num_pages: 1047
description: What happens when a man sacrifices privacy for power? What drives a politician to risk the ruin of his family, his marriage, his children, for the sake of ambition? Why can't a candidate ever explain himself to the electorate, communicate what he dreams about or what he wants? Why can't someone attempting to become the planet's most powerful official ever fulfill his own needs or desires?In 1986, Richard Ben Cramer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, embarked on a reportorial enterprise without parallel. He would explore the lives of the candidates who would run for president in 1988 and try to discover what convinced them they could lead the United States of America. In  What It Takes, Cramer answers the above questions about six of the 1988 contenders--including George Herbert Walker Bush. He sets a new standard for research and daring, and does for politicians what Tom Wolfe did for astronauts in The Right Stuff.Not a book about politics or the intricacies of campaigns, What It Takes uses novelistic detail to provide the most startlingly intimate glimpse of the American heart on the way to the White House.A bona-fide American epic--What It Takes is the most extraordinary book ever written about our political culture.
language: English
title: What It Takes: The Way to the White House
titlecomplete: What It Takes: The Way to the White House
characters: George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis, Joe Biden, Gary Hart, Dick Gephardt
genres: Biography, The United States Of America, Presidents, Political Science, Politics, History, Journalism, American, American History, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 2835
publisher: Random House