Tanmayee Yenumula: Outside Readings (Set 2): Book Review 12.5.10

Tim Rutten’s book review of George W. Bush’s autobiography Decision Points, focuses more on using a New Historicism critical approach. Rutten analyzes Bush’s background as well as the general happenings of the time period.

Rutten analyzes former President Bush’s background and how that impacted his decision to write the autobiography when he points out that “virtually every member of his [George Bush’s] extended, very political family has published a bestseller, including his parents' dogs”. Throughout the review, Rutten also talks about Bush’s personality and connects it to Bush’s recounts. An example of this can be seen when he talks about the fact that Bush writes that, “he enjoys surprising those who underestimate him”. Rutten picks out lines that reveal Bush’s personality and analyzes them, as he did with the above-mentioned quotation.

Rutten, as part of his New Historicist approach, also focuses on the events of the time period (in this case, our own time period) and how they impacted the book. If Rutten were to try to summarize all the major points in the book, then the review would be ridiculously long. Instead, he picks out some of the most controversial issues of the time period that Bush talks about and analyzes those. One example of this would be when Rutten focuses on Bush’s decisions in the wake of 9/11. Rutten focuses his analysis on how the events of 9/11 impacted Bush. Rutten pulls out a specific quote from Bush that said “‘History can debate the decisions I made, the policies I chose, and the tools I left behind. But there can be no debate about one fact: After the nightmare of September 11, America went seven and a half years without another successful terrorist attack on our soil. If I had to summarize my most meaningful accomplishment as president in one sentence, that would be it’”. He then goes on to analyze how that quote sums up Bush’s apparent unapologetic stance on his controversial decision on water-boarding other methods of torture.

As a fellow writer, I can say that Rutten’s book review was quite a strong one with many strengths and few weaknesses. Rutten was able to avoid the trap of simply summarizing the book, instead analyzing major points made in the book based on the New Historicist critical approach. He also maintains a very neutral stance, especially because this book is written by one of the most controversial presidents at the moment. This piece didn't really have any notable weaknesses.

One interesting thing that I did notice was the ending of the review, which referred to a reading from British Literature last year. Rutten ended the piece by connecting the ending of Decision Points with a line from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The line that he thought of was “To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself”, which was perhaps one last attempt at connecting the book back to Bush’s personality/background.