
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Good historical perspective ~10 years out of date
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Amusing Ourselves to Death
- Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
- By: Neil Postman
- Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach
- Length: 4 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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In this eloquent and persuasive book, Neil Postman examines the deep and broad effects of television culture on the manner in which we conduct our public affairs, and how "entertainment values" have corrupted the very way we think. As politics, news, religion, education, and commerce are given less and less expression in the form of the printed word, they are rapidly being reshaped to suit the requirements of television.
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Excellent Content Read at Warp Speed
- By chaoticmuse on 03-17-11
By: Neil Postman
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Poland 1939
- The Outbreak of World War II
- By: Roger Moorhouse
- Narrated by: Roger Moorhouse
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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For Americans, World War II began in December of 1941, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor; but for Poland, the war began on September 1, 1939, when Hitler's soldiers invaded, followed later that month by Stalin's Red Army. The conflict that followed saw the debut of many of the features that would come to define the later war-blitzkrieg, the targeting of civilians, ethnic cleansing, and indiscriminate aerial bombing-yet it is routinely overlooked by historians.
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Always Overlooked
- By C. G. Telcontar on 05-27-21
By: Roger Moorhouse
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2024
- How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America
- By: Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, Isaac Arnsdorf
- Length: 17 hrs
- Unabridged
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Award-winning reporters Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf bring us the definitive and explosive account of how Trump and his advisers overcame a dozen primary challengers, four indictments, two assassination attempts, and his own past mistakes to defeat the Democrats, and pave the way for a second term that would be far more aggressive and ruthless than the first.
By: Josh Dawsey, and others
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The Enlightenment
- The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790
- By: Ritchie Robertson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 40 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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This magisterial history - sure to become the definitive work on the subject - recasts the Enlightenment as a period not solely consumed with rationale and reason, but rather as a pursuit of practical means to achieve greater human happiness.
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The quickest 40 hour audio book I’ve listen to
- By Joey Caster on 04-02-21
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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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Original Sin
- President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again
- By: Jake Tapper, Alex Thompson
- Narrated by: Jake Tapper
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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From two of America’s most respected journalists, an unflinching and explosive reckoning with one of the most fateful decisions in American political history: Joe Biden’s run for reelection despite evidence of his serious decline—amid desperate efforts to hide the extent of that deterioration.
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Jake Tappers lack of accountability
- By M. Morgan on 05-26-25
By: Jake Tapper, and others
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The Wise Men
- Six Friends and the World They Made
- By: Evan Thomas, Walter Isaacson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Reese
- Length: 33 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Six close friends shaped the role their country would play in the dangerous years following World War II. They were the original best and brightest, whose towering intellects, outsize personalities, and dramatic actions would bring order to the postwar chaos, and whose strong response to Soviet expansionism would leave a legacy that dominates American policy to this day. In April 1945, they converged to advise an untutored new president, Harry Truman.
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Dull with poor narration
- By KD6161 on 03-31-17
By: Evan Thomas, and others
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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
Great book and an AMAZING performance.
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Over the top narration
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Phenomenal deep dive into the 1988 presidential election.
Political classic
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A world class political saga
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The detail is insane
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One of my absolute favorite books and readers
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Fascinating Read
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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.
Great political book
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Finally!
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A classic
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