Synopses & Reviews
The hidden history of Wall Street and the White House comes down to a single, powerful, quintessentially American concept: confidence. Both centers of power, tapping brazen innovations over the past three decades, learned how to manufacture it. But in August 2007, that confidence finally began to crumble.
In this gripping and brilliantly reported book, Ron Suskind tells the story of what happened next, as Wall Street struggled to save itself while a man with little experience and soaring rhetoric emerged from obscurity to usher in "a new era of responsibility." It is a story that follows the journey of Barack Obama, who rose as the country fell, offering the first full portrait of his tumultuous presidency.
Review
"A truly groundbreaking inside account....Penetrating in its analysis of why the administration's approach to the country's economic ills has been so lackluster....An important addition to the growing library of books about this president." Joe Nocera, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"Suskind's account of the Obama administration is a marker of our times. It reveals a President unable to perform responsibly the duties of his high office....Suskind's contribution to this tale of woe is to give us a fine grained picture of Obama's passive place in deliberations." The Huffington Post
Review
"No book about the Obama presidency appears to have unnerved the White House quite so much as Confidence Men by Ron Suskind, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has developed a niche in the specialized art of parting the curtain on presidential dealings." The Chicago Tribune
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"The work that went into Confidence Men cannot be denied. Suskind conducted hundreds of interviews. He spoke to almost every member of the Obama administration, including the President. He quotes memos no one else has published. He gives you scenes that no one else has managed to capture." Ezra Klein, The New York Review of Books
Review
"The book of the week, maybe the book of the month, is Ron Suskind's Confidence Men....A detailed narrative of the Administration's response-sometimes frantic, sometimes sluggish, sometimes both-to the financial and economic catastrophe it inherited, as experienced from the inside." Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker
Review
"My Book of the Year. A narrative tour de force....Journalism like this is all too rare in an age in which reporters trade their critical faculties for access. And it's even rarer that skeptical reporting is turned into something lasting." David Granger, Esquire
Review
"This inside account of the Obama economic team contains enough damning on-the-record quotes to give it the ring of truth despite White House efforts to discredit the narrative of infighting and missed opportunities. Read it and weep. It reminds me of the post-Iraq invasion books that documented a similar failure to rise to the enormity of the problem, whether the insurgency was in Iraq or on Wall Street." Eleanor Clift, Newsweek
Review
"Savvy and informative....The most ambitious treatment of this period yet....Suskind's book often reads like Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest. But the quagmire isn't a neo-Vietnam like Afghanistan — it's the economy." Frank Rich, New York magazine
Review
"A searing new book....Suskind has a flair for taking material he's harvested to create narratives with a novelistic sense of drama." Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Synopsis
Acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind, author of the New York Times bestselling The Way of the World, The One Percent Doctrine, and The Price of Loyalty, gives an explosive inside account of an Obama White House overwhelmed by the global financial crisis and the political and economic consequences still being felt today. Readers of Michael Lewiss The Big Short, John Heilemann and Mark Halperins Game Change, and Andrew Ross Sorkins Too Big to Fail will be riveted by Suskinds illuminating, in-depth investigation of the financial meltdown. Rooted in hundreds of hours of interviews with key members of the Obama administration, including the President himself, Suskinds exposé offers an eyewitness account of the most momentous events in the history of global finance.
About the Author
Ron Suskind is the author of The Way of the World, The One Percent Doctrine, The Price of Loyalty, and A Hope in the Unseen. From 1993 to 2000 he was the senior national affairs writer for The Wall Street Journal, where he won a Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Washington, D.C.