Since his retirement, former President George W. Bush has been working on more than just his painting. The president has also secretly written a biography about his father, former President George H.W. Bush.
The younger Bush worked on the biography, to be published November 11, in secret for two years with only friends and family aware of the project. Bush wrote the biography without a ghost writer but had research and editing help, POLITICO reported.
In a press release on Wednesday, Crown Publishers announced that the currently untitled biography will cover “the entire scope of the elder President Bush’s life and career, including his service in the Pacific during World War II, his pioneering work in the Texas oil business, and his political rise as a Congressman, U.S. Representative to China and the United Nations, CIA Director, Vice President, and President.”
Crown also published the younger Bush’s memoir “Decision Points” in 2010, the bestselling presidential memoir to date.
The book is expected to be approximately 300 pages, the AP reports. That is less than half the length of another high profile political memoir released this year, Hillary Clinton’s “Hard Choices,” which is 656 pages.
While Clinton’s book yielded disappointing sales, the unprecedented work of one president writing about another, of a son writing about his father, of the intimate look at one of America’s most important political families may prove a publishing goldmine.
The younger Bush’s low-profile retirement became news in 2013 when a data hacker released images of Bush’s nude-in-the-bathroom self-portraits. The former president followed up with a 2014 Dallas exhibition of international leaders’ portraits.
The relationship between presidents “41” and “43” has long fascinated politicos. Though George W. Bush said in a 2013 appearance on “CBS This Morning” that his father was a role model and that the two men’s relationship was based upon “love and admiration,” many have speculated that the younger Bush felt competitive with his father.
The elder Bush, who turned 90 in June, is one of the few modern presidents not to have written a memoir. He spends his time skydiving instead.
