Bush’s misadventures in Iraq

Head over to Salon.com to read my Q&A with chief White House correspondent Peter Baker about his new book, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, a history of the Bush administration that documents President Bush’s preoccupation with Iraq from his first weeks in office.

George Will is a lazy, partisan hack

This piece originally appeared in my column for Huffington Post on November 30, 2013. George Will proved once again in a recent column that he is perhaps the most intellectually dishonest “intellectual” in a city awash with intellectual dishonesty. Not content to make obvious arguments about the administration’s problems implementing the Affordable Care Act — nee Obamacare — Will […]

‘Moneyball’-ing election coverage

This piece originally appeared in my column for Huffington Post on November 27, 2013. There was an interesting discussion on Saturday’s “Up with Steve Kornacki” between Kornacki and John Sides, a political scientist who co-wrote The Gamble: Choice and Change in the 2012 Presidential Election, which takes the view that presidential elections are largely static stalemates that turn […]

Why readers love big bios

This is an excerpt of my recent Salon.com article about definitive biographies. Steve Jobs didn’t spend his life punching a clock; he was the creative force behind Pixar Animation, the Macintosh computer and the iPhone. His story and Walter Isaacson’s deft retelling of it were the reasons his Steve Jobs, published in 2011, has been a […]

JFK Transformed

This piece originally appeared in my column for Huffington Post on October 27, 2013. On the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, with bookstore shelves overflowing with reexaminations and conspiracy theories, John T. Shaw takes a look at an important but under-reported period of President Kennedy’s life in JFK in the Senate: Pathway to the Presidency. Shaw, a […]

‘Letters of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’

Andrew and Stephen C. Schlesinger discuss The Letters of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., a collection of their father’s letters to Harry Truman, Robert Kennedy and others, in a recent appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Here’s a summary of the book: The Letters of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. reveals the late historian’s unvarnished views on the great issues and […]

It’s Hard Up Here for the Rich

This review originally appeared in Daily Report. Americans are enamored with the wealthy. We take national pride in the rags-to-riches story, the mom-and-pop store that makes it big. We say things like “only in America” and call the United States a “land of opportunity.” We value the better mousetrap and laud its inventor with gobs […]

‘Wilson,’ Obama and Congress

This piece originally appeared in my column for Huffington Post on October 10, 2013. Here’s one tried and tested way for a president to deal with a difficult Congress: Go to your private office on Capitol Hill and stay there until a deal is done. Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States, lobbied Congress from […]

How is Obama legacy project going?

This piece originally appeared in my column for Huffington Post on July 8, 2013. Jonathan Alter said recently that the 2012 election was “the most consequential” of his lifetime. In his new book, The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies, Alter describes this more in terms of the non-election of Mitt Romney than the re-election of Barack Obama: Even if […]

Review: Politico e-books

This piece originally appeared in my column for Huffington Post on June 25, 2013. In the opening anecdote of Glenn Thrush and Jonathan Martin’s The End of the Line, their behind-the-scenes e-book about the last month of the 2012 presidential campaign, we join our regularly scheduled election already in progress: It was more than an hour after the […]