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The early years of the twenty-first century were a tumultuous time in America. During this time the man beside the President was Ari Fleischer, his press secretary and one of his most trusted confidants. In this role, Fleisher was present for every decision and became an eyewitness to history. In this riveting account, Fleischer goes behind the scenes as he recalls his experiences in the West Wing, including such momentous events as the 2000 election, September 11, 2001 and its aftermath, the anthrax scare, the war in Afghanistan, the pressure-filled buildup to the war in Iraq, and the President's thoughts as the war began. Through the ups and downs of this time, he took the heat, fielded the questions, and brought the President's message into living rooms around the world.
The early years of the twenty-first century were a tumultuous time in America. The country faced a hotly contested presidential election, the largest terrorist attack in the nation's history, and the early stages of war. Through it all, President George W. Bush surrounded himself with a handful of close advisers. During this time the man beside the President was Ari Fleischer, his press secretary and one of his most trusted confidants. In this role, Fleisher was present for every decision and became an eyewitness to history.
In this riveting account, Fleischer goes behind the scenes as he recalls his experiences in the West Wing. Through the ups and downs of this time, he took the heat, fielded the questions, and brought the President's message into living rooms around the world.
In
Taking Heat, Fleischer, for the first time, gives his perspective on:
- The 2000 election, from the recounts to the transition to power
- September 11, 2001, its aftermath, and the anthrax scare
- The pressure-filled buildup to the war in Iraq and the President's thoughts as the war began
- Life in the White House, from learning to adjust to the pace of the West Wing and his early briefings to his relationship with the press
- The White House press corps, who they are, and how they report the news
- The factors that led to his decision to leave Washington behind.
This is the story of the men and women of the White House press corps and the cornerstones of democracy: freedom of speech and the freedom of the press. Fleischer presents an in-depth, insider's view on the Washington political arena from a perspective few have seen.
Fleischer writes of his belief that the press has a bias in Washington. It's not a question of partisanship or press-driven ideology. Instead, it's a focus on conflict, particularly if it's a conflict they can attach to the President. It's the nature of the White House press corps, regardless of who's in power. The members of the White House press corps are masters at being devil's advocate, able to take with passion the opposite side of whatever issue the President supports. Fleischer's job was to calmly field their questions, no matter how pointed.
Taking Heat is an introspective exploration of the top political events in the first half of the Bush administration, as well as the candid observations of a professional who stood in the bright lights of the world stage.
"
Customer Reviews:
I got to be honest here...........2007-08-05
When I found this book (on CD) in the sale rack I thought maybe I'd found a rare jewel. Figuring the early Bush years were old news and this book was sent to the sale rack been because of that.
First off Ari should have never read his own book. He came off as a real complainer. A man who had written a book to continue to make excuses for his decisions. Notice I didn't say mistakes. He rarely stated a move of his without showing us how he was forced to do so. It was very sad. Even at one point the old Clinton administration pushes him around.
The few moments he gives us of true inside action where wonderful. There may have only been three in the whole book. The Colin Powell condom story was one of them. Ari that's what the reader wanted in the book.
What scared me was that Ari came off as extremely angry at the press. There is one woman reporter who he mocks endlessly in his vocal impersonation of her. I hope she doesn't hear the CD version or she is going to be super mad. Ari spends a very long chapter expaining how the press is unfair and bias. He uses graduation numbers instead of true stories. We all saw the press eat Bill Clinton alive...so it was hard to believe they were nicer to Bill then they were to George. That chapter should have met the shreader.
Ari did show some spots of careless reporting but his use of "you should have believed the White House" was a weak response. After past White House administrations trying to "out sly" the press Ari should have known the press would not simply take him at his word. He came off sounding like a naive high school student.
Several of the world stituations that happened while Ari was in office where handled with amazing skill in real life but Ari made it sound like he was rolled over. The moment where Bush took the megaphone in NYC was the most powerful moment in his presidency. Luckily I saw it because Ari barely mentioned it.
Ari ducked and dodged the press for years. He's mad that he did it. He's still mad at them. The amazing strategies the Bush administration used to keep the American people informed are not mentioned in this book. I wanted to learn something. Instead I see Ari scolding a press member for a inaccurate story that hurt the White House then giving the same guy a hot breaking story in the next breath by accident AND letting the guy run it. What was his reasoning? It sounded weak and also like bad management.
Was Ari out of his league? The book makes it appear so. Luckily I watch all this on television as an American citizen. I know the book paints the wrong picture. To the public Ari did a stand up job and he worked well to keep the American people informed. So next time you write a book Ari stick to your guns and be proud of what you did. It would make for a much better read.
Very fine comedy!.......2007-05-13
Absolutely rip-roaring hilarious!! It appears that he is actually not trying to be comedic but when one reads "I will always admire the President's calm and self control" (pg. 140, referring to Bush listening to "My Pet Goat" after being informed that his contry is under attack), it should be obvious that we are in the presence of a comedic master or an idiot who manages to be very funny. Either way, one of the funniest books I have read! Minus one star for some tedious passages trying to show himself in a good light without being funny.
The dialogues of george bush that are presented are totally unrealistic and seemed to be calculated to put him in a good light. For eg., he says Bush was a superb military commander as he left all the major decisions to the generals but then conveniently ignores Shinseki. In fact, most of the Iraq war dialogue is very funny now that we know more about what actually happened.
The Rating Depends on Your Point of View.......2006-04-24
Did my opinion of the president change after reading this book? Not really. I read the book with a somewhat-open mind, in that the book is written from the personal perspective of someone who was there. Fleischer wrote from his perspective; gave his testimoy; in that respect, the books is very well written. We're also talking about someone who trusts the President implicitly, so he's going to defend him. So I can't consider this a totally "objective" account of what was going on in the White House during the time the war was being debated.
I don't particuarly appreciate President Bush's policies and his way of thinking, but I do appeciate the fact that he doesn't change his mind once he makes a decision. (Most might say he won't admit he's made a mistake - that's a risk that's run with standing your ground.)
What I did appreciate about the book was the insight into President Bush's character. It explains to me why he thinks the way he does, and helps me understand why he says what he does. Doesn't mean I appreciate what he says, but understanding a person goes a long way in formulating an opinion.
I also appreciated the behind-the-scenes view into what was going on in the White House during the tense fall of '01.
I loved the insight into the media. Do I think they're biased? Absolutely! The book explains the media as much as it does the White House. Being interested in journalism, I was wrapped up in that part of the book. Doesn't excuse their recent behaviors....but the atmosphere of pressure to get the news out as it happens makes people take corners. I can understand that too.
Bottom line: if you're a Bush supporter, you'll love the book. If you a Bush loather, I don't see this book changing your mind. I wish, however, that you might be able to read it to understand why he is how he is...
Like some people still watch TV: what do they know?.......2005-10-17
The author, Ari Fleischer, of TAKING HEAT / THE PRESIDENT, THE PRESS, AND MY YEARS IN THE WHITE HOUSE, having been close to events that may yet produce an indictment of presidential adviser Karl Rove, has a point of view which is in need of a form of analysis made possible in modern society by a heady mix of Freud's books on Thomas Woodrow Wilson and WIT AND ITS RELATION TO THE UNCONSCIOUS. People who appreciate this book are likely to be applying the synthesis at the center of the latter, on "The Pleasure Mechanism and the Psychogenesis of Wit" and "The Motives of Wit and Wit as a Social Process." A little old lady named Helen Thomas is so good at filling the role which clowns reserve for representatives of virtue that Chapter 13 (pages 246-258) gives her a platform capable of illustrating section 64 of Nietzsche's THE GAY SCIENCE on "Sceptics. -- I am afraid that old women in their most secret heart of hearts are more sceptical than all men:" only to have her observations about "turmoil in the Arab world, obviously, from all the things we've been doing" answered at the end of the chapter by:
ARI: I think there's a lot of silent rejoicing in the Arab world that Saddam Hussein is gone.
The silent majority was also used by Nixon to justify his policies, which took years and a Congressional action ending American bombing in Southeast Asia instead of the timetable that "Peace is at hand" usually implies. Fortunately for Karl Rove, people tend to allow advisers near the top to expect to get away with a variety of secret circus stunts, justified by ideals worthy of THOMAS WOODROW WILSON, as when George W. Bush stated in March, 2003, "The best thing we have going for us is that our values will unleash that freedom." (p. 335).
Now is hardly the time to use Carl Schmitt's book, THE CONCEPT OF THE POLITICAL, to illustrate what war signifies in modern society:
Hegel has also advanced a definition of the enemy which in general has been evaded by modern philosophers. The enemy is a negated otherness. But this negation is mutual and this mutuality of negations has its own concrete existence, as a relation between enemies; this relation of two nothingnesses on both sides bears the danger of war. ([Schmitt's Note], p. 63).
It was in answering a question about the cost of such danger, based on an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office of between $9 and $13 billion, that Ari Fleischer made a famous remark, on October 1, 2002, "The cost of one bullet if the Iraqi people take it upon themselves is substantially less than that." (p. 286). The form of apology demonstrates techniques Freud associated with wit: "I had only one bullet to give my country, and I used it to shoot myself in the foot." (p. 286). Back on May 1, 2002, Helen Thomas was told that regime change in Iraq had already been approved in a law, "passed by the House and Senate, signed into law by President Clinton. Regime change, in whatever form it takes, is the policy of the United States government, under President Clinton, continued under President Bush. . . . Helen, if you were the President, you could have vetoed the law. (Laughter) President Clinton signed it, and the President will keep it enforced." (p. 252).
Politics in America has become so Schmittian that it is not surprising to find that Ari's gratitude to his editor, Claire Wachtel, in the Preface, is primarily about their political differences:
I had the help of many people writing and editing this book. Thank you to my editor at William Morrow, Claire Wachtel. A self-described "knee-jerk liberal," Claire helped me--sometimes forced me--to carefully think through my arguments and back them up. She challenged my assumptions and helped me to move from assertions to reasoned statements supported by evidence. What may seem self-evident to a Republican wasn't good enough for Claire. One of the most helpful and effective "prods" I ever met, I couldn't have written this without her. Thank you for your wisdom. (p. xiii).
To rock and rollers, this might sound too much like the chorus of the song `got my own thing' on Liz Phair's recent `somebody's miracle' (2005) CD. "They say that we would get along. So let's just get along. Oooh boy, I'd love to help. Give you enough rope to hang yourself. And watch the silly things you do." The court of public opinion is not as narrow in its scope as the laws which are likely to come to the attention of a special prosecutor who investigates how secret information is used by those who saw a bit more intelligence than the President saw before he claimed that Congress saw the same intelligence he saw. "And I hope you're swinging this way too. Boy I do." Liz sounds like part of a war between sexes that becomes "freed from all particular personality" (Schmitt, p. 63), as Hegel put it in "This war is not a war of families against families, but between peoples, and hatred becomes thereby undifferentiated and freed from all particular personality." People at the top like to pretend that they have a frame of reference which is above Hegel's complicated formulation, but then we get a book like TAKING HEAT.
disappointing.......2005-09-21
I'm guessing that at least one-half of this book's nearly 400 pages are transcripts -- either of excerpts from the President's remarks or speeches and of the give-and-take at Ari's press briefings. Since Fleischer maintains that his job was never to make news, the transcripts typically illustrate his ability calmly to provide platitudinous non-answers to nearly every question. There are so many of these illustrations that it becomes as tedious and aggravating to the reader as it must have been for the news-hungry journalists. The many excerpts from GWB's remarks serve to reconfirm that -- whatever his other strengths -- it is undeniable (even by his strong supporters) that Bush's rhetorical skills are weak. On the other hand, Fleisher does ably document the naked pro-liberal, anti-conservative bias by so many reporters from the mainstream media; he also demonstrates very convincingly an overwhelming press agenda to create news by finding or exaggerating conflicts between government officials where none exist, i.e. to sensationalize at all costs rather than to inform readers of the real facts. He does a good job, too, of compiling many examples of blatant factual errors by major media, reminding us that, unlike newspapers, broadcast news never troubles to issue corrections. Although my impression of Fleischer from his TV appearances is that he is an interesting, witty, engaging personality, his book is very dry, revealing very little of his personal side and virtually none of the President in whose company he spent so much time. The book contains very few memorable behind-the-scenes anecdotes, and adds astonishingly little to the below-the-surface portrait of Bush (or Fleischer) as a person. The book could have been shortened by half and we would have learned no less about W or Ari.
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Taking Heat CD: The President, the Press, and My Years in the White House
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ASIN: 0060760117
Release Date: 2005-03-01 |
Book Description
For two and a half years, Ari Fleischer served as the official liaison between the White House and members of the press, acting as the voice of President George W. Bush.
In
Taking Heat, Fleischer goes behind-the-scenes in the West Wing, giving his perspectives on:
• September 11, 2001, its aftermath, and the anthrax scare • The pressure-filled buildup to the war in Iraq and the President's thoughts as the war began • The White House press corps, who they are, and how they report the news
Fleischer believes that the press has a bias in Washington -- It's not a question of partisanship or press driven ideology. It's a focus on conflict they can attach to the President. The White House press corps are masters of the devil's advocate. Fleischer's job was to calmly field their questions, no matter how pointed. He calls the press a tough, sharp, skeptical group. They call him tight-lipped and secretive. But at the end of the day, they had a bond.
Taking Heat is an introspective and analytical exploration of the major political events in the first half of the Bush administration, as well as the candid observations of a professional who stood in the bright lights of the world stage.
Customer Reviews:
IT'S HIS TURN NOW.......2005-03-09
You probably knew before listening that this would not be an unbiased view. Hearing that he sometimes felt like a "pinata" reinforces this opinion. Well, everyone's entitled to have their say and so this is Ari Fleischer's take and now it's his turn.
Whether one agrees with his views or not, Fleischer served as the White House press secretary during some of our country's most momentous days, from 9/11, the prelude to the war in Iraq, and more.
The author/reader has no love for the press and reiterates what he feels are some of their more frigid exchanges. He has high praise for his former boss, Mr. Bush, extolling his leadership abilities. No surprises here.
While not a seasoned actor (some may take issue with that), he gives a straightforward, listenable reading of his story. Condemn him or praise him, his story is sure to be fodder for debate, diatribe, and discussion.
- Gail Cooke
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Safari: The Romance and the Reality
Molly Buchanan ,
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Manufacturer: National Geographic
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0792227654
Release Date: 2005-09-13 |
Customer Reviews:
-------------.......2005-01-04
"Africa is a paradox: a savage land, a sensitive land, a fragile land. The continent is where our journey began, where humans developed a brain-to-body ratio out of all proportion to that of any other creature in this living world. Yet it is a place where time stood still for hundreds and thousands of years."
So begins Molly Buchanan's ode to --- and chastisement of --- a continent. Or, more precisely, the wildlife conservation efforts of a continent.
Many of us like to indulge in a sort of collective fantasy, one where Africa reigns as the final bastion of diverse animal and plant life. To some degree, this was true until the late nineteenth century. Then, over the next fifty years, a complex combination of land mismanagement, human encroachment, civil strife, and indiscriminate hunting permanently destroyed many species while bringing others to the threshold of extinction.
In an effort to halt this negative eco-publicity, countries like Uganda and Kenya outlawed professional hunting in the 1970s. The results were unexpected and appalling. According to Richard Bonham, owner of the Ol Donyo Wuas Lodge near spectacular Mount Kilimanjaro, "When the hunters moved out, the poachers moved in. Nearly 90 percent of Kenya's elephants were slaughtered in the following decade."
The clash, as always, involves human economics vs. animal need. Fifty-three African nations are, like much of the world, trying to buy into The Great Dream symbolized by our Western lifestyle standards. The Masai farmer/ cattle rancher wants greater wealth for his children. Accordingly, he is willing to set out poison for the lions that prey upon his livestock.
One method of bridging the gap between the needs of man and nature is ecotourism. Preservation of wildlife is necessary to bring in tourist dollars. Where once the wealthy few went on safari (with the express purpose of killing) today's travelers are from a broad cross-section of middle and upper class households. Thankfully, the emphasis has shifted to image capture, the deathless commitment of picture to film or digital memory.
But things are rarely that simple, are they? Even with the assistance of notables such as Nelson Mandela, Dave Varty, Richard Leakey, Valli Moosa, Ian Player, Colin Bell and many others, the issue retains its barbed intricacies. There is a section on the excesses of ecotourism. Buchanan offers an example of how even good intentions can be overwhelmed by the "too muches." As thousands of people climb Kilimanjaro each year, pathways are being worn into the mountainside. During frequent rainstorms, the paths become funnels carrying topsoil into the Pangani River whose source is on Kilimanjaro. "It has recently been discovered that the coral reefs on the stretch of coastline where the Pangani . . . reaches the sea are dying because they are covered in silt."
Despite the brevity of this book, Buchanan manages to state succinctly the myriad problems facing attempts to preserve this continent's uniqueness. Mentioning the superlative photography seems nearly unnecessary since stunning pictures are synonymous with the words "National Geographic." Even if all one does is thumb through the photos and read the occasional paragraph (you will be doing yourself and the book a disservice if you choose this shorter course) it is still well worth the time.
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