The communications people in the Bush White House—following on the heels of Bill Clinton, a famous bookworm, and aware, surely, of the popular view of the President as incurious—always made a big to-do about what George W. Bush was reading. In 2005, it was Natan Sharansky’s “The Case for Democracy.” A year later, Bush was said to be digging into Albert Camus’s “The Stranger,” along with books about Lincoln, Alexander II, Mao, and Babe Ruth. By 2008, Karl Rove revealed in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that he and the President had been engaging in yearly reading contests (points for volume rather than style or taste), good-natured challenges where each man attempted to get through more than a book a week.
Back then, Rove noted that he had bested his boss each year, dutifully including the always-close final tallies. Bush may not have been able to keep pace, but you can try to read along with Karl Rove, as part of a new book club he’s started with Clayton Morris, over at Goodreads. This summer, the pair will be reading a book each week, with members (more than three hundred at this point) joining in and then talking about the texts in discussion boards. (There hasn’t been much reader participation thus far; we’ll see if the club finds its footing.)
So what are they reading? Week one was the history “What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848,” by Daniel Walker Howe. The current title, “Foreign Influence,” by the aptly named Brad Thor, sounds like the must-have book for beach week with the Heritage Foundation: “Buried within the black ops budget of the Department of Defense, a new spy agency has been created. Unfettered by the oversight of self-serving politicians, it reports only to a secret panel of insiders.” Thor, you’ve done it again!
Members will get to vote on future selections. Perhaps Karl Rove’s own memoir, published in March, will make the cut.
(Via: Politico.)
