Boy Genius: Karl Rove, the Brains Behind the Remarkable Political Triumph of George W. Bush
By Lou Dubose, Jan Reid, and Carl M. Cannon
PublicAffairs, 256 pages, $15.00

Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics
By Michael Lind
New America/Basic Books, 202 pages, $24.00

Excerpt:

David Frum, a conservative journalist and author who served as a speechwriter for Bush (his claim to fame was coining the phrase "the axis of evil") has, somewhat surprisingly, produced the most fully rounded of the three new books on the president. Surprising because Frum's work falls into an unusual genre: a polemical kiss-and-tell. His book, The Right Man, has a split personality. It typically whitewashes criticism from outside the administration (except occasionally from conservatives). But it offers an acute analysis of what goes on inside the administration.

Ronald Brownstein is a Los Angeles Times political writer in Washington, D.C. David Frum is a resident fellow at AEI.