| A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter's
explosive account of the inner workings of the George
W. Bush administration, the most secretive White House
of modern times.
This vivid, unfolding narrative is like no other
book that has been written about the Bush
presidency-or any that is likely to be written soon.
At its core are the candid assessments of former U.S.
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, for two years the
administration's top economic official, a principal of
the National Security Council, and a tutor to the new
President. He is the only member of Bush's innermost
circle to leave and then to agree to speak frankly
about what has really been happening inside the White
House.
O'Neill's account is supported by Suskind's
interviews with many participants in the
administration, by transcripts of meetings, and by
voluminous documents that cover most areas of domestic
and foreign policy. The result is a disclosure of
breadth and depth unparalleled for an ongoing
presidency.
As readers are taken to the very epicenter of
government, this news-making volume offers a
definitive view of the characters and conduct of Bush
and his closest advisers as they manage crucial
domestic policies and global strategies at a time of
life-and-death crises.
Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld,
Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Christine Todd
Whitman, and many of their aides are seen in an
intimate, "unmanaged" way-as is Fed Chairman Alan
Greenspan, O'Neill's close friend and ally. Along the
way, the central conflicts of this administration's
governance-between politics and policy, ideology and
analysis-are starkly visible through the lens of
recent events and the revelation of the often unseen
intentions that underlie actions.
In this book Suskind draws on unique access to
present an astonishing account of a President so
carefully managed in his public posture that he is
unknown to most Americans. Now, he will be known.
Ron Suskind was The Wall Street Journal's senior
national affairs reporter from 1993 to 2000 and won
the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing while working
there. He has recently attracted national attention
with his groundbreaking articles about the Bush White
House. Suskind, who writes for Esquire, The New York
Times Magazine, and other national publications,
appears frequently as a correspondent on PBS and
network news.
He is the author of the bestselling and critically
acclaimed A Hope in the Unseen and is a distinguished
visiting scholar at Dartmouth College. He lives in
Washington, D.C., with his wife and two sons.
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