Do-it-yourself posterity

In one of my favorite newspapers, The New York Times, an article by Frank Rich entitled A President Forgotten but Not Gone [display] sketches a brilliantly cruel portrait of George W Bush on the way out.

The time has come for Bush to start thinking about how he might be judged by posterity. Now, there's a French saying: You can never get better service than from yourself. In this spirit, the departing president has thought it appropriate and useful to publish a 52-page guide book on his legacy: a sort of How to Love and Admire Me in Ten Easy Steps.

[Click the photo to download the Bush legacy booklet.]

It's free, and it makes for pleasant reading. There are lots of illustrations, and I advise you to print it out on paper. Australian readers might take this piece of literature to the beach, and share it with friends. Here in chilly France, the best way of reading it, of course, is snuggled up in front of a log fire... but people will surely be disappointed to learn that there's no French translation of this opus.