoranda to the President, thank-you notes, meeting minutes, and voluminous reports. The result, The Price of Loyalty, is a gripping look inside the meeting rooms, the in-boxes, and the minds of a famously guarded administration. Much of the book, as one might expect from the story of a Treasury Secretary, revolves around economics, but even those not normally enthused by tax code intricacies will be fascinated by the rapid-fire intellects of O'Neill and Fed chairman Alan Greenspan as they gather for regular power breakfasts. A good deal of the book is about the things that O'Neill never figures out. He knows there's something creepy going on with the administration's power structure, but he's never inside enough to know quite what it is. But while those sections are intriguing, other passages are simply revelatory: O'Neill asserts that Saddam Hussein was targeted for removal not in the 9/11 aftermath but soon after Bush took office. Paul O'Neill makes for an interesting protagonist. A vaunted economist from the days of Nixon and Ford, he returns to a Washington that's immeasurably more cutthroat. And while he appears almost naïvely academic initially, he emerges as someone determined to speak his mind even when it becomes apparent that such an approach spells his political doom. --John Moe

About the Author:

Ron Suskind was The Wall Street Journal's senior national affairs reporter from 1993 to 2000 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing while working there. He has recently attracted national attention with his groundbreaking articles about the Bush White House. Suskind, who writes for Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, and other national publications, appears frequently as a correspondent on PBS and network news. He is the author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed A Hope in the Unseen, and is a distinguished visiting scholar at Dartmouth College. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and two sons.

About this edition

• Publisher: Thorndike Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0786265329
• ISBN 13: 9780786265329
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 541