The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III

Product Description
BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times • The Washington Post • Fortune • BloombergFrom two of America's most revered political journalists comes the definitive biography of legendary White House chief of staff and secretary of state James A. Baker III: the man who ran Washington when Washington ran the world.
For a quarter century, from the end of Watergate to the aftermath of the Cold War, no Republican won the presidency or ran the White House without the advice of James Addison Baker III. A scion of Texas aristocracy who became George H. W. Bush’s tennis partner, Baker had never worked in Washington until a devastating family tragedy struck when he was thirty-nine. Within a few years, he was leading Gerald Ford’s campaign and would go on to manage a total of five presidential races and win a sixth for George W. Bush in a Florida recount. He ran Ronald Reagan’s White House and became the most consequential secretary of state since Henry Kissinger. Ruthlessly partisan during campaign season, Baker became an indispensable dealmaker after the election. He negotiated with Democrats at home and Soviets abroad, rewrote the tax code, assembled the coalition that won the Gulf War, brokered the reunification of Germany, and helped bring a decades-long nuclear superpower standoff to an end.
Brilliantly crafted by Peter Baker of
The New York Times and Susan Glasser of
The New Yorker,
The Man Who Ran Washington is a page-turning study in the acquisition, exercise, and preservation of power in late twentieth-century America and the story of Washington when Washington ran the world. Their masterly biography is necessary reading and destined to become a classic.
Review
SILVER MEDAL WINNER OF THE ARTHUR ROSS BOOK AWARD
"A masterclass in political biography."
—The Economist
"An illuminating biographical portrait of Mr. Baker, one that describes the arc of his career and, along the way, tells us something about how executive power is wielded in the nation’s capital. . . often has the feel of a novel."
—The Wall Street Journal
"Enthralling, comprehensive . . . The authors rightly highlight the dimensions of Baker’s illustrious career that show so much about what is broken in the current American political system."
—The New York Times Book Review
“The Man Who Ran Washington . . . will rank alongside it as among the very best books about American political life in the late 20th century.”
—The Washington Post
"A masterly biography."
—The Guardian
"A fascinating look at political power."
—The New York Times
"Immensely informative, nuanced and judicious."
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“One of the finest political biographies of the year.”
—Dallas Morning News
"Enthralling."
—The Financial Times
"A sweeping history as well as an intimate biography, the book is also a fascinating study of how to acquire power in Washington and how to use it to maximum effect."
—Foreign Affairs
"Accomplished . . . Exhaustively reported and fluently written."
—Commentary
"American political culture is broken, but it hasn’t always been that way. James Addison Baker was
—the consummate master at actually getting things done in Washington."
—Fortune
"Superlative."
—The American Conservative
“Nobody was better at getting things done than James A. Baker. In a book that is at once fascinating, coolly revealing, and at moments touching, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser have given us a biography worthy of one of the most important figures of the late American Century. If you want to understand power in Washington—or anywhere, for that matter—this is the book for you.”
—Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, authors of The Wise Men
“Monumental. . . . It’ll live forever, and it ought to be in every library in America, because it’s not just about Jim Baker. It’s about how government really works. . . . Epic.”
—Tom Brokaw
“This book is a window into the way power works, in the tradition of Caro.”
—Robert Costa
“Toweri