A staff writer and editor at the New Yorker
, Hertzberg (Politics
) paints a triptych of the 2008 presidential campaign, opening with “The Wreckage,” mostly Bush's second term (September 10, 2004–June 29, 2007) through “The Marathon” of the primaries (August 10, 2007–June 5, 2008), and closing with “The Sprint” to the presidency (June 13, 2008–November 7, 2008). Fearlessly liberal and passionately partisan (“I've followed the Obama phenomenon with the tracks of my tears”), Hertzberg's book is a “real-time, contemporaneous record” of the last days of the Bush administration and its “crimes and misdemeanors that have inflicted unprecedented disgrace on our country's moral and political standing” as well as a blow-by blow of the campaign, with juicy analysis of the diversionary role played by political pundits. Readers similarly enraptured with the president's “political magic” will bask in the book's informative and witty discussion; those who don't share the author's “Obamaphilia” might find this an effusive and imbalanced rehashing of recent history. (Nov.)
