Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President

James Howard Hatfield, 1958 - 2001 James Howard Hatfield was born in 1958. He is best known for his biography of President George Bush, claiming Bush was hiding a cocaine arrest from thirty years ago. The book was entitled "Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President" and was released in 1999 after a rocky start. The book made the claim, according to unnamed sources, that a judge had a case of Bush being arrested for cocaine possession expunged, as a favor to the younger Bush's father. The book had originally been printed by St. Martin's Press in 1999, but soon after it was released, it was discovered that Hatfield had been convicted in the attempted murder of a former supervisor of his in 1988. They recalled 70,000 copies of the book in October and left another 20, 000 in storage. After St. Martin's had dropped the book, it was picked up by Soft Skull Press, a small publishing company in New York's Lower East Side. Police went to Hatfield's house on July 17 to arrest him for credit card fraud, but he was not at home. He was found the next day in a hotel room, dead, apparently from an overdose of presecription drugs. He left a note citing the failure of his book as one of the reasons he chose to kill himself. He was 43 years old.