The first reviews are in, and they are not good. This book is one of several to have been published (disclaimer – I have a chapter in a “rival” work) in what has now become the standard outpouring of immediate postpresidential assessments.

This particular volume contains ten chapters from nine British academics and a lone American. The latter, Andrew Rudalevige, kicks off with an overview of the complexities and ambiguities involved in attempts to rank American Presidents. Nigel Bowles then examines Bush's presidential leadership style through the lens of Richard Neustadt's work on the subject. John Owens and Robert Mckeever examine Bush's Congressional and judicial legacies respectively, and Clodagh Harrington assesses his ethical record. There are two chapters on foreign policy, one by Tim Lynch and the other by John Dumbrell, followed by chapters on domestic policy, the economy and Bush's partisan legacy by Alex Waddan, Iwan Morgan and Philip Davies.

The book is relatively brief, with each chapter being about eight thousand words long by my estimation. This is generally not sufficient room to provide a comprehensive overview of the policy area in question, so the contributors tend instead to pursue a key question or issue arising from the Bush presidency – was his leadership style effective? Did he transform the judiciary? Was his foreign policy really neoconservative? Did he construct a new “big-government conservatism” in domestic policy? The result is a series of generally stimulating, insightful and occasionally provocative analyses that do exactly what writings at this stage of the postpresidency ought to do, namely to seek to start the debate rather than to close it.

That said, where judgements are made they are generally sound. Despite an at times rather self-conscious determination to be as evenhanded as possible on the part of most of the contributors, the eventual conclusions of the vast majority of them are damning. Rudalevige, Bowles and Owens all conclude that while Bush achieved short-term victories these came at the expense of long-term success and demonstrated a lack of strategic vision and foresight. Mckeever argues, persuasively, that, despite widespread opinions to the contrary, Bush's appointments to the Supreme Court did not successfully complete a “conservative counter-revolution” but left the Court balanced much as before. Dumbrell concludes that Bush left the United States a diminished global power facing multiple threats and Waddan that Bush's domestic record was one of confusion, contradiction and inconsistency. Iwan Morgan and Philip Davis both argue that rather than completing the Reagan Revolution, as initially seemed likely, Bush may well have presided over its demise as laissez-faire economics and Republican dominance of all three branches of the federal government were derailed in the last two years of his presidency. It is, of course, too early to draw definite conclusions, but these judgements seem likely to this reviewer to stand the test of time.

There are some minor niggles: The “right man” concept that is supposed to provide some kind of unifying theme to the book is slightly forced and largely ignored by most of the contributors, whilst a couple of the chapters lack the analytical edge of the majority. There are also a couple of rather significant typos. Overall, though, this is a successful and stimulating set of essays.