The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future

President Biden is a master of the kind of practical politicking that yields transformational results, according to this effusive rundown of his first two years in office. Atlantic journalist Foer (World Without Mind) credits Biden with “the most fertile legislative season in memory,” including the passage of the American Rescue Plan stimulus bill; a huge infrastructure bill; the CHIPS Act, which aims to reboot semiconductor manufacturing; and the Inflation Reduction Act, a clean energy milestone. Drawing on interviews with policymakers and writing in whip-smart, evocative prose, Foer presents a canny insider’s account of Washington, full of backroom wrangling and posturing. Biden presides in grand fashion, “nose-counting, horse-trading, and spreading a thick layer of flattery” to clinch deals, especially with his great antagonist, Sen. Joe Manchin, whom he handles with a mixture of jawboning—”Joe, if you don’t come along, you’re really fucking me,” growled Biden when Manchin balked at the American Rescue Plan—and incentives (after Manchin voted for the ARP, Foer reports, Biden appointed his wife to a paid post on the Appalachian Regional Commission). Foer sometimes lapses into hero worship, calling Biden “the West’s father figure” and “a man for his age.” Still, his portrait of “the old hack who could” enacting a vigorous and far-reaching agenda is a stimulating corrective to right-wing caricatures of Biden as an inert near-invalid. (Sept.)