
What It Takes
The Way to the White House
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Narrated by:
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Keith Sellon-Wright
About this listen
An American Iliad in the guise of contemporary political reportage, What It Takes penetrates the mystery at the heart of all presidential campaigns: How do presumably ordinary people acquire that mixture of ambition, stamina, and pure shamelessness that makes a true candidate?
As he recounts the frenzied course of the 1988 presidential race - and scours the psyches of contenders from George Bush and Robert Dole to Michael Dukakis and Gary Hart - Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Richard Ben Cramer comes up with the answers, in a book that is vast, exhaustively researched, exhilarating, and sometimes appalling in its revelations.
©1992 Richard Ben Cramer (P)2020 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Good historical perspective ~10 years out of date
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Every politician should read this
- By Bette Grace on 02-08-19
By: Jim Webb
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The Path to Power
- The Years of Lyndon Johnson
- By: Robert A. Caro
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 40 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the story of the rise to national power of a desperately poor young man from the Texas Hill Country. The Path to Power reveals in extraordinary detail the genesis of the almost superhuman drive, energy, and ambition that set LBJ apart. It follows him from the Hill Country to New Deal Washington, from his boyhood through the years of the Depression to his debut as Congressman, his heartbreaking defeat in his first race for the Senate, and his attainment, nonetheless, at age 31, of the national power for which he hungered.
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The Best of all Biographies
- By David C. Daggett on 12-14-13
By: Robert A. Caro
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The Loudest Voice in the Room
- How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News - and Divided a Country
- By: Gabriel Sherman
- Narrated by: Erik Singer
- Length: 17 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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When Rupert Murdoch enlisted Roger Ailes to launch a cable news network in 1996, American politics and media changed forever. With a remarkable level of detail and insight, Vanity Fair magazine reporter Gabriel Sherman puts Ailes’s unique genius on display, along with the outsize personalities - Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Megyn Kelly, Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, Glenn Beck, Mike Huckabee, Gretchen Carlson, Bill Shine, and others - who have helped Fox News play a defining role in the great social and political controversies of the past two decades.
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A Monumental Achievement
- By L. Kerr on 01-28-14
By: Gabriel Sherman
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Coming Apart
- The State of White America, 1960–2010
- By: Charles Murray
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anything we have ever known, focusing on whites as a way of driving home the fact that the trends he describes do not break along lines of race or ethnicity.
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Brilliant & Flawed
- By Douglas C. Bates on 05-15-12
By: Charles Murray
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Eisenhower in War and Peace
- By: Jean Edward Smith
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 28 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Author of the best-seller FDR, Jean Edward Smith is a master of the presidential biography. Setting his sights on Dwight D. Eisenhower, Smith delivers a rich account of Eisenhower’s life using previously untapped primary sources. From the military service in WWII that launched his career to the shrewd political decisions that kept America out of wars with the Soviet Union and China, Smith reveals a man who never faltered in his dedication to serving America, whether in times of war or peace.
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Good, although biased, biography
- By Mike From Mesa on 10-15-12
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Blackouts
- A Novel
- By: Justin Torres
- Narrated by: Ozzie Rodriguez, Torian Brackett
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly, but who has haunted the edges of his life. Juan Gay—playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized—has a project to pass along. It is inspired by a true artifact of a book, Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, which contains stories collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried.
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meh
- By Thomas E Flint on 10-28-24
By: Justin Torres
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Playing to Win
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Michael Lewis
- Length: 2 hrs and 13 mins
- Original Recording
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All over America, families are investing blood, sweat, tears, and retirement savings in their children’s sports careers, all with the ultimate goal of…what exactly? A college scholarship? A professional contract? Simply the taste of victory? Through the lens of the highly competitive world of girls’ softball, Lewis reveals the youth sports industrial complex that has arisen to aggressively monetize after-school pastimes.
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Great Listen
- By Brian Bray on 10-15-20
By: Michael Lewis
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The Wolves of K Street
- The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government
- By: Brody Mullins, Luke Mullins
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 19 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 1970s, Washington’s center of power began to shift away from elected officials in big marble buildings to a handful of savvy, handsomely paid operators who didn’t answer to any fixed constituency. The cigar-chomping son of an influential congressman, an illustrious political fixer with a weakness for modern art, a Watergate-era dirty trickster, the city’s favorite cocktail party host—these were the sort of men who now ran Washington.
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A cast of characters
- By Judy L. Bourget MD Inc. on 06-15-24
By: Brody Mullins, and others
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Why England Slept
- By: John F. Kennedy, Henry R. Luce
- Narrated by: AJ Crozby
- Length: 4 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1938, British statesman and soon-to-be Prime Minister Winston Churchill published his book Arms and the Covenant. It was published three months later in the US under the title While England Slept. In 1940, future President John F. Kennedy, who was a senior at Harvard University, wrote his dissertation, criticizing Churchill’s harsh blame of England’s leaders, even drawing comparisons between England and the United States for its own similar lack of preparedness against the totalitarian Nazi regime. Responding to Churchill's title, Kennedy named his book, Why England Slept.
By: John F. Kennedy, and others
What listeners say about What It Takes
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- RZ
- 08-11-20
Great book and an AMAZING performance.
Great book and an AMAZING performance. Truly a Herculean feat to manage this many characters and voices as ably as Sellon-Wright did.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Picasso Tucasso
- 10-01-23
Over the top narration
Because of the narration, I'm not sure if I liked the book all that much. 54 hours and the narration is SLOW! Worse than that, though, is how the narrator tries to imitate (badly) different speakers. Fake laughs, accents, gender tones, etc. Just read it straight, like we do in our heads, and the overall experience would be MUCH better. It takes someone with some very good acting chops to pull that sort of narration off (e.g. Ray Porter in Michael Herr's "Dispatches"). I've heard worse than this, but not much worse . . . especially for such a long book. I listened to the whole thing, and many times found it excruciating.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Sam
- 07-05-21
Political classic
This is a must read/listen for any political or historical enthusiast! A
Phenomenal deep dive into the 1988 presidential election.
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- Matt B
- 12-21-21
A world class political saga
What an epic undertaking. "What it Takes" is an unrivaled chronicle of the 1988 presidential election and the 6 prominent candidates that take part in it. You will learn the stories of every one of those men with excruciating detail from childhood through to the months following the general election. This text has unparalleled insight into the political machines each candidate wielded in their careers, before and during the 1988 cycle. Truly a massive undertaking executed with precision and care. I was sad to hear the end credits, so immersed in the storytelling I was. I hope you enjoy it too.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-22-24
The detail is insane
Robert Caro is the gold standard and RBC might have surpassed. One of, if not the, best political non-fiction I’ve ever read.
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- Anonymous
- 06-13-21
One of my absolute favorite books and readers
Truly a joy to listen to. Great insights into the candidates and process abound throughout.
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- Paula Lynch
- 10-03-23
Fascinating Read
Entertaining book about the 1988 primaries and development of 6 of the main contenders told at length
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- Hebern
- 09-11-20
Great political book
It took more than a month, but I finally finished the longest book I’ve listened to thus far, clocking in at more than 54 hours. This was a detailed account of the primary season for the 1988 presidential election. It followed six candidates: George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, Mike Dukakis, Gary Hart, Joe Biden and Richard Gephardt. The title of the book refers to two things. What it takes to BE President and what it takes to BECOME President. For the second, it is the good and bad of what it takes.
The author at the outset apologized/explained why Jesse Jackson was not one of the featured candidates. He said that Jackson simply wouldn’t slow down enough to grant him the access he needed. He didn’t want to write about these men from simply research. He wanted access so that he could present much of the material from the point of view of each. And in fact, that is a feature of the book. There isn’t really a political bias to the book. The bias is that it is subtly biased toward each man when the discussion is about that man. At least initially. In the extensive biographies of each man it shows that each had what it takes to be President. However, deeper into the book in showing why 5 of the 6 didn’t have what it takes to become President, flaws are explored.
It is a long book, but was of great interest to me. At the time of the events depicted, I was a political science major at NC State. I was fortunate enough by that major and being at a large university to have a small connection with many of the people in the book which made what others may see as excessive detail, interesting trivia to me. I met Dukakis on NC State’s campus during primary season and shook hands with him. That fall, one of my Political Science professors gave me his tickets to a filming of Firing Line. There I was able to see up close and in person: William F. Buckley, Gary Hart, Jesse Jackson, George McGovern, Jack Kemp and Judge Robert Bork. I’ve always been very thankful for that professor giving me those tickets. It’s doubtful I’ll ever have an opportunity to attend something like that again.
I really enjoyed the book. It was very well done. I only have two small complaints. First, given the detail of the coverage on the primary it was a shame to have just a two hour summary of the general election. Second, I think the book would have been better if Jackson was substituted for Gephardt since Jackson was ultimately in the final two on the Democratic side. Plus, Jackson was historic as the first black candidate to really contend in a Presidential election. However, the author did explain the why on that.
As for the audio, it was excellent. The reader was a very good one for the subject matter. His imitation of Dole was really good, but surprisingly his imitation of Reagan was not given everyone used to “do” Reagan. Overall, he did a very good job with the MANY voices in the book.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Chris Corsini
- 05-20-21
Finally!
This was a notable absence for years from the audiobook catalogue. I am pleased to see the ivory tower eggheads finally came to their senses. A must listen for anyone who likes American politics.
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- reviewer
- 08-31-21
A classic
Probably the best book about the process of running for president. Especially worth reading today, because there is a lot about Joe Biden, much of it heartrending.
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