Description

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In honor of the one hundredth anniversary of George H. W. Bush’s birth, this visually stunning chronicle features never-before-published photos and memories celebrating the forty-first president’s vision of leadership as service to country—curated by Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Jon Meacham.

Lavishly illustrated, The Call to Serve is an intimate, illuminating portrait of the forty-first president, a man who was so much more than just his politics. In words and images—many found in a lifetime of scrapbooks kept by Barbara Pierce Bush—Jon Meacham brings George H. W. Bush vividly to life. From the values of integrity, empathy, and grace that Bush learned in childhood to his leadership at the highest levels in tumultuous times, the forty-first president embodied an ideal of service that warrants attention in our own divided time.

Bush pursued a life of service to America through his heroic combat experience in the Pacific during World War II, his political rise in Texas, his serving as U.S. ambassador to the UN, his time as envoy to China and as director of the CIA, his tenure as Ronald Reagan’s vice president, and his election as the forty-first president of the United States. Set against the background of America during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this book commemorates the legacy of a man who was far from perfect—he could be cutthroat on the campaign trail—but whose ambition was not an end unto itself. Bush’s drive to succeed was, rather, a means to put the values of balance, patriotism, and respect for others into action in the political arena. Toward the end of Bush’s life, the forty-fourth president, Barack Obama, said that Bush put the country first “both before he was president, while he was president, and ever since.”

Featuring more than 450 photographs, Meacham’s introduction and commentary throughout, and narration drawn from his biography of George H. W. Bush, Destiny and Power, this is an essential tribute to a uniquely American life.

About the Author

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Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer. The Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Chair in the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University, he is the author of the New York Times bestsellers And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle; His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope; The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels; The Hope of Glory: Reflections on the Last Words of Jesus; Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush; Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power; American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House; American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation; and Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship. A fellow of the Society of American Historians, Meacham lives in Nashville with his family.