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The President: A Political Novel
 
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The President: A Political Novel (Paperback)

by John Stewart (Author)
2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
Price: £7.95 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Product details

  • Paperback: 188 pages
  • Publisher: Shepheard-Walwyn (Publishers) Ltd (15 May 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0856832618
  • ISBN-13: 978-0856832611
  • Product Dimensions: 21 x 13.8 x 1.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 803,343 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review

It is beautifully written, Stewart's prose is graceful indeed.
Entertaining and thought-provoking, it will undoubtedly serve to spark interest in the work and thought of Henry George. --Paul Kane, www.compulsivereader.com, March 2009


Product Description

The President goes missing. Every corner of the White House has been searched and double-checked, without success. The Vice President is in Europe, so the decision of whether to go public or not falls upon the Chief of Staff. Just then the phone rings: a journalist has spotted the President sitting on a park bench near the Lincoln Memorial, his only disguise a baseball cap pulled well down over his eyes.

The Commander in Chief of the most powerful military force in the world has acted strangely and explanations are sought, but the President is far from apologetic. It is he who is asking questions.

This incident, which occurs about fifteen months from the end of the President's first term, provokes a change of attitude. This worries his campaign manager who fears he is throwing away his chances of re-election, but more sinisterly, it provokes the opposition of vested interests who fear their privileges are under threat.

But the President is convinced he has seen a way to make a real change, to cut through the tired arguments of both Left and Right and heal the rifts in society. In a carefully crafted dialogue, John Stewart spells out the implications and the reaction of press and public.

The interest in real change aroused by the US presidential primaries makes this book timely on both sides of the Atlantic. The reform the President seeks to introduce in the USA could be just as relevant for the UK.

John Stewart, the son of a farmer in Northern Ireland, moved to London in the 1950s. He is the author of three historical novels, The Centurion, translated into German, Italian and Spanish, The Last Romans, placed in the time of Justinian and Boethius, and Marsilio, centred on the early life of the Florentine philosopher-priest, Marsilio Ficino. He has written two biographies, Standing for Justice, on the life of Andrew MacLaren MP and A Promise Kept, on the work of a Christian trade unionist.

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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
2.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Breathtakingly bad, 2 Mar 2009
By Steve Bond (London, UK) - See all my reviews
I was half way down the first page of the first chapter when it struck me that something was wrong. Why are the characters speaking in this weird way? I thought. Why does every other line of dialogue end in an exclamation mark? I thought perhaps it was some sort of clever literary joke, soon to be explained. No such luck. Several pages on, I realised it was simply that John Stewart is a terrible, terrible writer. His characters speak unlike anyone in real life - not in a good way, not in a "pushing the boundaries of dialogue" way, just in a "I can't write dialogue" way. Worse still is the desperately unfunny "banter" that riddles every page, with the aforementioned exclamation marks highlighting every moment of repartee in case we had missed it.

And John Stewart doesn't want you to miss anything. That must be the reason he spells out everything so didactically, so there's no chance of ambiguity or, god forbid, subtlety. At one point early on, we learn that the Republican candidate for the forthcoming election is called Whiteside and is ahead in the polls. We learn this because the President explains it to a BBC political correspondent, who has to ask how popular Whiteside is. The idea that a BBC political correspondent, working in the US during a presidential race, would be unaware of the identity and standing one of the candidates is of course ludicrous, but this kind of laboured exposition is the only means Stewart has at his disposal to convey information to the reader.

All this makes the book pretty much unreadable, but don't worry, you're not missing much in the way of plot either. The central political idea is that certain plots of land gain enormous value by virtue of the community that surrounds them, and that this value is not earned by the owner of the land but by the community itself. The president gets this notion in his head early on and starts banging on about it, which brings opprobium from Wall St and other interested parties. It does not strike me as a particularly earth-shattering observation, but to the President of this book it's Das Kapital in one paragraph.

But weak plots are tolerable if supported by the scaffolding of decent writing. This writing is utterly wretched. I am frankly astonished that this book was ever published. One can only fantasise about how bad it must have been like before it was edited.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars enjoyable and inspiring, 3 Oct 2008
By Hm Harper - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This is an unusual book in that it is enjoyable and entertaining fictional reading which simultaneously outlines simple but feasible economic solutions to the USA's problems. It is surprisingly appropriate at this moment to the dilemma which is being faced by the world and the American people in particular.
John Stewart shows extraordinary powers of subtle perception of character.
The courage and words of this fictitious president are quite moving at times. The book left me quite uplifted at the end. Excellent.
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