Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann, Mark Halperin

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From the Publisher

"This shit would be really interesting if we weren't in the middle of it." —Barack Obama, September 2008

In 2008, the presidential election became blockbuster entertainment. Everyone was watching as the race for the White House unfolded like something from the realm of fiction. The meteoric rise and historic triumph of Barack Obama. The shocking fall of the House of Clinton—and the improbable resurrection of Hillary as Obama's partner and America's face to the world. The mercurial performance of John McCain and the mesmerizing emergence of Sarah Palin.

Based on hundreds of interviews with the people who lived the story, Game Change is a reportorial tour de force that reads like a fast-paced novel. Character driven and dialogue rich, replete with extravagantly detailed scenes, this is the occasionally shocking, often hilarious, ultimately definitive account of the campaign of a lifetime.

The New York Times Book Review - Jacob Heilbrunn

Heilemann, a columnist for New York magazine, and Halperin, the senior political analyst for Time, have conducted hundreds of interviews to provide the inside story of the 2008 campaign, longer on vignettes and backstage gossip than on analysis. But if their racy account provides little context for Obama's rise, it vividly shows how character flaws large and small caused his opponents to self-destruct. The narrative also reinforces the familiar argument that a presidential campaign provides one important test of a candidate's ability to govern.

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

…a spicy smorgasbord of observations, revelations and allegations…Though this book focuses on personal matters, not policy concerns, and though some of what will be its most talked about passages fall into the realm of gossip and reflect the views of chatty and, in some cases, bitter, regretful or spin-conscious aides, the volume does leave the reader with a vivid, visceral sense of the campaign and a keen understanding of the paradoxes and contingencies of history.

The Washington Post - Alan Wolfe

…[Heilemann and Halperin] not only tell the story of the 2008 campaign in an engaging and readable way, they come up with some real reporting. Much of that reporting, it must be said, is of the gossipy sort, such as Harry Reid's by-now famous comment about black speech. Still, although I had some sense of the dimensions of the Palin disaster before reading this book, the authors' account of how she failed to prepare for her debate with Joe Biden is chilling…I doubt that any other book about the 2008 election will top this one in narrative drive.

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents