<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Facinating content but lacked enough recordings
Review: After reading and listening to "Taking Charge," which was about LBJ's secret tapes, I was expecting the audio version of "Inside the Oval Office" to use many more actual recordings. Instead, the reader reads transcripts of conversations. The tapes contain a few actual recordings but very few, about one per president. Inexplicably, it presents no actual recordings of Reagan, Bush or Clinton. This was a disappointment since I knew from listening to "Taking Charge" that actual recordings contain great insights into the men who inhabited the White House. A reader cannot possibly capture the nuances of language used by our 20th century presidents. There is a great difference between hearing a president's actual words and having them read from transcripts. However, the content of the book and audiotapes provide a facinating glimpse inside the oval office.
Rating:
Summary: Facinating content but lacked enough recordings
Review: After reading and listening to "Taking Charge," which was about LBJ's secret tapes, I was expecting the audio version of "Inside the Oval Office" to use many more actual recordings. Instead, the reader reads transcripts of conversations. The tapes contain a few actual recordings but very few, about one per president. Inexplicably, it presents no actual recordings of Reagan, Bush or Clinton. This was a disappointment since I knew from listening to "Taking Charge" that actual recordings contain great insights into the men who inhabited the White House. A reader cannot possibly capture the nuances of language used by our 20th century presidents. There is a great difference between hearing a president's actual words and having them read from transcripts. However, the content of the book and audiotapes provide a facinating glimpse inside the oval office.
Rating: 
Summary: Management styles from FDR to Clinton
Review: Doyle's unorthodox book is a survey of the differing management styles of eleven presidents, FDR through Clinton. The book purports to be based on secret presidential tapes. But actual tape transcripts comprise a tiny percentage of the pages of this book, and in any event, there were no surreptitious recordings of conversations after Nixon. Anyone buying this book to read juicy tape transcripts will be disappointed. Instead, this book is a description of how each of the eleven presidents structured his staff, coped with the workload, and made decisions. Some presidents come across very differently than their popular image: For instance, Reagan was a surprisingly hands-on president, while Bush Sr. is portrayed as ineffectual and passive. Clinton fares very poorly in this book due to his lack of organization. It is Johnson, however, that is the most memorable, combining political acumen with incredibly disgusting personal habits. The book, as a whole, walks the reader through a half-century of US history as events were experienced in the Oval Office.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Insight
Review: I learnt more about the inner workings of the Oval Office from reading this book than when I used to be at school. You decide whether that's a bad thing... ..."Inside The Oval Office" is aimed at using taped conversations (no, Nixon wasn't the only one to do this) that occured in the Oval Office. However, don't think that this book is just one long transcript - the conversations are merely part of each wonderful chapter, as the comments are analyzed, described and discussed by Doyle in great length. The book is split into a section for each President from Roosevelt onwards to Clinton, using recorded conversations in the Oval Office as a backdrop for Doyle's excellent thoughts and revelations on the attitudes and actions of some of the last century's most famous leaders. Well worth a read for those who want to learn more about what happens inside America's most famous office.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Insight
Review: I learnt more about the inner workings of the Oval Office from reading this book than when I used to be at school. You decide whether that's a bad thing... ..."Inside The Oval Office" is aimed at using taped conversations (no, Nixon wasn't the only one to do this) that occured in the Oval Office. However, don't think that this book is just one long transcript - the conversations are merely part of each wonderful chapter, as the comments are analyzed, described and discussed by Doyle in great length. The book is split into a section for each President from Roosevelt onwards to Clinton, using recorded conversations in the Oval Office as a backdrop for Doyle's excellent thoughts and revelations on the attitudes and actions of some of the last century's most famous leaders. Well worth a read for those who want to learn more about what happens inside America's most famous office.
Rating:
Summary: Inside The Ultimate Cockpit
Review: It's a little mindblowing to realize such a historical resource exists: Recordings of presidents in the Oval Office discussing matters of state, negotiating with world leaders, and offering often-candidly caustic opinions of their contemporaries. While William Doyle's "Inside The Oval Office" is subtitled "The White House Tapes From FDR To Clinton," this is a misnomer. As others here point out, there's really only a trio of presidents that taped themselves at work with any regularity, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, and four more (Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, and Ford) that did so even at all. Reagan and Clinton both had video crews film some of their formal meetings, but Bush 41 and Carter avoided anything more involved than private diary tapings in recording the doings of their administrations. Despite the uneven nature of this record, Doyle tries his best to analyze each president's administration from a purely executive-managerial level, sometimes using the tapes as a guide but just as often relying on contemporaneous accounts and even interviews with people who were in the room with the various chief executives. The result is some fascinating portraits in miniature of the vastly different leadership styles America have elected to its helm. Doyle manages effective profiles of each man, but delivers the goods best on the ones, not surprisingly, who did the most taping. LBJ verbally bludgeons cowering senators to pass aggressive civil rights legislation and tells a pants manufacturer to give him some slacks with more room for his testicles, employing some decidedly earthy terminology in both instances. Kennedy and his Best and Brightest advisor team listen in on reports from Ole Miss while James Meredith is enrolled as a student there and the campus erupts into a combat zone. Nixon makes bizarre and angry pronouncements, half-commands and half-rantings, urging aides to spy on Kissinger when he suspects his chief diplomat is talking to the press. "Even with all their limitations, the Oval Office tapes do offer something no other source can: A real-time record of the presidents as executives in action as they manage the business of American history," Doyle writes. I heard my first Oval Office tape a couple of months ago at whitehousetapes.org, the first one ever made which features FDR holding a press conference in August 1940 and then, after the room is cleared, slyly slipping an aide some dirt on his Republican opponent, Wendell Willkie, apparently having forgotten he was wired for sound. That whole tape, just under an hour, is fascinating listening, even during that sometimes dry press conference where Roosevelt talks about American military preparedness and then apologizes to the lone female reporter before using the term "BVD," a brand of men's underwear the troops were being outfitted with. It would have been nice to read about filigree like that in this book, if it had been written as a tour guide of the mounds of tapes out there and all the strange secrets and bits of trivia they contain. You can't listen to all the tapes; Nixon alone made more than 3,000 hours of them. But something attempting to give shape to the vast treasure trove of Presidential tapings would have been more worthy of the title of this book. Please don't read that as a knock: Doyle does write a solid historical overview, complete with voluminous footnotes that should please the scholar as well as the casual reader. He manages the feat of presenting a very political setting in a way that is non-partisan yet zesty. He offers some interesting tidbits about each president you won't find in any other book, particularly Johnson, who agonized about Vietnam long before most anyone else did and was in many ways the Oval Office's most complicated man. "He was King Lear, Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, Captain Ahab, Moses, and Grendel, all stuffed into a scratching, belching, blustering, six-foot two-inch 220-plus pound explosive package," as Doyle memorably puts it, yet Johnson was also a passionate humanitarian and patriot who, as caught on tape, once exclaimed the one thing he ever wanted in the world was "a little love." A good book, at times very very good, but one with a poorly-chosen subtitle.
Rating:
Summary: NOT ABOUT RECORDINGS
Review: The "saskatoonguy" description of the book dated 24 April 01 pretty much nailed it on the head. The book is more about the personal and management styles of Presidents Roosevelt through Clinton. The reference to tape recordings is more of a come-on to attract readers. The recordings are more of a sidelight in this description of the administrative styles of the referenced presidents. In fairness, though, recordings were used minimally by Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower and the post-Nixon administrations shied away from recordings as well (although video recordings of certain events started under President Reagan). Only Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon made extensive use tape recordings and the first two still exercised control over what was recorded -- a practice that Nixon did not adopt and later regretted. The most memorable examples used were a couple of Johnson's recordings. A somewhat humorous recording, in spite of the tragic circumstances, was President Johnson's arm twisting his mentor, Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, into serving on the Warren Commission. Senator Russell despised Earl Warren. The second was a meeting to determine whether the Administration would commit 200,000 more troops to Vietnam where President Johnson finally decided to reverse his policy and start pulling back from that unpleasant and costly adventure. As for the descriptions of the administrations themselves, the book, in my opinion, is a testimonial to how too much emphasis is put on "qualifications" to be President. Each individual who has served in the Oval Office, including the current occupant and his successors, will have certain strengths and weaknesses that may prepare them well for the challenges that confront them, or not prepare them well at all. I always felt that in terms of "qualifications", Herbert Hoover was one of the most qualified men to serve as President. Under normal circumstances, his qualifications may have been adequate. But an economy plunging into a depression is not "normal". As much as I disliked President Carter, there is no disputing his intelligence. But he was so bogged down in learning what to do that he scarcely did anything at all (I do not agree with Mr. Doyle's revisionist attempt to portray the Carter Administration as being more than what it was, a failure). As Hoover was replaced by a visionary, so too was Carter. In terms of intellect, President Reagan does not rank very high. But he was successful in ways that his more "qualified" successor, George Bush Sr., could never understand. I also do not attribute the Clinton's Administration lack of cooperation with investigators to poor management practices that resulted in evidence being lost and unavailable until, conveniently, the investigation was over. I think deliberate obstruction of justice was a bigger factor. Although I supported George W. Bush in 2000 and would never, ever even consider voting for his opponent, I am not one of those who now claim how fortunate we are that he was president on 11 September 2001 and not Al Gore. I doubt anybody knows how a Gore Administration would have responded -- even Al Gore himself. No knock intended as it even took some time for the Bush Administration to recover and respond. If Al Gore was president, people would find certain aspects about his background and style that would be right for that crisis -- just as they did for George W. Although his response may have been different, the public would have supported his response if it was a strong response -- something considerably stronger than lobbing a few cruise missiles at an aspirin factory in a third world country. Bottom line: A good summary of the administrative and personal styles of Presidents Franklin Roosevelt through Clinton. However, if you are looking for more substance in terms of recordings, you will be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding -- but don't let the title fool you
Review: This is a lot more than a book about oval office tapes; it's about the managment styles of eleven presidents. Doyle does a superb job of contexting, analyzing and contrasting the widely different styles of presidents Roosevelt through Clinton. The tapes alone are fascinating (no, they didn't ALL tape: some just bugged their phones, some dicated a diary, some used a stenographer, and Bush did none of the above), but the real value of the book may be it's insights into eleven variously-successful executive leaders. I highly recommend this book to any business person. Instead of some "expert" giving you a lecture on the latest managment theory, eavesdrop on these eleven men and listen to how they really managed their staffs when the doors were closed. Fascinating reading.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific one volume insight into the modern presidency
Review: This is a terrific book and rewards the reader with insight into the modern presidency. It talks about each President's strengths and how each of them got themselves into trouble and it illustrates its points using each President's own words. Because it is less than 400 pages long it is hard for Doyle to support all the claims he makes, but it is still worth reading. More than that, it is worth owning and re-reading. The only reason I didn't give it five stars is that I think the book could have gone a bit deeper into each presidency without adding too much length. It was just a bit too much this side of a tourist's guide to each presidency. But there are so many wonderful and new insights that I feel guilty for not giving it five stars. So, if you want, just imagine that I did give it the full five with this little caveat.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific one volume insight into the modern presidency
Review: This is a terrific book and rewards the reader with insight into the modern presidency. It talks about each President's strengths and how each of them got themselves into trouble and it illustrates its points using each President's own words. Because it is less than 400 pages long it is hard for Doyle to support all the claims he makes, but it is still worth reading. More than that, it is worth owning and re-reading. The only reason I didn't give it five stars is that I think the book could have gone a bit deeper into each presidency without adding too much length. It was just a bit too much this side of a tourist's guide to each presidency. But there are so many wonderful and new insights that I feel guilty for not giving it five stars. So, if you want, just imagine that I did give it the full five with this little caveat.
<< 1 >>
|
