War
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4.5 • 189 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller
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 unrivaled, 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
Spectacular
Amazing book. Learned so much! Must read.
Page turner through and through
Exciting! Less a bashing of Trump (which is what I thought it would be) and more an explanation of the behind the scenes decision making regarding basically the wars in both Ukraine and Gaza, as well as Biden’s decision to drop out of the presidential race.
Trash
Trash book typical liberal spin