Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent by Larry Berman – Save 61% Today!

Why Buy A Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent by Larry Berman?

During the Vietnam War, Time reporter Pham Xuan An befriended everyone who was anyone in Saigon, including American journalists such as David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan, the CIAs William Colby, and the legendary Colonel Edward Lansdale—not to mention the most influential members of the South Vietnamese government and army. None of them ever guessed that he was also providing strategic intelligence to Hanoi, smuggling invisible ink messages into the jungle inside egg rolls. His early reports were so accurate that General Giap joked, We are now in the U.S. war room.

In Perfect Spy, Larry Berman, who An considered his official American biographer, chronicles the extraordinary life of one of the twentieth centurys most fascinating spies.

Over 14 Five Star Customer Reviews On Amazon!

Hubris
Larry Berman’s trace and insights into this master spy, An, forces one to confront the arrogance and amateurishness of Americans who touted their professionalism at war. The complexities of the Vietnamese people, their culture, history, hopes and dreams, all as unknown to Americans of 1955-1975 as their language, provide the means to understand why we lost and now the South Vietnamese nationalists were betrayed by the communist party of the North.

Not a book for those who want to see that time, or this, as a set of clearly defined opposing choices, or the “less developed” nations of the world as simple, backward or unenlightened.

His subject is a sophisticated, complex individual who understands he was ultimately used.

“Hell no, we’ll never forget”…
When I first went to university in Atlanta, arriving from the North, in the mid-60’s, I was struck with the proliferation of car tags with the subject quote, accompanied by the Confederate flag. The same flag was incorporated into numerous flags of the states of the old Confederacy… there were also the ubiquitous statues to “our Confederate dead” in the squares of the small towns throughout the South. It was 100 years after the end of the American Civil War, yet the “lost cause” still had numerous adherents. And I suspect the Vietnam War will be much the same way, with the arguments raging on for a hundred years, a “civil war” within American society. We’re more than a third of the way to that 100 year mark now, and the book itself, and Berman’s efforts to unravel the truth concerning the enigmatic An is lost, in the partisanship of these reviews. Perhaps it’s impossible for any sentient human who lived through that period, or who gave it a subsequent serious examination, to be “non-partisan,” certainly myself included.

Pham Xuan An did led one of the most incredible lives of the 20th Century. Without any true training in the “arts” of espionage, he was one of the most effective spies of all times. An was loyal to many of his friends, and duplicitous at the same time. He became a trusted friend of General Lansdale who first went to Vietnam on behalf of the CIA in the `50’s. It was Lansdale’s recommendation that helped An get his visa to study for two years, in Orange Co., CA., the first Vietnamese there, and the place which is now their informal capital, with the influx of refugees after the fall of the South. From Lansdale on, An knew the top leadership of both the South Vietnamese and the Americans, and he was always the essential “go to” source for the American journalists. And all the time he was working for the other side, so effectively that General Giap joked: “We are now in the U.S.’s war room.” Overall, despite some caveats below, I believe Professor Berman did an admirable job telling the essentials of this man’s story, and interviewing a man who lived a double-life so effectively that he could have been fooling even himself. Berman starts his story, suitably enough, by telling how An, at considerable personal risk to himself, used his influence to save the life of NYT reporter Robert Sam Anson, and ends it with the story of his help to a top South Vietnamese official, Dr. Tran Kim Tuyen, on the last day of evacuations during the fall of Saigon. A “private honor” indeed. On several occasions Berman quotes An as to the motivation for his actions, one that is easy for Americans to understand: he simply did not want Vietnam to be ruled by foreigners, be they French or American. After the American war ended, An was never fully trusted by the Northern leadership–he had been too close to the Americans, and still said injudicious things, and Berman does raise the question: Had he been a double or triple agent? My inclination is to say No.

As for the caveats, I felt there were serious ones of omission. Whether we are talking about Iraq, or Vietnam, given factions will use the argument that this particular action “saved American lives.” It is an important consideration, certainly on a personal basis, and wouldn’t it have been judicious to include a reasonable speculation on how many lives would have been saved if: 1. When Ho Chi Minh went to Versailles in 1919, before he “turned communist,” that Woodrow Wilson meant self-determination for ALL people, and not just white ones; 2. After the Second World War, that the USA supported the only faction in Vietnam who supported us during the war, Ho Chi Minh and his band of partisans, and that we answered the letters that he sent the American government, requesting independence from the French colonialists who had collaborated with the Japanese; 3. Or that after their war of independence against the French, that America actually supported the free elections called for in the Geneva accords of 1954, despite President Eisenhower’s estimate that 80% of the population would have voted for Ho Chi Minh. A different course at any of these three junctures might have saved 58,000 plus American lives, and three million Vietnamese. Finally, in terms of speculation, there is that haunting picture at the end of the book, of President George W. Bush standing with An Pham, An’s son. Omitted from the book was Bush telling the Vietnamese that one of the most significant “lessons” of the Vietnam War is if we had stayed there long enough, we would have won!! Absolutely mind-boggling. An might have saved innumerable American (and Vietnamese) lives simply by having the war end – finally – in 1975.

There are a few errors of commission too: “the bulk of them ground combat troops,” in reference to 540,000 Americans in Vietnam (p24). The “bulk” of our troops in Vietnam were ALWAYS support troops. It was Nui Ba Den, Black Virgin Mountain, not Ba Den, Black Mountain (p77). “fearful of a scenario such as the invasion by the People’s Army of Vietnam that had defeated the French in 1954…” (p133). What invasion? It was there country!

I briefly met An in the Majestic Hotel in Saigon in 1994. I was in the company of one of the big name American journalist of the war, unnamed in the book. An was very much still under suspicion for meeting so many Americans, and they had a subsequent private conversation. It was my one and only time in Saigon, despite having spent a year in the country, 1968-69. And that is another point about the book… clearly what happened in Saigon and what was going on in the “field” somewhere in country were related, but they were highly separate worlds, in which journalists feed on the latest rumors, and visited the field from time to time, but rarely saw or experienced the reality that troops in the field did. Completely different versions of the same war.

For those who rate the book a 1-star, demonizing An, and his actions as a “Communist,” I wonder what they think about the greatest threat to America today, (still!) “Red” China. It is not the military, but the economic threat that should be of utmost concern: all they have to do is stop buying our debt, and there would be financial panic of the worst sort, or stop manufacturing, and the shelves of so many retailers would be empty. A dependency of our own making.

Overall, Berman is to be commended for telling this important, essential story of one man’s remarkable actions during the war. You sensed that he pushed and prodded, gaining as much as he could elicit, before the veil was dropped again: “… we can go no further on that…”. Clearly Berman has empathy for An, but wisely does not accept all aspects of the story at face value. This is the only authoritative book we will ever have on Pham Xuan An, and Berman deserves a full 5-stars for his efforts.

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Where To Buy Soros On Soros: Staying Ahead Of The Curve By Krisztina Koenen At The Lowest Price?

From Library Journal
Hungarian-born investor Soros, already well known for the unmatched success of his Quantum Fund, achieved additional notoriety in 1992 when he amassed over $1 billion in profits with the collapse of the British pound. He is also recognized for his philanthropic activities, having established foundations in several Eastern European nations. Soros on Soros is a book-length interview, conducted by the managing director of Morgan Stanley and a Hungarian journalist. Its scope reaches far beyond the topic of investing and includes Soross responses to questions about life influences, philanthropy, international politics, and philosophy. The book should be a hit with those wanting an in-depth look into the mind of the master investor, but the interview format does not allow for the broadest coverage. Reporter and biographer Slaters Soros is better suited for those approaching the subject for the first time. Slaters presentation is balanced and well organized, and he succeeds at providing clear, concise summaries of Soross sometimes confusing ideas and theories. Both titles would make good additions to business collections.?Mark McCullough, Heterick Lib., Ohio Northern Univ., Ada
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From
Investment wizard, speculator extraordinaire, and magnanimous philanthropist, Soros is the less-than-cooperative subject of Time reporter Robert Slaters nonetheless admiring portrait Soros: The Life, Times, and Trading Secrets of the Worlds Greatest Investor, also due this fall. Unwilling to talk to Slater, Soros perhaps wanted to tell his own story. He does so here in the form of two extended interviews, with questions softly lobbed by German journalist Krisztina Koenen and Soros friend and Morgan Stanley investment strategist Byron Wien. With Wien, Soros talks about his personal background, his career, and his philosophy of making and spending money. Koenen and Soros discuss his political views and his philanthropy, which are guided by Hungarian-born Soros desire to bring stability to eastern Europe and by his belief in the concept of the open society. Because Soros has heretofore limited the medias access to him, his discussions here, controlled though they are, will help remove some of the mystery. David Rouse

Why Buy A Soros On Soros: Staying Ahead Of The Curve By Krisztina Koenen?
This interview with a successful American investor, whose previous works include The Alchemy of Finance, reveals his views on global finance as well as his own ideas of todays complex world order. The book blends Soross perspective on the markets with his unique view of the world.

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Soros On Soros: Staying Ahead Of The Curve By George Soros

From Library Journal
Hungarian-born investor Soros, already well known for the unmatched success of his Quantum Fund, achieved additional notoriety in 1992 when he amassed over $1 billion in profits with the collapse of the British pound. He is also recognized for his philanthropic activities, having established foundations in several Eastern European nations. Soros on Soros is a book-length interview, conducted by the managing director of Morgan Stanley and a Hungarian journalist. Its scope reaches far beyond the topic of investing and includes Soross responses to questions about life influences, philanthropy, international politics, and philosophy. The book should be a hit with those wanting an in-depth look into the mind of the master investor, but the interview format does not allow for the broadest coverage. Reporter and biographer Slaters Soros is better suited for those approaching the subject for the first time. Slaters presentation is balanced and well organized, and he succeeds at providing clear, concise summaries of Soross sometimes confusing ideas and theories. Both titles would make good additions to business collections.?Mark McCullough, Heterick Lib., Ohio Northern Univ., Ada
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From
Investment wizard, speculator extraordinaire, and magnanimous philanthropist, Soros is the less-than-cooperative subject of Time reporter Robert Slaters nonetheless admiring portrait Soros: The Life, Times, and Trading Secrets of the Worlds Greatest Investor, also due this fall. Unwilling to talk to Slater, Soros perhaps wanted to tell his own story. He does so here in the form of two extended interviews, with questions softly lobbed by German journalist Krisztina Koenen and Soros friend and Morgan Stanley investment strategist Byron Wien. With Wien, Soros talks about his personal background, his career, and his philosophy of making and spending money. Koenen and Soros discuss his political views and his philanthropy, which are guided by Hungarian-born Soros desire to bring stability to eastern Europe and by his belief in the concept of the open society. Because Soros has heretofore limited the medias access to him, his discussions here, controlled though they are, will help remove some of the mystery. David Rouse

Why Buy A Soros On Soros: Staying Ahead Of The Curve By George Soros?
George Soros Ends the Speculation

The outcome [of this book] is a summing up of my lifes work. . . As I finish the book, I feel I have succeeded.—George Soros from the Preface

Critical praise for Soros on Soros

If you have ever wanted to sit down for a candid conversation with a phenomenal financial success, George Soross book provides the opportunity. You will meet a complex man and a first-rate mind.—Henry A. Kissinger

The best expert on Soros is undoubtedly George Soros! After all, who is better equipped to tell us what he really thinks and how he thinks, a matter of some importance given the fact that he has translated a remarkable personal financial success into a truly generous and historically significant effort to promote postcommunist democracy. —Zbigniew Brzezinski

The best X-ray of the mind of the master yet. —Barton M. Biggs

George Soros brings a lot more to the world of finance than the intuition and nerve of a born trader—and in Soros on Soros hes no longer bashful about telling us about it. A philosopher at heart, George attributes his success at investing to a theory of the interaction of reality and human perception. What really drives the man now, with a personal fortune beyond all personal need, is a different kind of strategic investing—investment to build in Eastern Europe the kind of open societies he came to value in his own life. —Paul A. Volcker

Financial guru George Soros is one of the most colorful and intriguing figures in the financial world today. Now in Soros on Soros, readers are given their most intimate and revealing look yet into the life and mind of the one BusinessWeek dubbed, The Man Who Moves Markets.

Soros on Soros interweaves financial theory and personal reminiscence, political analysis and moral reflection to offer a compelling portrait of the world (and its markets) according to Soros. In an interview-style narrative with Byron Wien, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley, and with German journalist Krisztina Koenen, Soros vividly describes the genesis of his brilliant financial career and shares his views on investing and global finance, politics and the emerging world order, and the responsibility of power.

Speaking with remarkable candor, he traces his progress from Holocaust survivor to philosophy student, unsuccessful tobacco salesman to the worlds most powerful and profitable trader and introduces us to the people and events that helped shape his character and his often controversial views.

In describing the investment theories and financial strategies that have made him a superstar among money managers (The New York Times), Soros tells the fascinating story of the phenomenally successful Soros Fund Management and its $12 billion flagship, Quantum Fund. He also offers fresh insights into some of his most sensational wins and losses, including a firsthand account of the $1 billion he made going up against the British pound and the fortune he lost speculating on the yen. Plus: Soross take on the devaluation of the peso and currency fluctuations internationally.

He tells of the personal and professional crises that more than once threatened to destroy him and of the personal resources he drew upon to turn defeat into resounding victory. And he explains his motivations for establishing the Soros Foundation and the Open Society Institute through which he worked to build open societies in postcommunist countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Finally, turning his attention to international politics, Soros offers keen insights into the current state of affairs in Russia and the former communist bloc countries and analyzes the reasons behind and likely consequences of the Wests failure to properly integrate them into the free world. He also explores the crisis of the ERM and analyzes the pros and cons of investing in a number of emerging markets.

Find out what makes one of the greatest financial wizards of this or any age tick. Soros on Soros is a must read for anyone interested in world finance and international policy.

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Renegade: The Making Of A President By Richard Wolffe

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Posts Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Ted Widmer Given how often Barack Obama has been compared to John F. Kennedy, it makes sense that we now have a Camelot-style report on the great campaign of 08. Kennedys election was a literary as well as a political watershed, inspiring writers whose taut and sardonic style mirrored that of JFK himself. Not long after the election, Theodore White broke big with the publication of The Making of the President, 1960, a classic of political reporting that covered the campaign with a novelists sense of drama and a stenographers sense of detail. It has been imitated many times since, including by White himself, who dutifully put himself through the same paces every four years, sweating out similar books all the way through 1972 but never duplicating the caffeinated energy of the original. Despite hundreds of campaign books since then, no one else has either. More consciously than most, Richard Wolffe has now entered the Teddy White sweepstakes with Renegade: The Making of a President. The connection is right there in the title, and from the very first words there is little doubt what he is up to. Wolffe covered the Obama campaign for Newsweek, and at times he seems to be channeling White (who had been a Time reporter), referring to his protagonist as the candidate and deploying short, dramatic sentences that heighten the air of mystery about the transfer of power. Wolffes first sentence (Election day starts, in the small hours, where the candidate has spent most of his last 626 days: on a plane.), like Whites (It was invisible, as always.), comes straight out of Hemingway 101. Renegade stakes an audacious claim to its own importance and largely lives up to it. Like White, Wolffe was lucky in several ways, beginning with the fact that the campaign he chose to cover was exceptionally historic. But he was also granted unusual access to the candidate, and one of the books more interesting episodes reveals that it was Obama who came up with the idea of Wolffes project, nudging him forward with a casual remark (Why cant you write a book about it? Like Theodore White. Those are great books.) Renegade tells the whole amazing story, restating how unlikely it seemed, only two years ago, that President Obama would ever be identified as such. When the campaign started, he was 99th out of 100 senators in seniority. In 2000, he couldnt even gain admission to the Democratic convention, and his credit card was declined when he tried to rent a car in L.A. Wolffe explores all of the ups and downs of 2008, relaying anecdotes both new and familiar. There are not quite as many flashbulb revelations as I expected, beyond a horrifying glimpse into just how directionless the Bush White House was at the time of the economic collapse last fall and some provocative suggestions that the Obama marriage was in trouble around 2000, when his political ambitions were surfacing. But the book is clear, concise and well written, effectively retelling a story that still astonishes us, even after we all lived through it last year. Which is not quite to say that this is The Making of the President, 2008. Wolffe lacks the voracious appetite for detail that characterized Whites books, and he spends almost no time on the other aspirants. He also deviates from Whites model of telling the story the old-fashioned way, from beginning to end. The chapters are lively and well-informed, but some continuity is missing, and quite a few state primaries are ignored or dumbed down. White spent a great deal of attention on the power structures of each region: the urban bosses who would deliver votes in return for backroom promises, the Southern overlords of the Democratic party, the fissures within the Republican Party. This book lacks that sort of comprehensive detail, focusing instead on its protagonist, who is admittedly fascinating — but so was JFK, and White went well beyond him. No particular light is shed on the big efforts in Pennsylvania and North Carolina — and none at all in less scrutinized places like Missouri, where Obama narrowly beat Hillary Clinton with 49 percent of the vote to 48 percent, a crucial step on the way to his victory. The chief drama revolves around Obama-Clinton more than Obama-McCain, and we are shown glimpses of the agitation that Clintons perseverance was causing inside the Obama team. But we are told little of the genuine policy differences that separated them or of the random factors (the spike in gas prices) that also entered into the complex calculus of 2008. Still, the book will please the millions who lived and died with every test of the campaign and should satisfy a hunger to know more about the person at the center of these gravity-defying events. To some extent, Wolffe faces a problem that all writers about Obama have, namely, that it is difficult to write better about the man than Obama himself has already done. But he effectively explores the paradox of the quiet renegade (Obamas Secret Service handle) who rewrote all of the rules of American politics while barely breaking a sweat. Obama, the son of an anthropologist, offers gnomic observations about the political process (interestingly, he admires Ronald Reagan), keeps his head when those around him have lost theirs and retains his likeability throughout, even when complaining that all media scrutiny reminds him of a public colonoscopy. If so, this book will signal a return to the proctologist, but only for a relatively harmless check-up. Like White, Wolffe obviously favors the man he dubs the candidate. But to his credit, he points out the occasional imperfection (some fudging on the issues of campaign finance and NAFTA, for example) and reveals a politician ready to play very hard to win, even while claiming to be above the politics of anger. Wolffe flavors the book with his own opinions — including the arresting thought that the intemperate sermons of Obamas then-pastor, Jeremiah Wright, might easily have been discovered before the Iowa caucus, which would likely have boxed in Obama at the start. Near the beginning of their collaboration, Obama asked Wolffe whether there would be enough drama in a story that merely reflected a successful realization of a vision (What happens if we just had a plan and then went out and said, lets execute it?). That, in a nutshell, is exactly what happened in 2008. But, yes, there is enough drama, and then some, in Renegade. It is surely not the final word — but it is as close as we are likely to get until Obamas aides begin to write their version of an extraordinary American story that is still unfolding.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review
“The first of the President Obama books–and a good one–insightful, thorough, and straight.”
—Ben Bradlee, Washington Post

“If you really want to know what happened inside the Obama campaign, this is the one book that will take you there. My jaw dropped time and time again reading details that, despite the coverage, were never revealed in the long campaign. A clear-eyed, up-close look at the campaign, Renegade is the one Obama book that should not be missed.”
—Michele Norris, All Things Considered

“A superb achievement. With an almost painterly eye, compelling insights, and extraordinary access to Barack Obama and his inner circle, Richard Wolffe’s Renegade tells the hidden, dramatic story of the 2008 campaign and also reveals much we did not know about the 44th president’s life before politics. Wolffe’s brisk, well-written narrative is fully in the tradition of Theodore White and Richard Ben Cramer, capturing a pivotal presidential

Why Buy A Renegade: The Making Of A President By Richard Wolffe?
Before the White House and Air Force One, before the TV ads and the enormous rallies, there was the real Barack Obama: a man wrestling with the momentous decision to run for the presidency, feeling torn about leaving behind a young family, and figuring out how to win the biggest prize in politics.

This book is the previously untold and epic story of how a political newcomer with no money and an alien name grew into the world’s most powerful leader. But it is also a uniquely intimate portrait of the person behind the iconic posters and the Secret Service code name Renegade.

Drawing on a dozen unplugged interviews with the candidate and president, as well as twenty-one months covering his campaign as it traveled from coast to coast, Richard Wolffe answers the simple yet enduring question about Barack Obama: Who is he?

Based on Wolffe’s unprecedented access to Obama, Renegade reveals the making of a president, both on the campaign trail and before he ran for high office. It explains how the politician who emerged in an extraordinary election learned the personal and political skills to succeed during his youth and early career. With cool self-discipline, calculated risk taking, and simple storytelling, Obama developed the strategies he would need to survive the onslaught of the Clintons and John McCain, and build a multimillion-dollar machine to win a historic contest.

In Renegade, Richard Wolffe shares with us his front-row seat at Obama’s announcement to run for president on a frigid day in Springfield, and his victory speech on a warm night in Chicago. We fly on the candidate’s plane and ride in his bus on an odyssey across a country in crisis; stand next to him at a bar on the night he secures the nomination; and are backstage as he delivers his convention speech to a stadium crowd and a transfixed national audience. From a teacher’s office in Iowa to the Oval Office in Washington, we see and hear Barack Obama with an immediacy and honesty never witnessed before.

Renegade provides not only an account of Obama’s triumphs, but also examines his many personal and political trials. We see Obama wrestling with race and politics, as well as his former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright. We see him struggling with life as a presidential candidate, a campaign that falters for most of its first year, and his reaction to a surprise defeat in the New Hampshire primary. And we see him relying on his personal experience, as well as meticulous polling, to pass the presidential test in foreign and economic affairs.

Renegade is an essential guide to understanding President Barack Obama and his trusted inner circle of aides and friends. It is also a riveting and enlightening first draft of history and political psychology.

From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews & Opinions

The Campaign BEHIND The 2008 Presidential Campaign
Having watched the events as they actually unfolded, I did not expect to be so moved by RENEGADE — but even in the era of the 24/7 news cycle, there are still nuggets which don’t surface until after the fact. They’re all here.

Exemplary reporting and graceful writing do not always walk hand-in-hand — and from my own journalistic experience, I know how difficult it is not to “fall in love” with a compelling subject. Mr. Wolffe does a superb job of placing you, the reader, in the position of the proverbial fly-on-the-wall … and succeeds mightily in answering the question on so many people’s minds: “Who Is Barack Obama?”

Great food for a political jukie
Okay before I review this book, I will state I am one of the Kool aid drinkers. I am a political junkie and I am a huge Obama supporter. So, I got what I expected when I picked this book up. I found it so interesting, the behind the scenes look at the campaign, the depth and understanding of President Obama, and the excitement of reliving the campaign that had the right ending in my perspective.

Mr. Wolffe takes the reader from the very beginning, the decision to run, the people saying he couldn’t win, all the ups and downs of the campaign, and then tries to explain how and why it was just the right person for the time and place…I don’t know, just a good book, worth the read if you are interested in politics and may teach you something about our system if you are not.

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Renegade: The Making Of A President By Richard Wolffe

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Posts Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Ted Widmer Given how often Barack Obama has been compared to John F. Kennedy, it makes sense that we now have a Camelot-style report on the great campaign of 08. Kennedys election was a literary as well as a political watershed, inspiring writers whose taut and sardonic style mirrored that of JFK himself. Not long after the election, Theodore White broke big with the publication of The Making of the President, 1960, a classic of political reporting that covered the campaign with a novelists sense of drama and a stenographers sense of detail. It has been imitated many times since, including by White himself, who dutifully put himself through the same paces every four years, sweating out similar books all the way through 1972 but never duplicating the caffeinated energy of the original. Despite hundreds of campaign books since then, no one else has either. More consciously than most, Richard Wolffe has now entered the Teddy White sweepstakes with Renegade: The Making of a President. The connection is right there in the title, and from the very first words there is little doubt what he is up to. Wolffe covered the Obama campaign for Newsweek, and at times he seems to be channeling White (who had been a Time reporter), referring to his protagonist as the candidate and deploying short, dramatic sentences that heighten the air of mystery about the transfer of power. Wolffes first sentence (Election day starts, in the small hours, where the candidate has spent most of his last 626 days: on a plane.), like Whites (It was invisible, as always.), comes straight out of Hemingway 101. Renegade stakes an audacious claim to its own importance and largely lives up to it. Like White, Wolffe was lucky in several ways, beginning with the fact that the campaign he chose to cover was exceptionally historic. But he was also granted unusual access to the candidate, and one of the books more interesting episodes reveals that it was Obama who came up with the idea of Wolffes project, nudging him forward with a casual remark (Why cant you write a book about it? Like Theodore White. Those are great books.) Renegade tells the whole amazing story, restating how unlikely it seemed, only two years ago, that President Obama would ever be identified as such. When the campaign started, he was 99th out of 100 senators in seniority. In 2000, he couldnt even gain admission to the Democratic convention, and his credit card was declined when he tried to rent a car in L.A. Wolffe explores all of the ups and downs of 2008, relaying anecdotes both new and familiar. There are not quite as many flashbulb revelations as I expected, beyond a horrifying glimpse into just how directionless the Bush White House was at the time of the economic collapse last fall and some provocative suggestions that the Obama marriage was in trouble around 2000, when his political ambitions were surfacing. But the book is clear, concise and well written, effectively retelling a story that still astonishes us, even after we all lived through it last year. Which is not quite to say that this is The Making of the President, 2008. Wolffe lacks the voracious appetite for detail that characterized Whites books, and he spends almost no time on the other aspirants. He also deviates from Whites model of telling the story the old-fashioned way, from beginning to end. The chapters are lively and well-informed, but some continuity is missing, and quite a few state primaries are ignored or dumbed down. White spent a great deal of attention on the power structures of each region: the urban bosses who would deliver votes in return for backroom promises, the Southern overlords of the Democratic party, the fissures within the Republican Party. This book lacks that sort of comprehensive detail, focusing instead on its protagonist, who is admittedly fascinating — but so was JFK, and White went well beyond him. No particular light is shed on the big efforts in Pennsylvania and North Carolina — and none at all in less scrutinized places like Missouri, where Obama narrowly beat Hillary Clinton with 49 percent of the vote to 48 percent, a crucial step on the way to his victory. The chief drama revolves around Obama-Clinton more than Obama-McCain, and we are shown glimpses of the agitation that Clintons perseverance was causing inside the Obama team. But we are told little of the genuine policy differences that separated them or of the random factors (the spike in gas prices) that also entered into the complex calculus of 2008. Still, the book will please the millions who lived and died with every test of the campaign and should satisfy a hunger to know more about the person at the center of these gravity-defying events. To some extent, Wolffe faces a problem that all writers about Obama have, namely, that it is difficult to write better about the man than Obama himself has already done. But he effectively explores the paradox of the quiet renegade (Obamas Secret Service handle) who rewrote all of the rules of American politics while barely breaking a sweat. Obama, the son of an anthropologist, offers gnomic observations about the political process (interestingly, he admires Ronald Reagan), keeps his head when those around him have lost theirs and retains his likeability throughout, even when complaining that all media scrutiny reminds him of a public colonoscopy. If so, this book will signal a return to the proctologist, but only for a relatively harmless check-up. Like White, Wolffe obviously favors the man he dubs the candidate. But to his credit, he points out the occasional imperfection (some fudging on the issues of campaign finance and NAFTA, for example) and reveals a politician ready to play very hard to win, even while claiming to be above the politics of anger. Wolffe flavors the book with his own opinions — including the arresting thought that the intemperate sermons of Obamas then-pastor, Jeremiah Wright, might easily have been discovered before the Iowa caucus, which would likely have boxed in Obama at the start. Near the beginning of their collaboration, Obama asked Wolffe whether there would be enough drama in a story that merely reflected a successful realization of a vision (What happens if we just had a plan and then went out and said, lets execute it?). That, in a nutshell, is exactly what happened in 2008. But, yes, there is enough drama, and then some, in Renegade. It is surely not the final word — but it is as close as we are likely to get until Obamas aides begin to write their version of an extraordinary American story that is still unfolding.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Review
“The first of the President Obama books–and a good one–insightful, thorough, and straight.”
—Ben Bradlee, Washington Post

“If you really want to know what happened inside the Obama campaign, this is the one book that will take you there. My jaw dropped time and time again reading details that, despite the coverage, were never revealed in the long campaign. A clear-eyed, up-close look at the campaign, Renegade is the one Obama book that should not be missed.”
—Michele Norris, All Things Considered

“A superb achievement. With an almost painterly eye, compelling insights, and extraordinary access to Barack Obama and his inner circle, Richard Wolffe’s Renegade tells the hidden, dramatic story of the 2008 campaign and also reveals much we did not know about the 44th president’s life before politics. Wolffe’s brisk, well-written narrative is fully in the tradition of Theodore White and Richard Ben Cramer, capturing a pivotal presidential contest dominated by one of the most luminous figures in modern American history.”
—Michael Beschloss, author of Presidential Courage

“Many journalist

Why Buy A Renegade: The Making Of A President By Richard Wolffe?
Before the White House and Air Force One, before the TV ads and the enormous rallies, there was the real Barack Obama: a man wrestling with the momentous decision to run for the presidency, feeling torn about leaving behind a young family, and figuring out how to win the biggest prize in politics.

This book is the previously untold and epic story of how a political newcomer with no money and an alien name grew into the world’s most powerful leader. But it is also a uniquely intimate portrait of the person behind the iconic posters and the Secret Service code name Renegade.

Drawing on a dozen unplugged interviews with the candidate and president, as well as twenty-one months covering his campaign as it traveled from coast to coast, Richard Wolffe answers the simple yet enduring question about Barack Obama: Who is he?

Based on Wolffe’s unprecedented access to Obama, Renegade reveals the making of a president, both on the campaign trail and before he ran for high office. It explains how the politician who emerged in an extraordinary election learned the personal and political skills to succeed during his youth and early career. With cool self-discipline, calculated risk taking, and simple storytelling, Obama developed the strategies he would need to survive the onslaught of the Clintons and John McCain, and build a multimillion-dollar machine to win a historic contest.

In Renegade, Richard Wolffe shares with us his front-row seat at Obama’s announcement to run for president on a frigid day in Springfield, and his victory speech on a warm night in Chicago. We fly on the candidate’s plane and ride in his bus on an odyssey across a country in crisis; stand next to him at a bar on the night he secures the nomination; and are backstage as he delivers his convention speech to a stadium crowd and a transfixed national audience. From a teacher’s office in Iowa to the Oval Office in Washington, we see and hear Barack Obama with an immediacy and honesty never witnessed before.

Renegade provides not only an account of Obama’s triumphs, but also examines his many personal and political trials. We see Obama wrestling with race and politics, as well as his former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright. We see him struggling with life as a presidential candidate, a campaign that falters for most of its first year, and his reaction to a surprise defeat in the New Hampshire primary. And we see him relying on his personal experience, as well as meticulous polling, to pass the presidential test in foreign and economic affairs.
Renegade is an essential guide to understanding President Barack Obama and his trusted inner circle of aides and friends. It is also a riveting and enlightening first draft of history and political psychology.

From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews & Opinions

The Campaign BEHIND The 2008 Presidential Campaign
Having watched the events as they actually unfolded, I did not expect to be so moved by RENEGADE — but even in the era of the 24/7 news cycle, there are still nuggets which don’t surface until after the fact. They’re all here.

Exemplary reporting and graceful writing do not always walk hand-in-hand — and from my own journalistic experience, I know how difficult it is not to “fall in love” with a compelling subject. Mr. Wolffe does a superb job of placing you, the reader, in the position of the proverbial fly-on-the-wall … and succeeds mightily in answering the question on so many people’s minds: “Who Is Barack Obama?”

Great food for a political jukie
Okay before I review this book, I will state I am one of the Kool aid drinkers. I am a political junkie and I am a huge Obama supporter. So, I got what I expected when I picked this book up. I found it so interesting, the behind the scenes look at the campaign, the depth and understanding of President Obama, and the excitement of reliving the campaign that had the right ending in my perspective.

Mr. Wolffe takes the reader from the very beginning, the decision to run, the people saying he couldn’t win, all the ups and downs of the campaign, and then tries to explain how and why it was just the right person for the time and place…I don’t know, just a good book, worth the read if you are interested in politics and may teach you something about our system if you are not.

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