Inigo Thomas writes:

In The Bush Tragedy, Jacob Weisberg shows how Bush family traits explain some of George W.’s tactics and modes of decision-making. ‘What makes the family drama unusual,’ Weisberg says, ‘is the way it played out on a national and world stage.’ But the Bushes are less of a family and more of a clan: a clan that incorporates two prominent families, the Protestant, austere Bushes and the once Catholic, swashbuckling Walkers. They have their spendthrifts and hoarders, their rebels and conformists, their tensions between fathers, mothers, daughters, sons and cousins.

(LRB 24 April 2008)

Bloomsbury | hardback 271 pp. |ISBN: 9780747593942