Decision Points

George W. Bush's memoir is organized thematically around the major decisions that defined his presidency rather than as a day-by-day chronicle. Bush states that historians encouraged him to record his perspective in his own words, and he modeled his approach on Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs. His goals are to convey what it was like to serve as president and to illuminate how decisions are made in a complex environment.

The opening chapter establishes what Bush calls the foundational decision of his life: quitting drinking at age 40. When his wife, Laura Bush, asked him to name the last day he went without a drink, he could not. At a 40th-birthday celebration at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs in 1986, he drank heavily and resolved during his morning jog to stop. Bush weaves this decision into a memoir covering his upbringing in Midland, Texas; the loss of his sister Robin to leukemia; his education at Andover, Yale, and Harvard Business School; his service in the Texas Air National Guard; his 1977 marriage to Laura; and a deepening Christian faith sparked by a 1985 conversation with evangelist Billy Graham.

Bush traces his path into politics through a 1978 congressional campaign he lost, roles in his father's presidential campaigns, his purchase of the Texas Rangers baseball team, and a successful 1994 run for governor of Texas. As governor, he passed reforms in education, juvenile justice, welfare, and tort law and won reelection in 1998 with 68 percent of the vote before deciding to run for president.

The personnel chapter covers the selection of Dick Cheney as running mate and the 38-day transition after the contested 2000 election, resolved by the Supreme Court's Bush v. Gore decision. Bush assembled his national security team: Condoleezza Rice as national security adviser, Colin Powell as secretary of state, Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense, and George Tenet as CIA director. He details Supreme Court appointments, including John Roberts as chief justice, the withdrawn nomination of Harriet Miers, and the confirmation of Samuel Alito. The chapter closes with his refusal to fully pardon Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, convicted in the Valerie Plame leak investigation. Bush commuted the sentence but did not overturn the verdict, straining his friendship with Cheney.

A chapter on embryonic stem cell research describes Bush's first major domestic policy decision. After consulting scientists, ethicists, and religious leaders, he announced a compromise in an August 2001 primetime address: Federal funds could support research on existing stem cell lines derived from already-destroyed embryos, but no taxpayer money would fund further embryo destruction.

The memoir's center of gravity is September 11, 2001. Bush provides a detailed account: receiving his Presidential Daily Briefing in Sarasota, Florida; Chief of Staff Andy Card whispering during a reading exercise at Emma E. Booker Elementary School that "America is under attack"; authorizing the military to shoot down hijacked aircraft; and addressing the nation that evening from the Oval Office. On September 14 at Ground Zero, he stood atop a crushed fire truck with a bullhorn and told rescue workers, "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!" At the Javits Center, Arlene Howard, mother of missing Port Authority officer George Howard, pressed her son's badge into Bush's hand, and he carried it every remaining day of his presidency.

A chapter on the war footing details the tools created after the attacks: the USA PATRIOT Act, which removed barriers between law enforcement and intelligence; the Department of Homeland Security, unifying 22 federal agencies; the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which authorized the National Security Agency to monitor communications linked to al Qaeda, the terrorist network responsible for the attacks; the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay; and the CIA's enhanced interrogation program, including waterboarding. Bush argues these programs prevented further attacks while acknowledging the tension between security and civil liberties.

Bush recounts the October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. CIA teams and Special Forces linked up with the Northern Alliance, a coalition of Afghan forces, and toppled the Taliban, the Islamist regime that had sheltered al Qaeda, within two months. He describes the nation-building effort that followed, the Taliban's resurgence fueled by sanctuaries in Pakistan, and his regret that Osama bin Laden was not captured.

The Iraq chapter, the book's longest, explains how September 11 transformed Bush's view of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, whose regime had defied UN resolutions and was believed by every major intelligence agency to possess weapons of mass destruction. Bush describes the diplomatic campaign, the unanimous passage of UN Resolution 1441, and the March 2003 invasion. He calls the "Mission Accomplished" banner at his May 2003 appearance aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln a mistake in stagecraft. The failure to find weapons stockpiles proved what he calls "a massive blow to our credibility." He acknowledges two major errors: cutting troop levels too quickly and insufficiently debating the decisions to disband the Iraqi army and purge the ruling Baath Party, which alienated Sunnis and fueled the insurgency.

By 2006, sectarian violence threatened to tear Iraq apart. Bush rejected advice to withdraw and deployed more than 20,000 additional troops under a new counterinsurgency strategy led by General David Petraeus. Facing near-universal opposition, he pressed forward. By summer 2008, violence had dropped to its lowest level since the first year of the war, and sectarian killing had fallen more than 95 percent from its peak.

A chapter on domestic leadership covers the No Child Left Behind Act, passed through a bipartisan partnership with Senator Ted Kennedy; the Medicare Modernization Act, which added a prescription drug benefit; a faith-based initiative opening federal funding to religious charities; and failed efforts to reform Social Security and immigration. Bush calls the collapse of Social Security reform "one of the greatest disappointments of my presidency."

The Katrina chapter describes the devastation of the Gulf Coast in August 2005 and the chaotic government response, complicated by confusion over federal and state authority. Bush faults himself for an Air Force One flyover that projected detachment and for publicly praising Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Mike Brown before Brown's failures became apparent. He calls the accusation by rapper Kanye West that "George Bush doesn't care about black people" the worst moment of his presidency.

Bush devotes a chapter to the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a $15 billion initiative to combat HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. By the time he left office, PEPFAR had supported treatment for 2.1 million people. A chapter on the freedom agenda covers efforts to advance democracy worldwide, including a call for a democratic Palestinian state, the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon (a mass protest movement that forced Syria to withdraw its occupying troops), diplomatic campaigns against the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs, and relations with China and Russia.

The financial crisis chapter addresses the 2008 economic collapse: the failure of Bear Stearns, the government seizure of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the rescue of insurer AIG, and the passage of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), a $700 billion emergency package. Bush writes that intervening was contrary to his free-market instincts but that inaction risked a second Great Depression.

In his epilogue, Bush describes his final morning in office on January 20, 2009, leaving a letter on the Resolute desk, the president's desk in the Oval Office, for his successor, Barack Obama. After welcoming Obama and incoming first lady Michelle Obama, he flew to Midland, Texas, for a homecoming rally, expressing hope that history would see him as a leader who kept the country safe, pursued his convictions, and used America's influence to advance freedom.