The eldest of six children, George W. Bush was born the first year of the baby boom in New Haven in the state of Connecticut.

He has two sisters, one died when she was three years following an operation to treat his leukemia with wrong and three brothers, including John Ellis Bush (”Jeb”) who was born seven years after him.

The Bush family moved to Houston in 1959 when his father moved his prosperous oil company.

As a teenager, George W. Bush was sent to boarding school for boys in the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, at the time regarded as the toughest school in America by Time Magazine.

He was then admitted to Yale, where his grandfather was a director, to pursue graduate studies. He will get a Bachelor of Arts in History. It was at that time he became a member of a secret brotherhood of student known as the Skull and Bones, like his father George H. W. Bush (1948), his grandfather Prescott Bush (1917) and John Kerry, his future rival in the presidential election of 2004.

He did his military service by engaging in the Air National Guard in Texas in 1968 where he became a pilot of an F-102. His unit is responsible for air defense of the south and the Gulf of Mexico.

During its incorporation, it takes advantage of his leave to participate in election campaigns from his father or friends.

When his military service ends, having been refused at the Faculty of Law, University of Texas, the younger Bush was admitted to the prestigious Harvard Business School. He received his MBA in 1975 from Harvard.

He then marries Laura Welch in 1977. They will have two twin daughters, Barbara Pierce Bush and Jenna, born in 1981.

In 1978, he is in Texas in the election for the House of Representatives but with 47% of the votes, he is beaten by the outgoing representative, Kent Hance, his Democratic Party opponent.

He began his career in the oil industry with the creation of Arbusto Energy (Arbusto means bush in Spanish), a research company for oil and gas. This company has to face the energy crisis in 1979 and is renamed Bush Exploration, George W. Bush sells in 1984 to Spectrum 7, a Texan based competitor that takes the lead in the energy field. Others respond that the arrival of Bill Clinton did not change the case, proving the independence of investigations. From 1983 to 1992, he is part of the board of the film production company Silver Screen Partners, owned by Roland W. Betts, a friend and former colleague from school.

After working on the successful campaign of his father in 1988, he brings together close friends and bought the Texas Rangers, a baseball team in 1989. He is accused of having put political pressure to make the purchase. He moves to Crawford, where he owns a ranch where he spends his vacations.

Works Cited:

Brit Hume, Mara Liasson, Jeff Birnbaum, Charles Krauthammer (July 9, 2004). “The All-Star Panel Discusses John Kerry’s Shifting Positions on Iraq War Spending”, Fox News Network (transcript).

Carlisle, John K (January 3, 2004). “George Soros’s Plan to Defeat George Bush”, Human Events.

Cumings, Bruce; Ervand Abrahamian, Moshe Ma’oz (2006). Inventing the Axis of Evil: The Truth About North Korea, Iran, and Syria. New Press.

Greenburg, Jan Crawford. Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court, 2007, Penguin Books

Romm, Joe (2006). Hell or High Water. William Morrow.

Stone, Peter H. (July 4, 2001). “Big oil’s White House pipelines”. National Journal (33): 1042. ISSN: 03604217.

Wayne Slater, James Moore (2003). Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential. Wiley.