by Bill Turque
On the morning of March 1, 1976, as he prepared to mount the steps of a Tennessee courthouse to launch his first bid for public office, 27-year-old Albert Gore Jr. excused himself, found a rest room and threw up. To Turque, a Newsweek political correspondent, the moment epitomized Gore's lifelong ambivalence about following in the footsteps of his father, a powerful U.S. senator. The tension has made for some intriguing choices. As an undergraduate at Harvard, an antiwar hotbed, Gore enlisted and served in Vietnam. But when Dad pushed him toward law school, Gore Jr. defiantly opted for a career as a newspaper reporter. The portrait that emerges from Turque's uneven but well-researched biography is of a bright, driven and deeply religious man whose caution usually—but not always—outweighs his boldness. The right stuff for a President? You be the judge. (Houghton Mifflin, $25)
Bottom Line: Revealing bio of the would-be President
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