From The Pgh Post Gazette
By David Shribman

You know it’s the twilight of a presidency when the chief executive starts worrying about the past instead of the future.

That’s what President Bush, who is not exactly the biggest reader in the country, has been doing. He’s been reading like mad. About the Algerian War of 1954-1962. About the run up to World War II. About the colonial period and the Revolutionary War.

Some of it, no doubt, is in his environment. He lives in the most historic dwelling in the nation. Pictures of his predecessors line the walls. He occupies rooms once used by Jackson, Lincoln, the two Roosevelts. He sits at the desk where John F. Kennedy Jr. once peeked out of the kneehole panel.

Bill Clinton read a lot, too, but he always was a voracious reader, consuming about 40 books a year, once devouring a book on death during his honeymoon, once telling a reporter that “The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius” was the most important book he ever read. He was in trouble in the White House, too, and he took solace in reading. It is possible that Mr. Clinton read more presidential biographies than any president ever.

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