With his unmatched investigative skill, Bob Woodward tells the behind-the-scenes story of how President George W. Bush and his top national security advisers led the nation to war. Extensive quotations from the secret deliberations of the National Security Council and firsthand revelations of the private thoughts, concerns and fears of the president and his war cabinet, make BUSH AT WAR an unprecedented chronicle of a modern presidency in a time of grave crisis. Based on interviews with more than a hundred sources and four hours of exclusive interviews with the president, BUSH AT WAR reveals Bush's sweeping, almost grandiose vision for remaking the world. Woodward's virtual wiretap into the White House Situation Room reveals a stunning group portrait of an untested president and his advisers, three of whom might themselves have made it to the presidency. In BUSH AT WAR, Bob Woodward once again delivers a reporting tour de force.

In his unmissable new book Bob Woodward takes the reader on an inside journey from the start of the Iraq War in 2003 right up to the present day, providing a detailed, authoritative account of President Bush's leadership and the struggles among the men and women in the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA and the State Department. With Bush well into his second term, Woodward breaks new ground, as he has in his thirteen previous international bestsellers, including BUSH AT WAR and PLAN OF ATTACK. Woodward puts the Bush legacy in historical context as he shows this presidency in action in a way that is normally seen only years after a chief executive leaves office. He describes how Bush and his team have attempted to change the way that wars are fought, and put together a re-election campaign while re-inventing their strategy for the invasion and occupation of Iraq over and over again. Here is the behind-the-scenes story of this administration -- meetings, conversations, and memos; conflicts, manoeuvring, and anguish -- as key administration figures provide a full view of the first presidency of the twenty-first century.

This dramatic account of George Bush's life during 1941-1944, when he flew a fighter-bomber in the Pacific Theater of WW II, also tells the story of the old-fashioned courtship between the young naval officer and his one, true love, Barbara Pierce. Photographs.

Award-winning journalist Bob Woodward has spent over thirty years in Washington's corridors of power. In All the President's Men it was he, together with Carl Bernstein, who exposed the Watergate scandal and he has been giving us a privileged front-row seat to White-House intrigue and decision-making ever since. With PLAN OF ATTACK he brings his investigative skills to bear on the administration of George W. Bush, and the build-up to war in Iraq. What emerges is a fascinating and intimate portrait of the leading powers in Bush's war council and their allies overseas as they prepare their pre-emptive attack and change the course of history.

In his fourth book on President George W. Bush and his controversial 'War on Terror,' Bob Woodward takes us behind closed doors, into the hidden rooms of the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and US intelligence agencies, where the details of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were fiercely debated and eventually determined. Today, the Iraq War is a major source of contention around the world, and may become the defining political, social and moral issue of this brief period in American history. In an attempt to understand the Bush presidency, and its divisive legacy, Woodward examines this conflict at its source: in Washington D.C. This fast-paced, groundbreaking book includes never-before-published information, as Woodward draws upon his vast experience a veteran political journalist to provide a richly detailed and meticulously researched examination of the war in Iraq over the past two years. In The War Within, Woodward expands upon his study of the Bush administration in his previous three books, with his signature authoritative, measured, and deeply human sense of perspective.

From journalistic accounts like Fiasco and Imperial Life in the Emerald City to insider memoirs like Jawbreaker and Three Cups of Tea, the books about America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could fill a library. But each explores a narrow slice of a whole: two wars launched by a single president as part of a single foreign policy. Now noted historian Terry Anderson examines them together, in a single comprehensive overview. Shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush told advisor Karl Rove, "I am here for a reason, and this is how we're going to be judged." Anderson provides this judgment in this sweeping, authoritative account of Bush's War on Terror and his twin interventions. He begins with historical surveys of Iraq and Afghanistan-known respectively as "the improbable country" and "the graveyard of empires," and he examines US policies toward those and other nations in the Middle East from the 1970s to 2000. Then Anderson focuses on the Bush Administration, carrying us through such events as the terrorist's attacks of 9/11, the invasion of Afghanistan and the siege of Tora Bora, the "Axis of Evil" speech, the invasion of Iraq and capture of Baghdad, and the eruption of insurgency in Iraq. He ranges from RPGs slamming into Abrams tanks to cabinet meetings, vividly portraying both soldiers in the field and such policymakers as Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice. Anderson describes the counter-insurgency strategy embodied by the "surge" in Iraq, and the simultaneous revival of the Taliban. He concludes with an assessment of the prosecution of the wars in the first years of Barack Obama's presidency. Carefully researched and briskly narrated, Bush's Wars provides the single-volume balanced history that we have waited for. This new paperback edition takes the story through the first Obama term, covering our exit from Iraq and the ongoing drawdown in Afghanistan.

One of BookPage's Best Books of 2020 “The detailed, nuanced, gripping account of that strange and complex journey offered in Robert Draper’s To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq is essential reading—now, especially now . . . Draper’s account [is] one for the ages . . . A must-read for all who care about presidential power.” —The Washington Post From the author of the New York Times bestseller Dead Certain comes the definitive, revelatory reckoning with arguably the most consequential decision in the history of American foreign policy--the decision to invade Iraq. Even now, after more than fifteen years, it is hard to see the invasion of Iraq through the cool, considered gaze of history. For too many people, the damage is still too palpable, and still unfolding. Most of the major players in that decision are still with us, and few of them are not haunted by it, in one way or another. Perhaps it's that combination, the passage of the years and the still unresolved trauma, that explains why so many protagonists opened up so fully for the first time to Robert Draper. Draper's prodigious reporting has yielded scores of consequential new revelations, from the important to the merely absurd. As a whole, the book paints a vivid and indelible picture of a decision-making process that was fatally compromised by a combination of post-9/11 fear and paranoia, rank naïveté, craven groupthink, and a set of actors with idées fixes who gamed the process relentlessly. Everything was believed; nothing was true. The intelligence failure was comprehensive. Draper's fair-mindedness and deep understanding of the principal actors suffuse his account, as does a storytelling genius that is close to sorcery. There are no cheap shots here, which makes the ultimate conclusion all the more damning. In the spirit of Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August and Marc Bloch's Strange Defeat, To Start A War will stand as the definitive account of a collective process that arrived at evidence that would prove to be not just dubious but entirely false, driven by imagination rather than a quest for truth--evidence that was then used to justify a verdict that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and a flood tide of chaos in the Middle East that shows no signs of ebbing.

Study of the strengths and weaknesses of the president's control of foreign policy during the Persian Gulf War.

With more than 200 photographs, videos, letters, and speeches, this Deluxe eBook edition of Decision Points brings to life the critical decisions of George W. Bush’s presidency. George W. Bush served as president of the United States during eight of the most consequential years in American history. The decisions that reached his desk impacted people around the world and defined the times in which we live. Decision Points takes readers inside the Texas governor’s mansion on the night of the 2000 election, aboard Air Force One during the harrowing hours after the attacks of September 11, 2001, into the Situation Room moments before the start of the war in Iraq, and behind the scenes at the White House for many other historic presidential decisions on the financial crisis, Hurricane Katrina, Afghanistan, and Iran. In addition, it offers intimate new details on his quitting drinking, his discovery of faith, and his relationship with his family. The Deluxe eBook edition also includes: • Videos from the defining moments of the presidency, including Bush’s inspiring Ground Zero speech to the 9/11 rescue workers, intimate family home movies, and a special introduction to the edition from the president himself • Full texts of his most important speeches, including his addresses to the nation about 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq, and his second Inaugural • Handwritten letters from the president’s personal correspondence • And more than 50 new photos not contained in the print version of Decision Points A groundbreaking first in bringing multimedia to presidential memoir, the Deluxe eBook edition of Decision Points will captivate supporters, surprise critics, and change perspectives on eight remarkable years in American history—and on the man at the center of events.

It is impossible to examine any part of the war on terrorism in the twenty-first century without seeing the hand of Dick Cheney, Colin Powell or one of their loyalists. The Commanders,an account of the use of the military in the first Bush administration, is in many respects their story -- the intimate account of the tensions, disagreements and debates on the road to war.