How Obama Won the White House

Race of a Lifetime

The most exciting political book of recent years. Election reporting will never be the same again

Welcome to the meat-grinder, flash-incinerator race to be the 44th President of the United States

Incendiary, intriguing, nuanced, compelling. A fantastically detailed and gossipy affair

A spicy smorgasbord of observations, revelations and allegation. Leaves the reader with a vivid, visceral sense of the campaign and a keen understanding of the paradoxes and contingencies of history

Consistently fascinating... every bit as good as Theordore White's The Making of a President

Astounding, astonishing. Sleazy, personal, intrusive, shocking - and terribly compulsive. A thoroughly researched, well-paced and very amusing read. High-quality political porn

Great fun to read. A wealth of insight. Real fly-on-the-wall journalism, where the authors claim to know not just what people said, but what they were thinking

Compulsively readable. You can't put it down

John Heilemann and Mark Halperin are two of the most acclaimed political reporters in the US, with close access to the candidates and their teams. Heilemann is the political columnist at New York magazine. He is a National Magazine Award finalist and a former staff writer for the New Yorker, the Economist, and Wired. Halperin is editor-at-large and senior political analyst for Time, founding editor of The Page, and former political director of ABC News.

The runaway number one bestseller. The book that set Washington ablaze. The new non-fiction classic. 
Forget everything you think you know about the making of the most powerful man on the planet. Obama's triumph was not inevitable: it was the end product of a brilliant, crazy, unique political campaign. 
Race of a Lifetime is the gripping inside story of those thrilling months, from the collapsing House of Clinton to the erratic John McCain and the bewildering Sarah Palin. 
Brimming with exclusive revelations, this compulsively readable book lays bare the characters of the candidates, warts and all, and charts the true path to the White House. It's a tour de force: the shocking, funny, and definitive account of the campaign of a lifetime.

John Heilemann

Mark Halperin

An energetic and entertaining account of the knives-out behind-the-scenes living during the world’s most hard-fought election

Full of page turning details … translates insider politics for mass-market readers

The authors ability to get inside the campaigns and dramatise them make the book essential reading for those addicted to US politics

The book testifies to its authors’ energetic legwork and insider access ... creating a novelistic narrative that provides a you-are-there immediacy

‘What am I supposed to do when he starts spewing his bullshit?’ Barack Obama preparing for his first debate with Mitt Romney 
 
 
In their runaway bestseller Game Change / Race of a Lifetime, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann captured the full drama of Barack Obama’s improbable, dazzling victory over the Clintons, John McCain and Sarah Palin. With the same masterly reporting, unparalleled access, and narrative skill, Double Down picks up the story in the Oval Office, where the president is beset by crises both inherited and unforeseen – facing defiance from his political foes, disenchantment from voters, disdain from the nation’s powerful finance figures and dysfunction within the West Wing. As 2012 looms, leaders of the Republican Party, salivating over Obama’s political fragility, see a chance to wrestle back control of the White House – and the country. 
 
So how did the Republicans screw it up? How did Obama survive the onslaught and defy the predictions of a one-term presidency? Double Down follows the gaudy carnival of Republican contenders – ambitious and flawed, famous and infamous, charismatic and cartoonish – as Mitt Romney, the straitlaced, can-do, gaffe-prone multimillionaire from Massachusetts, scraped and scratched his way to the nomination, while Obama is seen storming out of a White House meeting with his high command after accusing them of betrayal, and gradually transforming a tense détente with Bill Clinton into political gold. 
 
Double Down takes you into back rooms and closed-door meetings, laying bare the secret history of the 2012 campaign in a panoramic account of an election that was as hard fought as it was lastingly consequential.

John Heilemann

Praise for Double Down

Explosive

Compelling

An energetic and entertaining account of the knives-out behind-the-scenes living during the world’s most hard-fought election

Explosive

Compelling

An energetic and entertaining account of the knives-out behind-the-scenes living during the world’s most hard-fought election

Explosive

Compelling

An energetic and entertaining account of the knives-out behind-the-scenes living during the world’s most hard-fought election

Books by John Heilemann

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