Posted on 01/22/2006 3:09:42 PM PST by wagglebee
Ever wonder which books President Bush is reading?
He provided a clue to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in the Oval Office this month, when talk turned to Merkel's childhood under Communism.
Bush said he had just read "Mao: The Unknown Story," an 814-page biography that presents the Chinese dictator as the moral equivalent of Hitler or Stalin.
Bush reportedly spoke glowingly of the book, a 10-year project by Jung Chang, the author of the hugely successful memoir "Wild Swans," which has sold 10 million copies worldwide, and her husband, John Halliday, a British historian. "Mao" has been at the top of the best-seller lists in Britain and Germany and was published to mixed reviews late last year in the United States.
"Mao: The Unknown Story" is a searing indictment of Communism.
Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said last week that Laura Bush had given the book to her husband as a gift and that the president had just finished reading it. Asked why Bush liked the book, McClellan said he would find out, then reported back Friday that Bush had told him that it "really shows how brutal a tyrant he was" and that "he was much more brutal than people assumed."
Bush also said that "millions upon millions were killed because of his policies."
The book charges Mao with responsibility for more than 70 million deaths in peacetime, “more than any other twentieth-century leader."
Chang and Halliday told the International Herald Tribune in a telephone interview from Paris, that they were "thrilled" that Bush had read the book.
Is this a book by the guy who claims Lincoln was gay?
The Chinese are going to be pissed.
This is great news! Eventually we will have a war with China.
"Hopefully, this will wake Bush to the growing threat of the Chicoms"
.......and the United States Democrat Party.
I haven't read it, but I've heard good things about it. Some good reviews at Amazon.
Given the amount of stuff he has to read every day, it is amazing that he has any energy left for bedtime reading.
The average high school or college grad probably isn't sure exactly what Mao (or Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler) did.
Mao and his Red Book are both still worshipped, albeit not by edict as it was, in Communist China.
I'm sure Karl Rove read it to him. We all know Chimpy McHitlerburton isn't literate enough to read a Times column, much less an 814 page book.</sarc>
He has to read several hundred pages of serious texts every day, 24/7/365 [for us laypeople - say, the seriousness of the reading compares with a preparation for a major university exam - one needs to read, understand, avoid forgetting important details, and tie it all together], - and he uses reading glasses, too. Thus my comment about him having a lot of energy left after it was meant literally, and was not ironic in the least.
Jung Chang is an excellent author. I've read her other book "Wild Swans" which traces the lives of her grandmother, mother and herself through Imperialisiic China and into modern day. She is no fan of Mao or communists.
Ummmmmmmm..........I'm pretty sure that he's been very 'awake' about the Chinese threat since he took office.
I know. I was just making a feeble attempt at humor.
I'm sure he's aware of it. In the end, however, the whole thing is going to come down to whether China decides to go with the West or the Islamics in the coming showdown.
Personally, I think they'll probably go with the West, although perhaps not right away. We shall see.
"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" came in at 870 pages.
Mao is the patron saint of San Franfreako.
Me neither. The point was that they are releasing kid's books now that are 800+ pages!
They'll use the jihadis to harm us (they armed pakistan, north korea and iran with nukes and missle technology). When the time comes and they have outlived their usefullness, the chicoms will obliterate them.
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