"Although the biographers differ politically, they are equally admiring of Goldwater. Goldwater, Edwards writes, "laid the foundation for a political revolution and led a generation of conservatives to understand that theirs was a winning as well as a just cause." Edwards describes him as an "Old Testament Jeremiah"; Goldberg calls him a "prophetic figure." Edwards quotes with approval the opinion of conservatives that Goldwater would have made a better president than Lyndon Johnson. Goldwater, Goldberg argues, "stands well in comparison with politicians like Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and even Ronald Reagan."
"The reader of these books will find something to buttress these opinions but will also discover evidence for a contrary view of Goldwater. Running through both books are disturbing revelations about his intellectual abilities and about his independence of mind. These books unwittingly portray him as a good-hearted but stupid and sometimes weak man whose success depended upon his following carefully a script that other people wrote.
Both books depict Goldwater as an abysmal student. After ninth grade, he was advised to leave Phoenix's public high school. Out of desperation, his parents sent him to Staunton Military Academy in Virginia, where he had to repeat the ninth grade and still received Cs and Ds. After graduating from Staunton, Goldwater went to the University of Arizona, but he dropped out after his freshman year because he was having too much difficulty keeping up with the work. Still, other politicians have had little interest or success in school and have led an intellectual life of their own. But Goldwater's sister Carolyn told Edwards that she could not recall his ever reading a book."