num_pages: 464
description: At a time when most Americans assume that their presidents lie to them, no book could be more essential than bestselling author Eric Alterman’s devastating analysis of the costs of executive duplicity. One of the best-known left-of-center journalist-historians in America, Alterman argues that those costs are not merely moral but practical. As examples, he uses four key lies told by presidents in the postwar era. From FDR at Yalta to LBJ in Vietnam, and from JFK in Cuba to Ronald Reagan in Central America, Alterman shows how attempts to mislead the American people ended up haunting their authors and dooming the very policies they were meant to advance. Closing with an examination of the Bush deceptions in Iraq, When Presidents Lie is history at its most compelling.
language: English
title: When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences
titlecomplete: When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences
genres: History, Presidents, American History, Politics, Political Science, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 144
publisher: Penguin Books