Bob Woodward (1)Recensioni

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS
(Print: ©9/12/2020; 9781471197710; Simon Schuster; 480 pp.)
(Digital: Yes).
*Audio: ©9/15/2020; 978-1797113043; Simon & Schuster Audio; Duration 13:28:17; 12 parts; unabridged
(Film: No.)

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
This is Bob’s second book about Donald J. Trump. Donald had not agreed to interviews for the first one, “Fear”, and, according to Bob, felt that perhaps if he had, Bob may have painted a better picture of him. So, he did 17 interviews with Bob for this book.
During the final interviews, Donald makes it clear that he understands that Bob is “one of them”—one of those liberal democrats who does not understand him. I suspect that Trump’s hope in doing the interviews was that Woodward would emphasize what Trump feels are his strong points. But my sense is that Woodward’s motive runs more along the line of broaching Trump’s weak points with him, not necessarily to demonstrate them to his audience, but possibly with a motive toward exerting some degree of influence.
So the book has a debate flavor with many “yes but's" on both sides.
The title of the book comes from something Donald told Bob early on, that he just seems to inspire rage in some people. They don’t like what he does or how he does it. And, is he maybe just a little proud of this? Me thinks he is.
Bob recorded the interviews and appears to be recounting parts of them here verbatim. He also interviewed people who had close contact with Donald during his presidency.
They discuss China’s handling of the pandemic; America’s experience of and handling of the pandemic; the strength of the economy before and after the pandemic; the friendly relationship Trump and Kim Jong-un of North Korea struck up; and other matters of consequence to the presidency.
We get a fairly accurate sense of Trump’s attitudes, but granted, they are served along with Bob’s assessment of those attitudes.

AUTHOR:
Robert (Bob) Upshur Woodward (3/26/1943). According to Wikipedia, Bob “is an American investigative journalist. He started working for The Washington Post as a reporter in 1971 and currently holds the title of associate editor.[1][2]
While a young reporter for The Washington Post in 1972, Woodward teamed up with Carl Bernstein; the two did much of the original news reporting on the Watergate scandal. These scandals led to numerous government investigations and the eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon. The work of Woodward and Bernstein was called "maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time" by longtime journalism figure Gene Roberts.[3]
Woodward continued to work for The Washington Post after his reporting on Watergate. He has written 20 books on American politics and current affairs, 13 of which have topped best-seller lists.”

NARRATOR:
Robert Petkoff. According to Wikipedia, Robert “is an American stage actor known for his work in Shakespearean productions and more recently on the New York City musical theater stage. Petkoff has performed on Broadway, the West End, regional theatre, and done work in film and television. Petkoff was featured as "Perchik" in the Tony award-nominated 2004 revival cast of Fiddler on the Roof but is perhaps best known for his role as "Tateh" in the 2009 revival of Ragtime on Broadway.[1] Petkoff has also provided the voices for over two dozen audiobooks, winning awards for his reading of Michael Koryta's So Cold the River. Married to actress Susan Wands, Petkoff has lived in New York City for the last twenty years, and often performs in benefit concerts for theater-district-related charities.”
Coincidentally, after listening to "Rage", we are now listening to Scott Turow’s “Pleading Guilty”. The dialogue is so different between the two books, that if the credits hadn’t been announced in the beginning, I probably would not have recognized that this is another of Robert’s narrations.
Great diction; perfect inflection and intonation; and easy to understand over engine and traffic noise.

GENRE:
Biography, non-fiction, politics

TIME FRAME:
2016-2020

SUBJECTS:
President Trump, politics, pandemic, Black Lives Matter, white privilege, Kim Jong-un

DEDICATION:
“To Alice Mayhew, who edited every one of my 19 previous books over 44 years and gave me a lifetime of wisdom and love, and to Carolyn Reidy, our revered and steady captain at Simon & Schuster. I miss them both.
And to the next generation:
Diana Woodward
Tali Woodward
Son-in-law Gabe Roth
Grandchildren Zadie and Theo"

SAMPLE QUOTATION:
From chapter one:
“Shortly before the Thanksgiving holiday of 2016, retired Marine General James Mattis saw a call from an unknown Indiana number flash on his cell phone screen. Not knowing anyone from there, he ignored it.
He was volunteering at the local Tri-Cities Food Bank in Richland, Washington, his childhood home on the Columbia River, where his mother and brother still lived.
When a second call came from Indiana, he answered.
“This is Mike Pence.”
Mattis didn’t know a Mike Pence, but quickly realized he was speaking with the vice president-elect.
The president-elect would like to talk to you about the secretary of defense job, Pence said.
I am happy to give my advice, Mattis said, but I am not eligible. To preserve strict civilian control, the law prohibits anyone who has been a military officer in the last seven years from serving as defense secretary. The only exception had been World War II General George Marshall, who had received a waiver in 1950 and been a national hero.
Given the raging partisan divisions in Washington, Mattis privately believed Democrats in Congress would never support such a waiver.
But Mattis did talk to Trump, and agreed to fly east. He wanted to persuade Trump to question his positions on NATO and torture. Trump had called the military alliance “obsolete” and promised to bring back the “enhanced interrogation techniques” on suspected terrorists that President Barack Obama had banned. Mattis thought Trump was wrong on both counts.”

RATING:
5 stars. Despite my opinion that the subject of politics can be dry and alternating parts boring and annoying, this book kept my interest.

STARTED-FINISHED
8/31/2021 – 9/9/2021

I think Woodward did an excellent job of going behind-the-scenes and setting the stage for the players in the Trump administration. I got a better idea of the advisors and senior staff who had to work with the President daily and the struggles both sides had to contend with. Woodward's years of journalism are clear in this book as he simply lays things out as they are, uses quotes from 17 interviews with Trump as well as other interviews, and saves his own personal opinion for the epilogue.

I was prepared to be furious and frustrated with our administration at the end of this book. Instead I walk away with a better understanding of the challenges faced and the intricacies (and difficulties) of governing a country.

In his 27 years at Goldman, Cohn had made billions for his clients and hundreds of millions for himself. He had granted himself walk in privileges to Trump's Oval Office, and the president had accepted that arrangement. On the desk was a one page draft letter from the president addressed to the president of South Korea, terminating the United States-Korea Free Trade agreement, known as KORUS. Cohn was appalled. For months Trump had threatened to withdraw from the agreement, one of the foundations of an economic relationship, a military and, most important, top secret intelligence operations and capabilities. Cohn removed the letter draft from the Resolute Desk. " I stole it off his desk," he later told an associate. "I wouldn't let him see it. He's never going to see that document. Got to protect the country. "

#364 in our old book database. Not rated.

Because so much of the dialogue in “Fear: Trump in the White House” is between Trump’s generals and staffers, his lawyers and a few cabinet members, a portrait of the real Donald Trump kind of creeps out of the pages of this book quietly.

Donald Trump believes that fear instills if not loyalty at least obedience in his White House and beyond, and that is what this book is all about: what Donald Trump’s mantra means to governing America at home, and how it sets the stage for relations with its allies and enemies.

Donald Trump wants you to be afraid of him. And many of us are, but not for the reasons that would necessarily serve his ends.

Much of the dialogue appears without reflection or analysis. We kind of get what the antagonists feel, but not too much of what the author feels or how the author compares what he is hearing to what he has written about at length before: what other presidents felt, or what other presidents did that actually worked.

In the short time frame of the book we never get to find out if things Trump did actually worked except that almost everything he says creates fierce, constant criticism and contempt.

Woodward starts with a Donald Trump premise and then rolls it out against the advice of his staff and the wider world. For example, why should America bother subsiding trade deficits with South Korea and paying billions for a military presence in that country if America gets nothing in return and the North Koreans continue unabated to build their nuclear offensive capabilities?

Why should America stay in Afghanistan at all when it cost America close to a trillion dollars to find out it is incapable of controlling the political landscape there or recouping its expense by harvesting Afganistan’s supposed mineral wealth?

Trump feels he never gets a straight answer from his advisors, but the answer is pretty elementary: nuclear weapons are no laughing matter for those who have them and those who strive to acquire them. They give you leverage, a concept Trump is certainly well aware of. And the more nations who have them, the weaker everybody is to control them.

That is why America’s military is so outsized in relation to the immediate threats that face it. It’s because neither America nor anybody else wants to see what happens when that button gets pushed again.

That’s also why the outsized influence of Steve Bannon on Donald Trump is so worrisome. Build walls, smash global trade, ignore climate change.

These are really dumb ideas.

For all that ails American capitalists and American democratic institutions; for the inequities between who creates American wealth and who gets to keep it, for all those who believe in individual sovereignty (read: abortion rights) and those who want to enforce supposed Christian standards of behaviour by fiat; for those who believe that automatic weapons have no place in the polity; for those who believe America is wealthy enough to provide basic health care insurance; for all those who despise the influence of libertarians in public debate, this story is only about one man and his loyalties.

In the 2018 midterm elections, Trump tried to divert attention away from the unpopular Republican stand against pre-existing conditions in the Affordable Care Act. He called out troupes to defend the southern border against aliens creeping into America.

During this whole episode, one heard so little in the media about why these people were so desperate to risk incarceration at the US border, or risk having their children taken from them. There was no discussion about the problems failed states to the south face or what their neighbours are trying to do to correct the violence and corruption at home.

It is not that different from what is causing Europe palpitations over the tidal wave of migrants on their borders.

Also troubling about this book is the way it satirizes the so-called adults in the room. If Trump doesn’t get the answers he wants from his advisors, there’s a suggestion that there’s something wrong with the advisors. Indeed there is. The retired generals and Wall Street types around him supposedly understand the right thing to do, but Woodward makes them out to be somewhat twisted individuals as well — which they probably are. But the inference is that Trump is actually right.

Nobody wants to hear that.

The third of Woodward's series of books about Trump, this time with co-author Robert Costa. Although this one is really half about Trump and half about Biden. It covers the campaign for the 2020 election, the events of Jan. 6, 2021 and their aftermath, and Biden's first actions in office. As with the previous volumes, there's not a whole lot in here the I feel I didn't already know about. The stuff about Jan. 6, in particular, is not especially in-depth. I did, however, very much appreciate how much the book gives us of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley's perspective on events. I remember getting more than a little desperately needed reassurance from his clear statements about where the military stood on matters, and it was satisfying to get some more background on the man and on where he was coming from.

Like the previous volumes, this does sometimes feel disjointed, perhaps even a little disorganized. But it's a pretty fast read, anyway, at least for as long as you can stomach the subject matter. (I admit, there were times when I couldn't quite face picking it up again, for reasons that had nothing to do with the writing.)½

Loses rigor and interest in the final chapters, from reporting to opinion—I go to the newspaper for current events.

That said, warning signs are made plain, though inefficiently at times.. On 9/11 the message board over the interstate leading to the beltway from Maryland points west read something like “Avoid Washington. Big Trouble.” Clearly, MDOT should have left that sign up.

I expected better prose from Woodward. The book reads like a mediocre novel, and it would be such if the stories in it were not believable. It probably could have used half the words.

Két ok miatt olvastam el a könyvet. Egyrészt több könyvet olvastam Bersteintől és Woodwardtól, de a leghíresebb és egyben a legfontosabb valahogy kimaradt. Másrészt pedig sokat hallottam a Watergate-botrányról, de a részleteket nem ismertem elég alaposan.

A könyvben a két oknyomozó újságírón keresztül ismerjük meg az ügyet, vagyis ( pár apró kivételtől eltekintve ) mindig pont annyit tudunk mint a két újságíró. Nincsenek más történetszálak ahol az összeesküvők cselekedeteit mutatná be időrendben vagy a hivatalos nyomozás részleteit. Csak akkor értesülünk eseményekről, amikor valaki beszél a főszereplőknek róla, ami akár hónapokkal a történtek után lehet. Különösen a vége felé zavaró ez, amikor az ügy már túlnőtt a két újságírón. Vagyis ha a Watergate ügyet szeretnénk alaposan megismerni, akkor nem ez a legjobb olvasmány. Ha viszont azt szeretnénk látni, hogy két oknyomozó újságíró hogyan deríti fel az ügyet ami végül az elnök bukásához vezet, akkor ez a tökéletes könyv.

A könyv nem túl könnyű olvasmány, a nevek többsége már nem sokat mond ennyi év távlatából és könnyű összekeverni a szereplőket akik apránként csepegtetik az információkat az újságíróknak.

A könyv olvasása után hiányérzetem maradt, aminek egyszerűen az az oka, hogy a könyv még Nixon bukása előtt jelent meg, vagyis hiányzik a történet vége, azt egy külön könyvben írták meg.½

A detailed accounting of the Trump presidency, using direct interviews with Trump and his staff.

It details his divisiveness, indecision, failure to lead, and correctly concludes he is the wrong person for the job.

This is gripping and informative, following the lead journalists thru the uncovering of the entire Watergate scandal. I got an idea of how exciting and stressful journalism can be on big events like this, and the tedium and disappointment that comes when things don't pan out. I also enjoyed the new forward that includes comparisons to the entire Trump debacle.

Nemrég olvastam Woodwardtól a Bush háborúját, ami a 2001. szeptember 11-i terrortámadás utáni időszakot mutatja be, az afganisztáni háború előkészítését és a háború elejét. Woodward írt még három könyvet Bush háborúiról amit kihagytam így az Obamáról szóló könyvvel folytatom. A friss elnök megörökölte a háborúkat (a többes szám ellenére Irakról alig van szó a könyvben, több kritika jogosan írja hogy itt inkább a Fehér Ház és a fegyveres erők közti háborúra utalt a szerző a többes számmal) és a könyv elején a jól ismert stílust követve arról olvashatunk, hogyan sodródik az elnök, mit kezd egy láthatóan nem igazán megnyerhető háborúval. A könyv közepén kissé meglepő módon Obama megelégeli a sodródást és próbál húzni egy határt és nem jobban belesodródni a háborúba,itt egy kicsit érdekesebb lett a könyv. Persze 2023-ban olvasva már tudjuk, hogy mi lett a háború vége.

Alelnökként természetesen a mostani elnök Biden is szerepel a könyvben, a vártál kevesebbet, és meglepően pozitív figurának tűnik.

Egyrészt rettentően becsülendő, hogy Woodward milyen részletesen tud írni titkos dolgokról, nagyon sok jó forrása van, és biztos vagyok benne, hogyha valaki 50 év múlva szeretné megérteni hogy pontosan mi történt, annak ez nagyszerű kordokumentum lesz, de ettől a könyv még nem túlzottan olvasmányos. Elveszünk a részletekben és egy kicsit későbbről visszanézve már nem annyira tűnik fontosnak, hogy végül is 30000 vagy 40000 embert küldött az USA Afganisztánba ezen a ponton.

Even as a law student I found this boring. I get the importance. I get the shock of what happened. Maybe it's because I've done two projects on Watergate and this is just... Eh. Been there. Done that. Reporters breaking every rule they can to catch actual rulebreakers in the act. Whenever I come back to this story it just further convinces me to stay away from DC and to never become an investigative journalist. I mean that's really it for me. As a beginner's guide to Watergate, sure go for it. Be prepared for a bit of confusion but the 40th anniversary has some help in it and a good afterword.

Absolutely fantastic. This book went a good way in restoring my faith in the field of journalism, which had plummeted during the past 6 or 7 years due to today's sloppy and biased reporting. Seeing the lengths Woodward and Bernstein went to in order to corroborate information (at least 3 sources) was refreshing, especially given that today reporters regularly quote a pair of anonymous Twitter accounts and call it a story. Eye-opening, compelling read. Highly recommend.

This 19+ hour audio book is not for the casual listener. It's a study book, like you get in college. The cast is a plethora that's hard to keep straight, even if we lived through it on TV every night. I suspect that if it could be distilled down to 1/3 of it's length, it would be tolerable. So, I skimmed through it.

A fascinating look into the details of the reporting of the Watergate scandal. This blow-by-blow account reveals the investigative process, the breakdown in the Nixon White House's internal structure, the lies and dissimulation from political figures, and has insight into how to manufacture, and read, news. A trenchant story for today.

all of his books are worth reading,
but some are more history now

pick up again at Disk 4 track 4

somewhat dated

A Bush kormányzat 2001. szeptember 11-i terrortámadás utáni két hónapját mutatja be rendkívül részletesen a könyv, az afganisztáni háború elindítását és a háború elejét. Woodward rengeteg interjút készített a könyvhöz, többek között Bush elnökkel is, legjobb tudomásom szerint a könyv hitelességét nem igazán vonta kétségbe senki. A rendkívül részletes leírás persze történészi szemszögből nagyon hasznos, de azért olvasóként nem feltétlenül izgalmas a huszadik nagyon egyforma megbeszélésről olvasni.

Az olvasó nyilván valami nagy leleplezést vár egy ilyen könyvtől (különösen, hogy Woodward volt a Watergate botrány egyik kirobbantója) de túl sok ilyenre nem érdemes számítani. Többen pont azzal vádolták Woodwardot, hogy túl pozitív képet fest Bush elnökről a könyvben. Nekem mondjuk hiába volt alapvetően szimpatikusnak ábrázolva az elnök, azért végig az volt az érzésem, hogy úgy indítanak háborút, hogy nincs konkrét politikai céljuk azon kívül, hogy 9/11 miatt valakinek vissza kell ütni.

Miután a könyv 2002. végén jelent meg, az utolsó fejezetben kapunk egy rövidebb áttekintést a két hónap utáni eseményekről is. Ez nagyon hasznos amikor Afganisztánról van szó, de furcsa szerkesztési elvnek tűnik, hogy míg a könyv korábbi fejezeteiben alig van szó Irakról, itt a legvégén egyre hangsúlyosabb az iraki háborúra készülődés. Tekintve, hogy Woodward négy könyvet írt Bush háborúiról, elég feleslegesek voltak ezek a részek itt.

Húsz évvel később persze nagyon érdekes azt is látni, hogy mennyire változott a világ (a könyvben Putin segítőkésznek és rendesnek tűnik) mi lett az akkor elindított folyamatokból, és hát ebből a szempontból külön nehéz azokat a mondatokat olvasni, amikor az amerikai politikusok pl. arról beszélnek, hogy miként kell elkerülni, hogy beleragadjanak az afgán háború mocsarába.

You know the drill: a break-in at the Democratic National Committee office in the Watergate complex led to the collapse of Richard Nixon's presidential administration, largely thanks to the efforts of intrepid reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

What I liked about All the President's Men was how Bernstein and Woodward peel back the tight factual skin of newspaper reporting to reveal their own screw-ups and the humanity of their opponents. They repeatedly record that queasy moment when a journalist has to choose between a scoop and compassion. The greater good doesn't always win, but compassion can't compete with good copy:

"As the cry of JEEEEEESUS was repeated, Bernstein had perceived the excruciating depth of Mitchell's hurt. For a moment, he had been afraid that Mitchell might die on the telephone, and for the first time Mitchell was flesh and blood, not Nixon's campaign manager, the shadow of Kent State, Carswell's keeper, the high sheriff of Law and Order, the jowled heavy of Watergate. Bernstein's skin felt prickly." [110]

I only knew of Bob Woodward from Watergate, so I was expecting a more serious book.

This is basically just gossip with zero analysis, but it's well-sourced gossip so it is compelling. Woodward's attempt to preserve the exact words of the speakers adds some extra colour, and is the most interesting aspect of the book.

Each chapter looks at a different moment in the Trump White House and how frustrated staffers and appointees scrambled to keep Trump from doing something that would undermine the country's interests. Clearly the man had no understanding of geopolitics and economic policies and stubbornly viewed them through his businessman lens. God bless those staffers and appointees; clearly they served their country by constantly clawing its leadership back off the cliff. Where would this country be today if not for them?

Fascinating in a train wreck kind of way. Still, I don't think I really read anything I hadn't already read elsewhere.

This book started out in the four star category, but ended up at a three for me. Woodward relates in (sometimes excrutiating) detail the fight to raise the debt limit in 2011. Really, when I say detail, I mean detail. He knows what people said and when they said it. To his credit, he doesn't do a whole lot of interpreting. The reader can draw their own conclusions as to who was right and who was wrong and who was to blame for the entire fiasco.
I am not going to share my conclusions on the matter - - only to say here that in my mind, the very experienced Senate and House leaders brought the most to the table in terms of actually solving the problem at hand. But there were many, many people who undermined both the efforts of the President and those of the Congressional leadership . . .and perhaps it is the fault of the leadership that they couldn't reel in their sides. It certainly wasn't for a lack of effort on the parts of Obama and Boehner. If it were just those two guys calling the shots, there would have been a deal that would have been better for the country overall. Not that they didn't have their own interests. Obama wanted a solution that would last past election day. Boehner wanted no revenue increases without masking them as tax reform (somewhat understandably as he had no chance of selling the very adamant Tea Party contingency on them, and their votes were needed).

If you love politics and political intrigue, you'll find this book pretty engaging. But after awhile, you kind want to smack everyone silly. It's pretty darn dysfunctional. Frighteningly so actually. We are lucky they figured out anything at all because seriously we could be in a huge prolonged depression right now had they not raised the debt ceiling. Honestly, I was in a bit of a depression after reading the book. It's only ONE example of how our government solves problems, and let's just say, it was incredibly unimpressive.

I appreciated Woodward's writing style overall - - I was captivated. But there were some components of the deal that could have been explained a bit better by him to assist the reader. I was an economics major, but some of the ideas that were put forth just didn't seem totally clear to me in terms of how they were actually going to work. But I did admire how he stayed pretty impartial and showed all the differing perspectives of the major players.

Definitely a worthwhile read . . .but realize it is 300 pages focused on a very narrow topic. You have to be interested.

First edition signed as new