Inside Victoria: A Chronicle of Scandal (Bob Bottom with John Silvester, Tom Noble & Paul Daley)

Inside Victoria: A Chronicle of Scandal

Bob Bottom with John Silvester, Tom Noble & Paul Daley

Blurb: Victoria may never be quite the same after Inside Victoria.

It questions Victoria's presumption of moral, political and economic superiority over the rest of Australia. As a chronicle of scandal, Inside Victoria exposes Victoria's we-know-best society - a holier than thou syndrome that has sheltered crime and corruption, legal nonsense, and political and economic ineptitude.

Traversing significant events from the illegal foundation of the Victorian colony in 1835 through to 1991, Inside Victoria chronicles the fall from grace of the Garden State in the context of lessons of the past.

ISBN: 0330272616 (Paperback)

Year: 1991

Publisher: Pan

Pages: 216 (Non-Fiction)

Links

1. Buy from Amazon

2. Getcited page for the book

3. Google books page

4. Information on the author

5. Audio interview with the author

Inventing a Nation (Gore Vidal, foreword Bob Carr)

Inventing a Nation

Gore Vidal with a Foreword by Bob Carr

Blurb: Inventing a Nation is Gore Vidal's testament to the America he loves and mourns, to its continued promise and troubled future.

Vidal, a master stylist of American literature and one of the most acute observers of American life and history, turns his immense literary and historiographic talent to a portrait of the first three presidents of the United States, George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.

Vidal's splendid and percipient prose animates key moments of decision in the birth of the American nation, and we come to know these men in new ways - their opinions of each other and the wider world, and their concerns about creating viable democracy. Vidal brings America's founding fathers to life and illuminates the force and weight of the documents they wrote, the speeches they gave, and the institutions of government they fashioned.

As one of Australia's leading politicians, Bob Carr, writes in the introduction to this special Australian edition: 'In these shining pages Gore Vidal answers a question that puzzled George Washington himself: what has gone wrong with America?'

ISBN: 052285138X (Paperback)

Year: 2003

Publisher: Melbourne University Press

Pages: 198 (Non-Fiction)

Links

1. Article on the book

2. Buy from Amazon

3. Author's Wikipedia page

4. Google books page

5. Article on the book

The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008 (Bob Woodward)

The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008

Bob Woodward

Blurb: As violence in Iraq reaches unnerving levels in 2006, a second front in the war rages at the highest levels of the Bush administration. In his fourth book on President George W. Bush, Bob Woodward takes readers deep inside the tensions, secret debates, unofficial backchannels, distrust and determination within the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the intelligence agencies and the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq. With unparalleled intimacy and detail, this gripping account of a president at war describes a period of distress and uncertainty within the U.S. government from 2006 through mid-2008.

The White House launches a secret strategy review that excludes the military. General George Casey, the commander in Iraq, believes that President Bush does not understand the war and eventually concludes he has lost the president's confidence. The Joint Chiefs of Staff also conduct a secret strategy review that goes nowhere. On the verge of revolt, they worry that the military will be blamed for a failure in Iraq.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice strongly opposes a surge of additional U.S. forces and confronts the president, who replies that her suggestions would lead to failure. The president keeps his decision to fire Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld from Vice President Dick Cheney until two days before he announces it. A retired Army general uses his high-level contacts to shape decisions about the war, as Bush and Cheney use him to deliver sensitive messages outside the chain of command.

For months, the administration's strategy reviews continue in secret, with no deadline and no hurry, in part because public disclosure would harm Republicans in the November 2006 elections. National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley tells Rice, 'We've got to do it under the radar and screen because the electoral season is so hot.'

The War Within provides an exhaustive account of struggles of General David Petraeus, who takes over in Iraq during one of the bleakest and most violent periods of the war. It reveals how breakthroughs in military operations and surveillance account for much of the progress as violence in Iraq plummets in the middle of 2007.

Woodward interviewed key players, obtained dozens of never-before-published documents, and had nearly three hours of exclusive interviews with President Bush. The result is stunning, firsthand history of the years from mid-2006, when the White House realises the Iraq strategy is not working, through the decision to surge another 30,000 U.S. troops in 2007, and into mid-2008, when the war becomes a fault line in the presidential election.

The War Within addresses head-on questions of leadership, not just in a war but in how we are governed and the dangers of unwarranted secrecy.

ISBN: 9781921470103 (Hardback)

Year: 2008

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Pages: 487 (Non-Fiction)

Links

1. Buy from Amazon

2. Foreign Affairs look at the book

3. The Washington Post's in depth look at the book

4. Article on the book

5. Good reads page for the book