History is a mirror

Laura Bush --

Q ... Mrs. Bush, just out of curiosity, what are you reading these days, and what about the President?

MRS. BUSH: Well, I'm reading as quickly as I can one of our Book Festival writers, J.A. Jance. She's a mystery writer; she's a best-selling writer. She's written tons of books, so I hope people will look at hers. The President right now is reading a book by Jay Winik, who is a historian. It's called "The Great Upheaval." It's a very long history of the world, really, up to the -- around the same time as the founding of the United States. And I think it will be very interesting. I also have that big book on my bedside table; Lynne Cheney gave it to me.

What might George Bush find interesting about Winik's book? Here's the LA Times review --

He focuses on people in leadership positions -- inherited, acquired by election or seized -- whose decisions were taken on the fly and reflected their character and convictions. At almost every watershed he describes, his main thrust is that things could have gone the other way ... America's leaders agonized over the best means to preserve their young nation and show that the rule of law could prevail without the iron hand of an autocrat -- and that democracy need not degenerate into mob rule ... The lengthy chronicle of Catherine's war against the Ottoman Empire, in particular, seems to have been included mostly because Western conflict with Islam is currently a hot topic ... Winik's Big Man approach to history -- the lower classes appear exclusively as members of enraged crowds brandishing severed heads on pikes or ripping hapless victims limb from limb -- scants the underlying social forces that made it highly improbable that France could nonviolently achieve in a few years the kind of moderately representative government it took England centuries to reach.


The book also has an extensive discussion of the disputed Presidential election of 1800 (=2000-2 centuries, geddit?). In which Thomas Jefferson ended up President.