Briefly noted.(four books)(Brief Article)

Ambling Into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush, by Frank Bruni (HarperCollins; $23.95). Bruni, who covered the Bush campaign and the early Bush White House for the Times, announces at the start that Bush's ideology, his policies, and his life story "have been fairly well established," so he won't be discussing them. That's conceding an awful lot of ground, but within the narrow confines in which Bruni had to operate as a correspondent and has chosen to operate as an author -- minute observation of the public Bush -- he does a very good job. Bruni comes across as honest and perceptive, more prejudiced against Bush's opponents than in favor of Bush himself. And Bush comes across as a curious figure to be President; the first non-overachiever in memory to hold the job, he possesses a peculiar mixture of humility and presumption. Bruni, like many people who know Bush, seems to like him but not to completely respect him; he also doesn't appear to buy the patronizing idea that Bush suddenly grew up, at the age of fifty-five, on September 11th.

Bad Blood, by Lorna Sage (Morrow; $24.95). This wry family memoir by the late English literary critic Lorna Sage serves as a corrective to anyone harboring romantic notions about growing up in rural Britain. The author's grandfather was a licentious vicar in a small town near the Welsh border who blacked out the titles of his books so that parishioners wouldn't ask to borrow them. Her grandmother spent most days in bed -- hoarding sweets and coal, and cursing her husband's wickedness -- while Sage's mother served as the family drudge. Bathing was considered vaguely suspect; neighbors were to be despised; no one taught Lorna how to tell time. Life beyond the vicarage proved little better, as the Dickensian cruelties of the classroom competed with the Darwinian realities of the schoolyard. But these ...