War
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4.6 • 13 Ratings
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
Chosen by WATERSTONES as one of their BEST POLITICS BOOKS of 2024
Two-time Pulitzer prize winner Bob Woodward tells the revelatory, behind-the-scenes story of three wars – Ukraine, the Middle East and the struggle for the American presidency.
War is an intimate and sweeping account of one of the most tumultuous periods in presidential politics and American history.
We see President Joe Biden and his top advisers in tense conversations with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. We also see Donald Trump, conducting a shadow presidency and seeking to regain political power.
With unrivalled, inside-the-room reporting, Woodward shows President Biden’s approach to managing the war in Ukraine, the most significant land war in Europe since World War II, and his tortured path to contain the bloody Middle East conflict between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas.
Woodward reveals the extraordinary complexity and consequence of wartime back-channel diplomacy and decision-making to deter the use of nuclear weapons and a rapid slide into World War III.
The raw cage-fight of politics accelerates as Americans prepare to vote in 2024, starting between President Biden and Trump, and ending with the unexpected elevation of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for president.
War provides an unvarnished examination of the vice president as she tries to embrace the Biden legacy and policies while beginning to chart a path of her own as a presidential candidate.
Woodward’s reporting once again sets the standard for journalism at its most authoritative and illuminating.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his latest fly-on-the-wall presidential chronicle, Pulitzer winner Woodward (Peril) explores the efforts of Joe Biden and his administration to cope with foreign conflicts while a baleful Donald Trump waits in the wings. Opening with Biden's chaotic 2021 pullout from Afghanistan, Woodward moves on to what he depicts as a masterful handling of the war in Ukraine—he characterizes Biden as handing Putin a strategic defeat via an expanded NATO—and an account of the Gaza war centered on the administration's struggles with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who resisted Biden's demands to allow aid into Gaza and negotiate a ceasefire. Woodward paints Biden as a sharp, thoughtful, decisive commander-in-chief (he includes only a few somewhat discordant nods to Biden's obvious public mental decline). Donald Trump, meanwhile, is a disruptive presence in the book, with Woodward depicting him as a dishonest, erratic dupe of Putin. Working from extensive insider interviews, Woodward takes readers into the situation rooms and diplomatic dinners where policy is hashed out in an often emotional fashion ("He's a bad fucking guy!" raged Biden at Netanyahu's intransigence), relays vivid anecdotes deriding Trump's pomposity ("Going to Mar-a-Lago is a little bit like going to North Korea," observes Sen. Lindsey Graham. "Everybody stands up and claps every time Trump comes in"), and delivers several dramatic revelations, among them that Trump made illicit phone calls to Putin concerning Ukraine after leaving office. It's a captivating analysis of high-wire statesmanship.
Customer Reviews
If only more people had read this
It’s November 7. Donald Trump has just been re-elected to the Presidency of the United States.
I very much doubt that would have happened if more voters had read even a summary of this book before casting their ballot.
An incredible insight into the complexities of foreign engagement and the absolutely crucial nature of a steady hand and experience.
Old white guy shows he’s still got it
4.5 stars
Author
Legendary American journalist now in his eighties who rose to prominence in 1972 for his reporting (with Carl Bernstein) of the mother of all political scandals, the one that resulted in every subsequent transgression, real or imagined, major or minor, having the suffix “-gate” appended to it.
Summary
Woodward’s most recent books, ‘Fear’ (2018), ‘Rage’ (2020) and ‘Peril’ (2021) were all about the Trump presidency, and a bit ho-hum if you ask me. Disclaimer: I only read two of them. I can’t recall which two.
This time at bat, the subject is war, or rather, wars: the one in Ukraine and the (current) one in the Middle East. The author’s forte has always been investigation. His reputation grants him access to places and people others can’t reach. Neither POTUS44 or 45 granted him interviews, but he spoke to numerous insiders. The detail about intelligence gathering, diplomacy, the mechanics of decision-making at the highest levels, and the interplay of personalities was impressive, and fascinating.
Writing
Woodward is the same age as Joe Biden but appears to have retained a greater quantity of his marbles. Of course, this was an open book assignment he completed at home rather than a live interview, and as he admits in his afterword, his wife (also a journalist) proof-reads and edits his work extensively. That having been said, the prose is crisp and clear, the conclusions coherent and logical, the reference list extensive.
Bottom line
The best thing Mr Woodward has written in many moons .