| THE PRICE OF LOYALTY George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill Ron Suskind New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-7432-5545-5 | ||||
| ISBN 0-7432-5545-3 | 348pp. | HC | $26.00 | |
| Page 1: | Phrases "a panoramic descent into Washington's Reagan National Airport" and "the Mall's Elysian symmetry" and "this confected balance" |
| These examples of Suskind's writing style stuck me as odd and opaque when I first saw them. Yet they are correct, merely unconventional (though "Elysian", when used this way, meaning "delightful", is not capitalized.) |
| Pages 38-39: | "Insofar as they shared a skepticism of economic theory, this was shy: race across the country's top twenty industries in forty minutes, your bare feet pounding the cold earth, and it's almost possible to feel the American economy." |
| This reminds me strongly of Gary Dorsey's writing in Silicon Sky, where he had the satellites whizzing up and down the corridor of the engineering building. It is, in other words, an odd metaphor. |
| Page 99: | " 'There's no question but that global warming is a real phenomenon that it is occurring,' she said emphatically." |
| Either missing comma or extra word: S/B "global warming is a real phenomenon, that it is occurring" or "global warming is a real phenomenon that is occurring". I lean toward the missing comma. |
| Page 164: | "Weinberger, who was a prominent tax lobbyist and had run Ernst & Young's tax division beore joining the administration, noted ..." |
| Spelling: S/B "before". |
| Page 187: | "The President, O'Neill recalled 'seemed very engaged by George and his plan.' " |
| Missing comma: S/B "O'Neill recalled, 'seemed". |
| Page 244: | "O'Neill tried to fix his gaze through the timpani throbs of his temples." |
| I've always spelled this first word as "tympani", but that appears to be outmoded. Suskind's version is correct in any case. |
| Page 251: | "The two talked to a mother who had got the nevirapine to her baby, who does not have HIV, but couldn't afford it for herself." |
| Since nevirapine is an anti-HIV drug, I'm at a loss to understand why the baby needed it. It could be that the baby's test result had not come through at the time, and the drug would be a precaution. The next sentence makes it clear the mother does have the virus. |
| Page 293: | "The President was caught in an echo chamber of his own making, cut off from everyone other than a circle around him that's tiny and getting smaller and in concert on everything—a circle that conceals him from public view and keeps him away from the one thing he needs most: honest, disinterested perspectives about what's real and what the hell he might do about it." |
| It's a small thing, but I find this change of tense annoying. |
| Pages 333-348: | Most locations are indexed, but there's no entry for Amelia Island. Neither is there one for the Ritz-Carlton, the hotel on that island where the CEO conference takes place, nor for Jacksonville, the Florida city nearest the island. |
| In the text, they are all mentioned on page 232. I did not try to check the index thoroughly; it seems mostly correct. |
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