Within this president, whom some mocked as a cowboy, was a man who loved reading. His wife Laura later wrote that even in their early years of marriage, Bush read every night in bed. A history major at Yale, he retained a particular interest in that subject throughout his two-term presidency.
Here are some of the authors and books who either influenced or entertained our 43rd president.
‘The Bible’
In The American Scholar article “Dubya and Me,” Walt Harrington wrote of meeting the 40-year-old Bush in 1986 and of an evening spent in his home along with Laura and their preschool-aged twin daughters. Scattered around were several books, works of contemporary fiction and biographies. Harrington wrote, “'I also found an open Bible in the house. ‘I’ve read it cover to cover, and it wouldn’t hurt you, Walt, to do the same,’ Bush said, laughing. Within the last year, W. had begun a new lifetime regimen of daily Bible readings, as I and all of America would later learn.”
Politics: Guidance and Consolation
While active in the political arena, early on Bush looked to histories and biographies as helpful navigators for his own sea of troubles. As he told Harrington, “When I got elected governor and president, history gave me a chance to study the decisions of my predecessors.”
These biographies of past leaders also brought a measure of comfort in the face of criticism. In the Texas governor’s mansion, for instance, Bush read “The Raven,” Marquis James’s biography of Sam Houston.
“I was fascinated by the story of Houston voting against secession, and reading a description of him basically being driven out of town by angry citizens. … My only point is that one lesson I learned, if they’re throwing garbage on Houston, arguably Texas’s most famous politician—Sam Houston Elementary School, where I went to school in Midland, was named for him!—if they’re throwing garbage on him, they can throw garbage on me.”
During his book contests with Karl Rove, Bush doubled down on political histories and biographies of Americans. He became an Abraham Lincoln aficionado, reading 14 biographies of the Illinois rail-splitter during his eight years in office. As he had with Sam Houston, Bush found encouragement and solace in the ways Lincoln either ignored or shrugged off the ugly criticisms of his opponents.
Eclectic Tastes
Approximately 25 years later, on another visit with his old friend, Harrington found the now former president still reading and talking about books. “On his desk is a stack of books that have come as gifts: ‘All Things Are Possible Through Prayer’; ‘Basho: The Complete Haiku’; ‘Children of Jihad’; and ‘Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children’. To the pile, I add my own gift, ‘Cleopatra’ by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Stacy Schiff.”Politics and the American past remained an abiding interest as well. Of this same visit, Harrington wrote, “Right now, Bush is reading Ron Chernow’s ‘Washington: A Life,’ a biography of the first president. ‘Chernow’s a great historian,’ Bush says excitedly. ‘I think one of the great history books I read was on Alexander Hamilton by Chernow. But I also read “House of Morgan,” “Titan,” and now I’m reading “Washington.”
Harrington reported that subjects of other biographies Bush had read in recent years included Mark Twain, Huey Long, Lyndon Johnson, Theodore Roosevelt, and John Quincy Adams. Even Genghis Kahn made the list.
This interest in Genghis Khan surprised Harrington, so Bush explained:
“I didn’t know much about him. I was fascinated by him. I guess I’ve always been fascinated by larger-than-life figures. That’s why I’m looking forward to reading ‘Cleopatra.’ I know nothing about her. … But you can sit there and be absorbed by TV, let the news of the moment consume you. You can just do nothing. I choose to read as a form of relaxation. … Laura used to say, ‘Reading is taking a journey,’ and she’s right.”
The Stetson-wearing Dubya, as some referred to Bush, may have been a “cowboy president,” but when it came to reading and books he was riding at the front of the herd.
