Bob Woodward
Author of PLAN OF ATTACK, THE COMMANDERS and OBAMA'S WARS
Book Recommendations:
Recommended by Bob Woodward
“Karl has a reporter’s eye and ear for the truth—all carefully rendered here.” (from Amazon)
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "The most important thing that has been written to date about what is in front of the American people in the next presidential election." —Nicolle Wallace An extraordinary view into the politics of our times, Tired of Winning explores how Donald Trump remade the Republican Party in his own image—and the wreckage he’s left in his wake. Packed with new reporting, Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party tracks Trump’s improbable journey from disgraced and defeated former president to the dominant force, yet again, in the Republican Party. From his exile in Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump has become more extreme, vengeful, and divorced from reality than he was on January 6, 2021. His meddling damaged the GOP’s electoral prospects for third consecutive election in 2022. His legal troubles are mounting. Yet he re-emerged as the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Jonathan Karl has known Donald Trump since his days as a New York Post reporter in the 1990s, and he covered every day of Trump’s administration as ABC News’s chief White House correspondent. No one is in a better position to detail the former president’s quest for retribution and provide a glimpse at what the GOP would be signing up for if it once again chooses him as its standard bearer. In 1964, Ronald Reagan told Americans it was “a time for choosing.” Sixty years later, Republicans have their own choice to make: Are they tired of winning?
Recommended by Bob Woodward
“Brilliant, dedicated reporting by a journalist who goes to ground to get the truth. A sad, real tale about this war, America and the brave warriors who live -- and die -- at the point of the spear.” (from Amazon)
Jake Tapper(you?)
Jake Tapper(you?)
The basis of the 2020 film starring Orlando Bloom and Scott Eastwood, The Outpost is the heartbreaking and inspiring story of one of America's deadliest battles during the war in Afghanistan, acclaimed by critics everywhere as a classic. At 5:58 AM on October 3rd, 2009, Combat Outpost Keating, located in frighteningly vulnerable terrain in Afghanistan just 14 miles from the Pakistani border, was viciously attacked. Though the 53 Americans there prevailed against nearly 400 Taliban fighters, their casualties made it the deadliest fight of the war for the U.S. that year. Four months after the battle, a Pentagon review revealed that there was no reason for the troops at Keating to have been there in the first place. In The Outpost, Jake Tapper gives us the powerful saga of COP Keating, from its establishment to eventual destruction, introducing us to an unforgettable cast of soldiers and their families, and to a place and war that has remained profoundly distant to most Americans. A runaway bestseller, it makes a savage war real, and American courage manifest. "The Outpost is a mind-boggling, all-too-true story of heroism, hubris, failed strategy, and heartbreaking sacrifice. If you want to understand how the war in Afghanistan went off the rails, you need to read this book." --Jon Krakauer
Recommended by Bob Woodward
“Belongs with the best of a rising group of Washington reporters.” (from Amazon)
Michael C. Bender(you?)
Michael C. Bender(you?)
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! Michael C. Bender, senior White House reporter for the Wall Street Journal, presents a deeply reported account of the 2020 presidential campaign that details how Donald J. Trump became the first incumbent in three decades to lose reelection—and the only one whose defeat culminated in a violent insurrection. Beginning with President Trump’s first impeachment and ending with his second, FRANKLY, WE DID WIN THIS ELECTION chronicles the inside-the-room deliberations between Trump and his campaign team as they opened 2020 with a sleek political operation built to harness a surge of momentum from a bullish economy, a unified Republican Party, and a string of domestic and foreign policy successes—only to watch everything unravel when fortunes suddenly turned. With first-rate sourcing cultivated from five years of covering Trump in the White House and both of his campaigns, Bender brings readers inside the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One, and into the front row of the movement’s signature mega-rallies for the story of an epic election-year convergence of COVID, economic collapse, and civil rights upheaval—and an unorthodox president’s attempt to battle it all. Fresh interviews with Trump, key campaign advisers, and senior administration officials are paired with an exclusive collection of internal campaign memos, emails, and text messages for scores of never-before-reported details about the campaign. FRANKLY, WE DID WIN THIS ELECTION is the inside story of how Trump lost, and the definitive account of his final year in office that draws a straight line from the president’s repeated insistence that he would never lose to the deadly storming of the U.S. Capitol that imperiled one of his most loyal lieutenants—his own vice president.
Recommended by Bob Woodward
“The foremost intelligence and policy expert on Afghanistan and Pakistan has produced a vital and concise history of America’s first engagement in that pivotal part of the world that is still President Obama’s war today. This book is both cogent history and dramatic lesson.” (from Amazon)
In February 1989, the CIA's chief in Islamabad famously cabled headquarters a simple "We Won." It was an understated coda to the most successful covert intelligence operation in American history. In "What We Won," CIA and National Security Council veteran Bruce Riedel tells the story of America's secret war in Afghanistan and the defeat of the Soviet 40th Red Army in the war that proved to be the final battle of the cold war. He seeks to answer one simple question --why did this intelligence operation succeed so brilliantly? Riedel has the vantage point few others can He was ensconced in the CIA's Operations Center when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979. The invasion took the intelligence community by surprise. But the response, initiated by Jimmy Carter and accelerated by Ronald Reagan, was a masterful intelligence enterprise. Many books have been written about intelligence failures --from Pearl Harbor to 9/11. Much less has been written about how and why intelligence operations succeed. The answer is complex. It involves both the weaknesses and mistakes of America's enemies, as well as good judgment and strengths of the United States. Riedel introduces and explores the complex personalities pitted in the war --the Afghan communists, the Russians, the Afghan mujahedin, the Saudis, and the Pakistanis. And then there are the Americans --in this war, no Americans fought on the battlefield. The CIA did not send officers into Afghanistan to fight or even to train. In 1989, victory for the American side of the cold war seemed complete. Now we can see that a new era was also beginning in the Afghan war in the 1980s, the era of the global jihad. This book examines the lessons we can learn from this intelligence operation for the future and makes some observations on what came next in Afghanistan --and what is likely yet to come.