Publishers Weekly
11/04/2024
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. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
The shocking, breaking news is the biggest Oct surprise of the 21st century”—Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC
“Explosive...juicy...so wow”—Jake Tapper, CNN
"this should be 'stop everything' stuff"—Nicolle Wallace, MSNBC
"fascinating book ... This is a great book no matter where you are on the political spectrum."—Neil Cavuto, Fox News Channel
"This Time, Bob Woodward Gets It Right: The Watergate journalist has taken a lot of hits—including from me. In his new Biden chronicle, War, he’s at his best."—Franklin Foer, The Atlantic
“This is harrowing, riveting stuff...Three weeks after War is published on Oct. 15, voters will provide raw material for the sequel. Though he specializes in real-time suspense, Woodward doesn’t write cliffhangers. His impulse — his talent — is to impose an arc and a moral on the mess and sprawl of very recent history. This time around, his stated conclusions are unambiguous: 'Donald Trump is not only the wrong man for the presidency,' he writes, 'he is unfit to lead the country.' In contrast, 'Biden and his team will be largely studied in history as an example of steady and purposeful leadership.' Those judgments sound authoritative. They also sound wishful."—A.O. Scott, New York Times
"...the legendary reporter, who, at age 81, has more energy and puts in more shoe leather than reporters half his age."—Peter Bergen, CNN.com
"[War] sports all the familiar Woodwardian trademarks—the anonymously sourced accounts of Top Secret meetings, the profanity-laced dialogue (in quotation marks, as if heard by a fly on the wall), the portrait of high politics as a clash of colorful characters: a fun, often compelling first (at times, second) draft of history. Yet, compared with the previous volumes, this latest is in some ways more interesting (if a bit less sensational), and it offers a more (though far from completely) coherent narrative....Woodward uncovers intriguing new facts about the conflicts or, at times, adds color and dimension to stories that others have reported in mere bits and pieces."—Fred Kaplan, Slate
“...reducing the book to scoops trivializes Woodward’s ambitions for this sprawling, occasionally blinkered but timely book. If the nuggets were the meal, then the headlines would make the book itself redundant ... a reader who understands these perspectives can adjust for any slants the sources may seek to provide. And even if most of the sources Woodward spoke to for the book are residents or friends of Bidenworld, he is too good a writer and too experienced an observer to let the book’s lessons be dictated by his sources ...it is because it thrums with the urgency Woodward must feel of persuading the electorate not to make the same mistake — or a worse one — again."—Paul Musgrave, Washington Post
"Bob Woodward’s new book War is a sober but alarming must-read"—Lloyd Green, The Guardian
