0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
The Hobo Philosopher, 2007-10-19
Well, I read a few books by Woodward. I haven't been that impressed by any of them. After I finished this one, I closed the door on Bob Woodward.
First of all I don't like the fiction type format for a history book. I realize that he and his staff of junior writers are trying to make it interesting and more enjoyable, but when they write things like: Judge So and So thought to himself, what a complete jerk this guy is. That's going too far for me. That's fiction not history.
Next, I think this accounting was rather ridiculous. This book makes Jimmy Carter out to be a foul mouthed, conniving manipulator of people and the poor press; on the other hand Gerald Ford comes off as a ex-altar boy with only the purest apolitical motivations. Come on!
I struggled and struggled to finish reading this book, but that's the last one by Woodward and friends for me.
I've read a couple by Bernstein. I think Mr. Bernstein was the real thing in this duo. This Woodward is a joke.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Inside of the White House, 2005-06-15
Another Bob Woodward book, another masterpiece. I am getting great pleasure from his books. Detailed research, witnesses, and main character interviews are combined to revealed truth with every respect. In Shadows, he discovers the last five presidents scandals and events around them. Book starts with Ford, Nixon and Watergate, This is the most interesting chapter of the book, and it is explained with every detail. Secondly, Carter and payment made to Jordan King and Iran Hostage crisis. You can feel Carter's pain in this chapter. After that, of course Reagan and Iran-Contra weapon sale and Oliver North incident. This chapter is also very interesting. The role Regan and Senior Bush is much different than public knows. Senior Bush's role is very controversial. There are always something learn from his books. When Senior Bush was at the White House, subject is the war again. First gulf war and Saddam stories given. There is also little bit information about Bush-Saudi relations in that time. Inevitable, Mr. Bandar's name is also here. Finally, Clinton era, Whitewater and Monica. This is also very big chapter. In Whitewater investigation is explained very well. Also Monica scandal is the fun part of the book. Star and Clinton have not a bad relation as we know.
This is the best book for near presidential history. I give all the credits to Mr. Woodward for this great book. Buy it and read it!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
The effect the Independent Counsel had on the Presidency, 2003-12-26
I think this is a pretty good book on the Presidency of the United States since Watergate. Of course, Mr. Woodward played a significant role in reporting Watergate and has written extensively about the Presidency since then.This book examines the various difficulties and scandals the Presidents since Nixon have had and the shadow the legacy of Watergate fell on those events and affected how they were handled and perceived. The most significant event in the way these things played out was the creation of the Independent Counsel. While I was never wild about the Independent Counsels before I read this book, I have come to the conclusion that it was an awful idea and an abuse of our Constitution. While the office was designed to not be accountable to the President to afford a credible ability to investigate the Executive Branch, it has no reasonable boundaries or limits and is not subject to any of the checks or balances that enable our government to function as reasonably as it does.
Freed from any limits of time, budget, or public accountability it is not surprising that many, but not all, of these Independent Counsels end up pursuing all kinds of things apart from what they were originally charged to pursue. My chief conclusion from reading this book is that this was a bad law with worse execution and should never be revived. Good riddance!
Half of the book is devoted to the Clinton scandals. The other large section is Iran-Contra. How you perceive Woodward's balance and objectivity will be colored by your personal politics. I have to admit that I found my own reading of the book varied at different points because of my own view of these scandals and whether or not I agreed with Woodward or felt that his own political biases were creeping in (which is impossible to avoid). But all-in-all there is a lot of good reporting here and is written in way that is easy to read. There are lots of endnotes to document the sources for the various statements, meetings, and conclusions drawn.
I recommend the book highly.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Interesting, disturbing look at the presidency, 2003-02-03
Heard the taped version of SHADOW: FIVE PRESIDENTS
AND THE LEGACY OF WATERGATE by Bob Woodward . . . it
is a very interesting, as well as disturbing, look at what it takes to be president in this country.
Because of Watergate, the press no longer takes a "hands off"
approach to what is being done in the White House . . . consequently, Woodward points out that all presidents--from Nixon through Clinton--seem to have had lapses in judgment, during which they either did not tell the truth or had others help cover it up for them.
I got a fresh perspective on Ford's pardon of Nixon, and though
I had thought I had known a lot about the Monicagate morass,
I now know even more (including a lot of dirt not uncovered
elsewhere).
Fortunately, Woodward is only heard at the beginning and
the end . . . he does not have a great speaking voice, that's
for sure . . . the rest was narrated by James Naughton . . . his
impressive baritone voice made for easy listening . . . moreover, he actually sounds like many of the characters he portrays, such as James Carville, Ronald Raegan and Jimmy Carter.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
An important bridging of common sense psychology & politics, 2003-01-18
The first line in Micahel Lind's deeply provocative treatise on the modern American conservative movement UP FROM CONSERVATISM kicks you in the stomach, regardless of your political beliefs:"American Conservatism is dead." Like the political Nietzsche he is, Bob Woodward, in SHADOW: FIVE PRESIDENTS AND THE LEGACY OF WATERGATE, finishes that statement in this 500-plus page tome by saying, essentially, "...and Nixon has killed it."
None other than Gore Vidal has nicknamed America the *United States of Amnesia* so often that the trueness of it stops it from being funny. Yet any psychologist worth their salt will tell you the many reasons why memory, in a person or culture, is often the first thing to be EXORCISED. It isn't always something that leaves willingly. Bob Woodward brings common sense psychology--memory--back into the discussion of what has happened to the presidency, and America's relationship to it, since the quasi-psychotic Nixon disgraced it in the early 1970's. He reveals this with SHADOW, not by calling out and judging the Nixonians from the perspective of opinion, but via showing and analysing actual history. The degree to which the entire concept and institution of the American Presidency has been almost irrevocably debilitated by Watergate is the subject of this book, and it cannot be ignored in our time after reading it. In revealing the new cynically invasive psychic architecture of American politics, built on the destroyed remnants of the trusted Tao of FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, LBJ and Kennedy, he offers a glimpse of what Watergate symbolized about Nixon's soul. And what that tortured soul has meant for American culture today, in the 21st century.
Doing this not only puts Monica Lewinsky into a less mythological perspective. It also puts all of the machinations that now go into politicking for your right to actually BE President long after you have been elected--Republican or Democrat--into a new, important, and ultimately saddening perspective. (The degree to which her very existence in the public mind is shown to be part of a desire of Clinton's powerful enemies to erase Nixon's legacy from the annals of history with the impeachment of a Democratic President is brilliant. That omen is ironically overshadowed, however, by the way he explains the uncontrollable political Frankenstein that was the Office of Independent Counsel. This evil genie, with its granted near absolute power, is what Clinton let out of the bottle; a bottle that, after Watergate, was thought never to be opened again. Without it, the reincarnation of the Salem witch trials with Kenneth Starr and the pornography of his reports would never have occurred.)
I happened to have picked up this book to read after reading Conason and Lyons' THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT--something which truly must be read in tandem with this if one is to really understand the social forces that also took center stage in the Clinton drama, despite their desire to still remain hidden. As such I found the Clinton chapters of SHADOW a rehash of previously digested material. SHADOW nonetheless, with its detailed meticulous analyses of the weaknesses and foibles of Ford, Carter, Regan, Bush and Clinton, and how these weaknesses became debilitating through the sins of their Watergate predecessor Nixon, cuts to the quick of our social consciousness today.
It is so important, it seems, for the American public not to have a historical perspective on anything that happens in politics. As if the pretense that all of it has no precedence somehow makes it more real or important--or worse, justifies an often hypocritically manufactured moral outrage. (I'll never forget the rage Clinton-haters would express at the mere mentioning of Sally Hemmings [Thomas Jefferson's slave mistress], Judith Exner [one of Kennedy's mistresses] or the broken first marriages of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, seemingly defending their right to believe Bill and Monica had ushered in the seventh sign of the Book of Revelations with their original sin.) Woodward's SHADOW destroys any validity that way of thinking had, and redefines the desire to be willfully politically/historically ignorant (as if ignorance buys someone moral virtue) as anything but sane. The book has a way of revalidating the entire concept and discipline of psychology, and its ability to explain the source of today's events, as it gives new strength to the battle weary line of Santayana: "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
Anyone interested in a deeper perspective on the Clinton presidency, the presidency of both Bushes, and modern American culture would highly benefit from this powerful trinity: Michael Lind's UP FROM CONSERVATISM, Conason and Lyons' THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT, and this book. Woodward's SHADOW is extraordinarily well written, tremendously informative, and, even with its inevitable biases both in favor of journalism as it is presently practiced (Consaon and Lyons are fortunately not so kind--particularly to the Washington Post) and against the possibility of a president after Nixon inspiring the kind of faith and hope that those like FDR and Kennedy did (though he is almost right, Conason, Lyons and Lind will explain clearly why it could have happened but would not be allowed in Clinton's case), Woodward's masterful writing and storytelling skills hide a multitude of sins. Highly recommended.