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Title details for What It Takes by Richard Ben Cramer - Wait list

What It Takes

The Way to the White House

by Richard Ben Cramer
Keith Sellon-Wright
Audiobook
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 8 weeks
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0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 8 weeks
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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 31, 2020

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781541408739
      • File size: 1572301 KB
      • Duration: 54:35:37

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Originally published in 1992, Cramer's lengthy, well-researched examination of the 1988 U.S. presidential election may speak of years gone by--but the inclusion of President-Elect Joe Biden makes it quite current. Sadly, Keith Sellon-Wright's workmanlike performance does little to take the facts and commentary beyond the pedestrian. Much of the audiobook addresses the early lives and political careers of the Democratic and Republican primary contenders of that year, and of the ultimate race for the highest office in the land. Sellon-Wright's narration, despite being friendly, mellow, and well measured, does not even approach the drama one might expect of its peeks into what we used to call "smoky back rooms." W.A.G. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 1, 1992
      ``Who are these guys? What are they like?'' Cramer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Esquire contributing editor, answers these questions at length in this compulsively readable look at six presidential contenders in 1988: two Republicans (Dole, Bush) and four Democrats (Hart, Biden, Gephardt, Dukakis). He follows each candidate as he makes his way through the primaries, fine-tuning his stand on issues, struggling to retain his individuality while being hounded by rapacious journalists, worked over by his handlers and browbeaten by his image wizards. Cramer's use of interior monologue is brilliant, especially his portrait of Dukakis as a humorless know-it-all and Bush as a compulsive nice guy. Based on more than a thousand interviews and remarkable cooperation from the candidates, the narrative is rich in its accounts of each candidate's family background, marriage, political career and personal ordeals. Delicious quotes and anecdotes abound, such as Bush's ``I deny that I have ever given my opinion to anybody about anything.'' First serial to Esquire; BOMC featured selection.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 31, 1993
      Cramer's compulsively readable chronicle of the 1988 presidential campaign, a BOMC featured selection and a one-week PW bestseller in cloth, focuses on six contenders--Bush and Dole among the Republicans, and Democrats Hart, Biden, Gephardt and Dukakis--bringing them to life with detailed descriptions and well-crafted interior monologues.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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