Vice

Vice

Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency

Summary

The untold story of Dick Cheney: the most powerful yet most unpopular vice president in American history.

Cheney's relentless rise to political prominence over three decades happened almost by stealth. Veteran reporters Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein reveal the disturbing truth about the man who successfully co-opted executive control over the U.S. government, serving as the de facto 'shadow president' in one of the most controversial White House administrations in memory.

With unique access to numerous first-hand sources, this account provides startling revelations concerning the war on terror, Cheney’s relationship with the CIA and his involvement with Enron. Dubose and Bernstein explore Cheney’s ruthless manouevers and ambitious drive that consistently steered America to the right, an impact that can still be felt in American politics today.

Credited by Vanity Fair as one of the key influences behind Adam McKay’s Oscar-nominated film VICE, this utterly gripping exposé chronicles the hijacking of the American presidency and illustrates the arrogance of power as never before.

About the authors

Lou Dubose

Lou Dubose has covered Texas politics for twenty-five years. He is the co-author (with Molly Ivins) of two New York Times bestsellers, Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush and Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America. In 2003 he wrote (with Texas Monthly writer Jan Reid) The Hammer: Tom DeLay, God, Money, and the Rise of the Republican Congress (released in paperback as The Hammer Comes Down: The Nasty, Brutish and Shortened Political Life of Tom DeLay). He has also written a political biography of Karl Rove.

Texas Observer executive editor Jake Bernstein has chronicled stories from Washington, D.C., to the jungles of Central America. As a weekly reporter in Miami, he covered the 2000 Florida recount and the Elián González story. While working as a freelancer in Guatemala and El Salvador, he wrote about the destruction of the rain forest and the end of guerrilla insurgencies. In Texas, Bernstein's work on Tom DeLay's campaign-finance scandals has won multiple journalism awards.
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Jake Bernstein

Jake Bernstein was a senior reporter on the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists team that broke the Panama Papers story. In 2017, the project won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. Bernstein earned his first Pulitzer Prize in 2011 for National Reporting, for coverage of the financial crisis. He has written for The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Guardian, ProPublica,and Vice, and has appeared on the BBC, NBC, CNN, PBS, and NPR. He was the editor of The Texas Observer and is the coauthor of Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency.
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