What It Takes, Richard Ben Cramer
What It Takes, Richard Ben Cramer
List: $39.99 | Sale: $28.00
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What It Takes
The Way to the White House

Author: Richard Ben Cramer

Narrator: Keith Sellon-Wright

Unabridged: 54 hr 35 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/31/2020

Synopsis

An American Iliad in the guise of contemporary political reportage, What It Takes penetrates the mystery at the heart of all presidential campaigns: How do presumably ordinary people acquire that mixture of ambition, stamina, and pure shamelessness that makes a true candidate? As he recounts the frenzied course of the 1988 presidential race—and scours the psyches of contenders from George Bush and Robert Dole to Michael Dukakis and Gary Hart—Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Richard Ben Cramer comes up with the answers, in a book that is vast, exhaustively researched, exhilarating, and sometimes appalling in its revelations.

About Richard Ben Cramer

Richard Ben Cramer (1950-2013) won the Pulitzer Prize for Middle East reporting in 1979. His journalism has appeared in Time, Newsweek, the New York Times Magazine, Esquire, and Rolling Stone. He is the author of How Israel Lost: The Four Questions and the classic of modern American politics What It Takes: The Way to the White House.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Adam

Gigantic work of political reporting and a huge accomplishment. It's a comfort to read Cramer's close examination of the 1988 primaries and remember that campaigns are always nutty. The overriding thesis of the book is smart: a deep look at 6 very different figures (Bush/Dole; Dukakis/Biden/Gephardt......more

Goodreads review by Tim

The book covers the 1988 Presidential primaries, profiling 2 Republicans (Bush and Dole) and 4 Democrats (Dukakis, Biden, Hart, and Gephardt). It alternates between details of the 1988 campaign and flashbacks showing the candidates' histories and how they got to this moment. I enjoyed much of this, b......more

Goodreads review by Cora

"One of the things you realize fairly quickly in this job is that there is a character people see out there called Barack Obama. That’s not you. Whether it is good or bad, it is not you. I learned that on the campaign.” - President Barack Obama, speaking to Michael Lewis in October 2012 What It Takes......more

Goodreads review by A.J.

I'm reposting this review today because the e-book version of this is on sale at Amazon for $2, or a .0005¢ per page. Tempting me to buy an electronic copy of a long book I've already read, that I probably won't ever read again.But if you haven't read this one, I really recommend it. Re-reading my r......more

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