George Herbert Walker Bush had a long career in public service. Among
the many positions he held before becoming first
vice
president and
then president of the United States, were (1) member of Congress, (2)
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, (3) head of the U.S. delegation
to China, and (4) director of the CIA. And before all that, he had
succeeded in the business world as an oil manThroughout his
life, he wrote a steady stream of
letters to family and friends. A
collection of those letters make up the body of this book. While Bush
was often unwilling to express the true depth of his feelings in
public, he allowed himself to be more forthcoming in his letters.This
series of letters begins when he was a young man, writing to his
parents while serving in the military in WWII. It continues throughout
his courtship of his wife, Barbara, through his ascendancy toward the
presidency, to his years of retirement.Since he has already
gone on ready as having no inclination to write his memoirs, these
letters can serve instead as a pseudo-autobiography, offering readers
insights into who he was and how he felt about matters, both personal
and professional.