No, not another book on Dubya I can hear you say, and indeed the 43rd president of the United States must be one of the most picked-apart political figures of this and any age. So what is this slim volume, a neocon paean to the guardian of Western values in the war on terror or a liberal-left diatribe against the architect of the pointless Iraqi quagmire?
Well, in fact neither. Second Term Blues is a partly successful attempt to do some serious analysis of the Bush presidency in its second term and if its title sounds judgemental, it is a conclusion reached after thorough and objective analysis by some of the country's most experienced and canniest observers.
There is general agreement that while Bush began his second term in a relatively strong position determined to "spend political capital" after his re-election, he enters his final months very much the lame duck, minus any major achievements either at home or internationally and with hopes of a positive legacy rapidly evaporating.
Dan Balz, of the Washington Post, sees a combative president who initially thrived on his reputation as a strong can-do leader in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the momentum just sufficient to take him to re-election in 2004. However by 2005 he was taking some serious hits, including the Terri Schiavo case, Hurricane Katrina and an Iraq War going from bad to worse.
Fred Greenstein, of Princetown University, believes Bush over-estimated the political capital he could take from the tight 2004 re-election with already more than a third of electorate expressing "strong disapproval" of his performance.
Carla Anne Robbins, of the New York Times, contrasts the idealism - or was it hubris - in Bush's second inaugural speech with the compromises he has been forced to make since. She gives the impression of a president quite willing to say one thing and do almost the opposite; of a shallow Administration that is all show and no substance.
Finally Charles O. Jones (University of Wisconsin) plumbs Bush's past to try and reveal the workings of an extremely complex individual. Jones believes the Administration has functioned quite unlike almost any other in the history of the American Republic, has broken most of the rules and probably paid the penalty. One of his conclusions gets close to the heart of the argument.
"The Bush presidency has been beset with crisis that oblige executive leadership and fix accountability in the White House. However suited to the pure executive [which he says Bush personifies] such crises carry risks of eroding presidential power, including position, the resource relied on most by Bush."
These essays are partly successful for the obvious reason they review a second term that is just half over. The contributors delivered their verdicts in the months following the Republican Party's mid-term rout in Congress, and the editors acknowledge that there is still time for the president to score successes in his last two years that would require a revision of these assessments.
Forced to make compromises with a Democrat-controlled Congress, Bush has purged the Administration of two of its more prominent head-kickers, Donald Rumsfeld and John Bolton. With the pragmatic, hard-working Condoleezza Rice in charge, the State Department has regained its role at the heart of American foreign policy.
A revival of the long-stalled Middle East peace initiative and an improvement in the situation on the ground in Iraq, may yet allow George W. Bush to leave office able to claim achievements and with some semblance of dignity. Second Term Blues is a useful progress report but it cannot be the definitive word. That will await the work of historians in the years and decades to come.
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