Boy Genius: Karl Rove, the Architect of George W. Bush's Remarkable Political Triumphs

by Jan Reid, Carl M. Cannon, Lou Dubose

Book Overview

The Washington Post Bestseller - Now Updated with Five New Chapters and a New Epilogue

Unlike President George. W. Bush, Karl Rove, his chief political adviser, is rarely "misunderestimated." Many of the president's opponents see Rove's hand in everything the president does. His friends, and the president himself, are just thankful he's on their side, and always has been. From their earliest days in Texas, Rove saw and tapped...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1586483366
• ISBN13: 9781586483364
• Release Date: March 2005
• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Remarkable partial biography

If you ever thought Karl Rove might be a man of questionable morals, but just didn't know enough to be sure, this book will make your jaw drop. What is truly remarkable is that a man of his low standards, willing to do anything regardless of ethics to win, could be closely associated with the most powerful man in the free world.

Let us be realistic please

I, for one, do not support Karl Rove or our current President's policies. However, this book does not endorse those policies nor does it pretend to. The previous reviewers are so aggravated that they can not see past their own ideologies. This book follows the political victories of Republicans in Texas, followed by those of George Bush until 2002. Karl Rove is largely responsible for the Republican wins in Texas; however, the writers carefully assert that the political winds favored Rove in some circumstances. Yet, Rove managed to remove Texas from the Democrats. Anyone who understood Texas before and after Rove does not underestimate "King Karl". As one reviewer mentioned the 2000 election, I would point out the book clearly documents Rove's extreme overstatement of Bush's strength in the Electoral College. This book is very well balanced, but the same cannot be said of the reviewers here. PS I do not think this book is worthy of a five-star rating, but I have to attempt to balance two other ridiculous one-star ratings.

The Best and The Scummiest

Every human endeavor has its masters. There are leading physicists, writers, teachers, architects, carpenters and chefs.The demi-monde also has its corp of top pick-pockets, pimps, snitches and flimflammers. It is to this latter list that we can write the name of Karl Rove. His talents add nothing useful to the world; to the contrary, he and his cabal of mayberry machiavellians' efforts are directed toward finding people's weaknesses and exploiting them, tearing down peoples lives and putting any skeletons on public display, so that "their" guy might win. "Boy Genius" depicts the political career of Karl Rove, how he honed his skill and applied them to the benefit of conservative Republicans and especially to George W. Bush.The authors do give some background information on Rove and briefly describe how he came to embrace right-wing politics.As a young man, he is described as a "nerd" and one can well imagine that he was the boy who gotten beaten up on the playground at school. But no thorough psychological profiles are hazarded in this work. We learn only that Rove is a rather emotionless person. The authors offer a couple of "Oprah moments" that hint that their subject might harbor some modicumof humanity. Despite a couple of these excursions into sentimentality, Dubose et al. stick mostly to the political highlights that mark Rove's life. And that is just as well, because we intuit that if we extracted the electoral machinations from this biography, there would be almost nothing left.But reading this book reveals as much about we Americans and our times as it does about Rove. We would hope to be titilated by some of Rove's underhanded schemes to win elections, but instead find ourselves rather bored with the enterprise. We are used to this sort of dirty dealing and know that both major parties engage in these activities. It's old hat. Karl Rove just happens to be the best and the scummiest at the game that goes on all the time. The victors in political affairs are not those who present the best ideas but rather those who know how to manipulate through the electronic media. We are given in this book an introduction to the Cardinal Richelieu of the Nouveau Regime, Karl Rove.

Great Book!

This is a great book about not only the history of politics in Texas, but also about the greatest political strategist of our time.Karl Rove is a remarkable man, and this book gives some insight into what makes him click.

Boy, it's Genius

This is a fair and thoughtful account of George Bush's ascendency and the GOP takeover of Texas, both masterfully executed by Karl Rove. This is a must read for any political junkie of either political party. Rove comes off as part madman, part genius, part Machiavellian mastermind and also a man of somewhat questionable character. Nonetheless, he decimated the Democratic Party in Texas and concocted the strategy that put a man in the White House who, at the time, was clearly not ready for primetime. I found that I couldn't put the book down, always eager to find out what Rove's next political chess move would be.