Bob Woodward
Bob Woodward is an associate editor at The Washington Post, where he has worked for more than 50 years. He has shared in two Pulitzer Prizes, one for his Watergate coverage and the other for coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He has authored 21 bestselling books, 15 of which have been #1 New York Times bestsellers.
All Books By Bob Woodward
All the President’s Men
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrator: Richard Poe
- Length: 13 hours 34 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2012
- Language: English
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4.17(45520 ratings)
50th Anniversary Edition–With a new foreword on what Watergate means today.
“The work that brought down a presidency…perhaps the most influential piece of journalism in history” (Time)–from the #1 New York Times bestselling authors of The Final Days.
The most devastating political detective story of the century: two Washington Post reporters, whose brilliant, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation smashed the Watergate scandal wide open, tell the behind-the-scenes drama the way it really happened.
One of Time magazine’s All-Time 100 Best Nonfiction Books, this is the book that changed America. Published just months before President Nixon’s resignation, All the President’s Men revealed the full scope of the scandal and introduced for the first time the mysterious “Deep Throat.” Beginning with the story of a simple burglary at Democratic headquarters and then continuing through headline after headline, Bernstein and Woodward deliver a riveting firsthand account of their reporting. Their explosive reports won a Pulitzer Prize for The Washington Post, toppled the president, and have since inspired generations of reporters.
All the President’s Men is a riveting detective story, capturing the exhilarating rush of the biggest presidential scandal in US history as it unfolded in real time.
Bush at War
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrator: James Naughton
- Length: 6 hours 49 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2002
- Language: English
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3.51(3434 ratings)
With his unmatched investigative skill, Bob Woodward tells the behind-the-scenes story of how President George W. Bush and his top national security advisers, after the initial shock of the September 11 attacks, led the nation to war.
Extensive quotations from the secret deliberations of the National Security Council – — and firsthand revelations of the private thoughts, concerns and fears of the president and his war cabinet – — make Bush at War an unprecedented chronicle of a modern presidency in time of grave crisis.
Based on interviews with more than a hundred sources and four hours of exclusive interviews with the president, Bush at War reveals Bush’s sweeping, almost grandiose, vision for remaking the world. “I’m not a textbook player, I’m a gut player,” the president said.
Woodward’s virtual wiretap into the White House Situation Room reveals a stunning group portrait of an untested president and his advisers, three of whom might themselves have made it to the presidency. In Bush at War, Bob Woodward once again delivers a reporting tour de force.
Fear
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrator: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 24 hours 40 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2018
- Language: English
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3.87(45825 ratings)
OVER 2 MILLION COPIES SOLD
RUNAWAY #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
SENSATIONAL #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
“Explosive.”–The Washington Post
“Devastating.”–The New Yorker
“Unprecedented.”–CNN
“Great reporting…astute.”–Hugh Hewitt
THE INSIDE STORY ON PRESIDENT TRUMP, AS ONLY BOB WOODWARD CAN TELL IT
With authoritative reporting honed through nine presidencies, author Bob Woodward reveals in unprecedented detail the harrowing life inside President Donald Trump’s White House and precisely how he makes decisions on major foreign and domestic policies.
Fear is the most intimate portrait of a sitting president ever published during the president’s first years in office. The focus is on the explosive debates and the decision-making in the Oval Office, the Situation Room, Air Force One and the White House residence.
Woodward draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand sources, meeting notes, personal diaries, files and documents. Often with day-by-day details, dialogue and documentation, Fear tracks key foreign issues from North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East, NATO, China and Russia. It reports in-depth on Trump’s key domestic issues particularly trade and tariff disputes, immigration, tax legislation, the Paris Climate Accord and the racial violence in Charlottesville in 2017.
Fear presents vivid details of the negotiations between Trump’s attorneys and Robert Mueller, the special counsel in the Russia investigation, laying out for the first time the meeting-by-meeting discussions and strategies. It discloses how senior Trump White House officials joined together to steal draft orders from the president’s Oval Office desk so he would not issue directives that would jeopardize top secret intelligence operations.
“It was no less than an administrative coup d’etat,” Woodward writes, “a nervous breakdown of the executive power of the most powerful country in the world.”
Maestro
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrator: James Naughton
- Length: 5 hours 22 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2000
- Language: English
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3.38(686 ratings)
Perhaps the last Washington secret is how the Federal Reserve and its enigmatic chairman, Alan Greenspan, operate. What do they do? Why precisely do they do it? Who is Greenspan? How does he think? What is the basis for his decisions? Why is he so powerful? What kind of relationships has he had with Reagan, Bush, and Clinton — presidents during the 13 years he has been Fed chairman?
The Greenspan years, 1987 to 2000, are presented here as a gripping, intimate narrative, a remarkable portrait of how one man has become the symbol of American economic preeminence.
Maestro reveals a fascinating intellectual journey. Greenspan, and old-school anti-inflation hawk of the traditional economy, was among the first to realize the potential in the modern, high-productivity new economy — the foundation of the current American boom.
Reappointed by Clinton in 2000 for another four-year term, Greenspan is slated to serve as Fed chairman until 2004. He is not only a major figure in the world’s economic past, but is central to its future.
Obama’s Wars
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrator: Boyd Gaines
- Length: 15 hours 37 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2010
- Language: English
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3.79(7240 ratings)
2011 Audie Award Finalist for Nonfiction
In Obama’s Wars, Bob Woodward provides the most intimate and sweeping portrait yet of the young president as commander in chief. Drawing on internal memos, classified documents, meeting notes and hundreds of hours of interviews with most of the key players, including the president, Woodward tells the inside story of Obama making the critical decisions on the Afghanistan War, the secret campaign in Pakistan and the worldwide fight against terrorism.
At the core of Obama’s Wars is the unsettled division between the civilian leadership in the White House and the United States military as the president is thwarted in his efforts to craft an exit plan for the Afghanistan War.
“So what’s my option?” the president asked his war cabinet, seeking alternatives to the Afghanistan commander’s request for 40,000 more troops in late 2009. “You have essentially given me one option…It’s unacceptable.”
“Well,” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates finally said, “Mr. President, I think we owe you that option.”
It never came. An untamed Vice President Joe Biden pushes relentlessly to limit the military mission and avoid another Vietnam. The vice president frantically sent half a dozen handwritten memos by secure fax to Obama on the eve of the final troop decision.
President Obama’s ordering a surge of 30,000 troops and pledging to start withdrawing U.S. forces by July 2011 did not end the skirmishing.
General David Petraeus, the new Afghanistan commander, thinks time can be added to the clock if he shows progress. “I don’t think you win this war,” Petraeus said privately. “This is the kind of fight we’re in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids’ lives.”
Hovering over this debate is the possibility of another terrorist attack in the United States. The White House led a secret exercise showing how unprepared the government is if terrorists set off a nuclear bomb in an American city–which Obama told Woodward is at the top of the list of what he worries about all the time.
Verbatim quotes from secret debates and White House strategy sessions–and firsthand accounts of the thoughts and concerns of the president, his war council and his generals–reveal a government in conflict, often consumed with nasty infighting and fundamental disputes.
Woodward has discovered how the Obama White House really works, showing that even more tough decisions lie ahead for the cerebral and engaged president.
Obama’s Wars offers the reader a stunning, you-are-there account of the president, his White House aides, military leaders, diplomats and intelligence chiefs in this time of turmoil and danger.
Obama’s Wars
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrator: Boyd Gaines
- Length: 15 hours 37 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2010
- Language: English
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3.79(7240 ratings)
2011 Audie Award Finalist for Nonfiction
In Obama’s Wars, Bob Woodward provides the most intimate and sweeping portrait yet of the young president as commander in chief. Drawing on internal memos, classified documents, meeting notes and hundreds of hours of interviews with most of the key players, including the president, Woodward tells the inside story of Obama making the critical decisions on the Afghanistan War, the secret campaign in Pakistan and the worldwide fight against terrorism.
At the core of Obama’s Wars is the unsettled division between the civilian leadership in the White House and the United States military as the president is thwarted in his efforts to craft an exit plan for the Afghanistan War.
“So what’s my option?” the president asked his war cabinet, seeking alternatives to the Afghanistan commander’s request for 40,000 more troops in late 2009. “You have essentially given me one option…It’s unacceptable.”
“Well,” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates finally said, “Mr. President, I think we owe you that option.”
It never came. An untamed Vice President Joe Biden pushes relentlessly to limit the military mission and avoid another Vietnam. The vice president frantically sent half a dozen handwritten memos by secure fax to Obama on the eve of the final troop decision.
President Obama’s ordering a surge of 30,000 troops and pledging to start withdrawing U.S. forces by July 2011 did not end the skirmishing.
General David Petraeus, the new Afghanistan commander, thinks time can be added to the clock if he shows progress. “I don’t think you win this war,” Petraeus said privately. “This is the kind of fight we’re in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids’ lives.”
Hovering over this debate is the possibility of another terrorist attack in the United States. The White House led a secret exercise showing how unprepared the government is if terrorists set off a nuclear bomb in an American city–which Obama told Woodward is at the top of the list of what he worries about all the time.
Verbatim quotes from secret debates and White House strategy sessions–and firsthand accounts of the thoughts and concerns of the president, his war council and his generals–reveal a government in conflict, often consumed with nasty infighting and fundamental disputes.
Woodward has discovered how the Obama White House really works, showing that even more tough decisions lie ahead for the cerebral and engaged president.
Obama’s Wars offers the reader a stunning, you-are-there account of the president, his White House aides, military leaders, diplomats and intelligence chiefs in this time of turmoil and danger.
Peril
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrator: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 13 hours 35 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
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3.71(14 ratings)
The transition from President Donald J. Trump to President Joseph R. Biden Jr. stands as one of the most dangerous periods in American history.
But as #1 internationally bestselling author Bob Woodward and acclaimed reporter Robert Costa reveal for the first time, it was far more than just a domestic political crisis. Woodward and Costa interviewed more than 200 people at the center of the turmoil, resulting in more than 6,000 pages of transcripts–and a spellbinding and definitive portrait of a nation on the brink.
This classic study of Washington takes readers deep inside the Trump White House, the Biden White House, the 2020 campaign, and the Pentagon and Congress, with eyewitness accounts of what really happened. Intimate scenes are supplemented with never-before-seen material from secret orders, transcripts of confidential calls, diaries, emails, meeting notes and other personal and government records, making Peril an unparalleled history. It is also the first inside look at Biden’s presidency as he began his presidency facing the challenges of a lifetime: the continuing deadly pandemic and millions of Americans facing soul-crushing economic pain, all the while navigating a bitter and disabling partisan divide, a world rife with threats, and the hovering, dark shadow of the former president.
Plan of Attack
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrator: Boyd Gaines
- Length: 6 hours 39 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2004
- Language: English
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3.68(4824 ratings)
Plan of Attack is the definitive account of how and why President George W. Bush, his war council, and allies launched a preemptive attack to topple Saddam Hussein and occupy Iraq. Bob Woodward’s latest landmark account of Washington decision making provides an original, authoritative narrative of behind-the-scenes maneuvering, examining the causes and consequences of the most controversial war since Vietnam.
Based on interviews with 75 key participants and more than three-and-a half hours of exclusive interviews with President Bush, Plan of Attack is part presidential history charting the decisions made during 16 critical months; part military history; and part a harrowing spy story as the CIA dispatches a covert paramilitary team into northern Iraq six months before the start of the war.
What emerges are astonishingly intimate portraits: President Bush in war cabinet meetings and in private conversation; Dick Cheney, the focused and driven vice president; Colin Powell, the conflicted and cautious secretary of state; Donald Rumsfeld, the controlling war technocrat; George Tenet, the activist CIA director; Tommy Franks, the profane and demanding general; Condoleezza Rice, the ever-present referee and national security adviser; Karl Rove, the hands-on political strategist; other key members of the White House staff and congressional leadership; and foreign leaders ranging from British Prime Minister Blair to Russian President Putin.
Plan of Attack provides new details on the intelligence assessments of Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction and the planning for the war’s aftermath.
Rage
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrator: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 26 hours 32 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2020
- Language: English
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4.18(15577 ratings)
Rage is an unprecedented and intimate tour de force of new reporting on the Trump presidency facing a global pandemic, economic disaster and racial unrest.
Woodward, the #1 international bestselling author of Fear: Trump in the White House, has uncovered the precise moment the president was warned that the Covid-19 epidemic would be the biggest national security threat to his presidency. In dramatic detail, Woodward takes readers into the Oval Office as Trump’s head pops up when he is told in January 2020 that the pandemic could reach the scale of the 1918 Spanish Flu that killed 675,000 Americans.
In 17 on-the-record interviews with Woodward over seven volatile months–an utterly vivid window into Trump’s mind–the president provides a self-portrait that is part denial and part combative interchange mixed with surprising moments of doubt as he glimpses the perils in the presidency and what he calls the “dynamite behind every door.”
At key decision points, Rage shows how Trump’s responses to the crises of 2020 were rooted in the instincts, habits and style he developed during his first three years as president.
Revisiting the earliest days of the Trump presidency, Rage reveals how Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats struggled to keep the country safe as the president dismantled any semblance of collegial national security decision making.
Rage draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand witnesses as well as participants’ notes, emails, diaries, calendars and confidential documents.
Woodward obtained 25 never-seen personal letters exchanged between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who describes the bond between the two leaders as out of a “fantasy film.”
Trump insists to Woodward he will triumph over Covid-19 and the economic calamity. “Don’t worry about it, Bob. Okay?” Trump told the author in July. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll get to do another book. You’ll find I was right.”
Includes excerpts from Bob Woodward’s interviews with President Donald J. Trump for Rage.
State of Denial
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrator: Boyd Gaines
- Length: 7 hours 16 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2006
- Language: English
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3.8(3650 ratings)
THE DETAILED, INSIDE STORY OF A WAR-TORN WHITE HOUSE
Bob Woodward examines how the Bush administration avoided telling the truth about Iraq to the public, to the Congress, and often to themselves in State of Denial. Woodward’s third book on President Bush is a sweeping narrative from the first days George W. Bush thought seriously about running for president, through the recruitment of his national security team, the war in Afghanistan, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the struggle for political survival in the second term.
State of Denial answers the core questions: What happened after the invasion of Iraq? Why? How does Bush make decisions and manage the war that he chose to define his presidency? And, is there an achievable plan for victory? After more than three decades of reporting on national security decision making, including his two #1 national bestsellers on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush at War and Plan of Attack, Woodward provides the fullest account, and explanation, of the road Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and the White House staff have walked.
The Brethren
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrator: Holter Graham
- Length: 20 hours 53 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2019
- Language: English
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4.13(4369 ratings)
The Brethren is the first detailed behind-the-scenes account of the Supreme Court in action.
Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong have pierced its secrecy to give us an unprecedented view of the Chief and Associate Justices–maneuvering, arguing, politicking, compromising, and making decisions that affect every major area of American life.
The Final Days
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrator: Holter Graham
- Length: 19 hours 18 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2018
- Language: English
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4.15(5112 ratings)
“An extraordinary work of reportage on the epic political story of our time” (Newsweek)–from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Pulitzer Prize-winning coauthors of All the President’s Men.
The Final Days is the #1 New York Times bestselling, classic, behind-the-scenes account of Richard Nixon’s dramatic last months as president. Moment by moment, Bernstein and Woodward portray the taut, post-Watergate White House as Nixon, his family, his staff, and many members of Congress strained desperately to prevent his inevitable resignation. This brilliant book reveals the ordeal of Nixon’s fall from office–one of the gravest crises in presidential history.
The Justices Behind Roe V. Wade
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrator: Holter Graham
- Length: 4 hours 35 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
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4.11(63 ratings)
A thrilling, behind-the-scenes account of the revolutionary Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling.
The Justices Behind Roe V. Wade offers a front-row seat to the inner workings of the Supreme Court that led to the monumental Roe v. Wade decision. Spanning from 1969 to 1972, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Bob Woodward and coauthor Scott Armstrong report on the masterful maneuvering and politicking that affected the court’s decisions and created obstacles for the landmark ruling. Abridged from the #1 bestseller The Brethren, this is an exquisite work of reporting on one of the most important rulings of the United States.
The Last of the President’s Men
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrator: Campbell Scott
- Length: 6 hours 9 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2015
- Language: English
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3.88(1822 ratings)
Bob Woodward exposes one of the final pieces of the Richard Nixon puzzle in this “intimate but disturbing portrayal of Nixon in the Oval Office” (The Washington Post).
“Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Bob Woodward returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency…Woodward re-creates detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men…a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour” (Kirkus Reviews). In The Last of the President’s Men, Woodward reveals the untold story based on forty-six hours of interviews with Butterfield, supported by thousands of documents–many of them original and not in the presidential archives and libraries–and uncovered new dimensions of Nixon’s secrets, obsessions, and deceptions.
“This volume…amplifies (rather than revises) the familiar, almost Miltonian portrait of the thirty-seventh president…as a brooding, duplicitous despot, obsessed with enemies and score-settling and not the least bit hesitant about lying to the public and breaking the law” (The New York Times). Today, The Last of the President’s Men could not be more timely and relevant as voters question how much do we know about those who are now seeking the presidency in 2016–what really drives them, how do they really make decisions, who do they surround themselves with, and what are their true political and personal values? This is “yet another fascinating gift to history by DC’s most relentless reporter” (Politico).
The Price of Politics
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrator: Boyd Gaines
- Length: 13 hours 44 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2012
- Language: English
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3.61(1946 ratings)
See how and why Washington is not functioning.
Bob Woodward’s freshly reported, thirty-five-page Afterword to his national bestseller, The Price of Politics, provides a detailed, often verbatim account of what happened in the dramatic “fiscal cliff” face-off at the end of 2012 between President Obama and the Republicans.
Now it’s happening again. In fall 2013, Washington faces a new round of budget and fiscal wars that could derail the American and global economies.
“We are primarily a blocking majority,” said Michael Sommers, Speaker John Boehner’s chief of staff, summarizing the House Republican position.
It was the land of no-compromise:
On health care cuts over ten years, Boehner suggested to Obama, you are $400 billion, I’m at $600 billion. “Can we split the difference here? Can we land at $500 billion?”
“Four hundred billion is it,” Obama replied. “I just can’t see how we go any further on that.”
After making $120 billion in other concessions, Obama pleaded with Boehner, “What is it about the politics?”
“My guys just aren’t there,” Boehner replied.
“We are $150 billion off, man. I don’t get it. There’s something I don’t get.”
The Price of Politics chronicles the inside story of how President Obama and the U.S. Congress tried, and failed, to restore the American economy and set it on a course to fiscal stability. Woodward pierces the secretive world of Washington policymaking once again, with a close-up story crafted from meeting notes, documents, working papers, and interviews with key players, including President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner. Woodward lays bare the broken relationship between President Obama and the Congress.
The Secret Man
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrator: Boyd Gaines
- Length: 5 hours 50 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2005
- Language: English
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3.77(1936 ratings)
In Washington, D.C., where little stays secret for long, the identity of Deep Throat — the mysterious source who helped Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein break open the Watergate scandal in 1972 — remained hidden for 33 years. Now, Woodward tells the story of his long, complex relationship with W. Mark Felt, the enigmatic former No. 2 man in the Federal Bureau of Investigation who helped end the presidency of Richard Nixon.
The Secret Man chronicles the story in intimate detail, from Woodward’s first, chance encounter with Felt in the Nixon White House, to their covert, middle-of-the-night meetings in an underground parking garage, to the aftermath of Watergate and decades beyond, until Felt finally stepped forward at age 91 to unmask himself as Deep Throat.
The Secret Man is an intense 33-year journey, providing a one-of-a-kind study of trust, deception, pressures, alliances, doubts and a lifetime of secrets. Woodward has spent more than three decades asking himself why Mark Felt became Deep Throat. Now the world can see what happened and why, bringing to a close one of the last chapters of Watergate.
The War Within
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrator: Boyd Gaines
- Length: 6 hours 25 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2008
- Language: English
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3.74(1585 ratings)
2009 Audie Award Finalist for the Judges’ Award
Bob Woodward once again pulls back the curtain on Washington to reveal the inner workings of a government at war in his fourth book on President George W. Bush.
The War Within provides an exhaustive account of the struggles of General David Petraeus, who takes over in Iraq during one of the bleakest and most violent periods of the war. It reveals how breakthroughs in military operations and surveillance account for much of the progress as violence in Iraq plummeted in the middle of 2007.
Woodward interviewed key players, obtained dozens of never-before-published documents, and had nearly three hours of exclusive interviews with President Bush. The result is a stunning, firsthand history of the years from mid-2006, when the White House realizes the Iraq strategy is not working, through the decision to surge another 30,000 U.S. troops in 2007, and into mid-2008, when the war becomes a fault line in the presidential election.
The War Within addresses head-on questions of leadership, not just in war but in how we are governed and the dangers of unwarranted secrecy.