What It Takes: The Way to the White House

Richard Ben Cramer

Open Road Media, Aug 2, 2011 - Political Science - 1060 pages

A masterpiece of political reportage that exposes the emotional reality of the modern American campaign system Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Richard Ben Cramer cracks open the heart of the American political system in this classic exploration of the 1988 presidential campaign. Cramer delves into the personal, intimate lives of the key candidates, including George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, Joe Biden, and Michael Dukakis, as he seeks to understand the drives, passions, egos, and failings that transform an individual into a president. Exhaustively researched from thousands of hours of interviews, What It Takes creates powerful portraits of the men who would be president, and how the campaign for the highest office transforms them.

What people are saying

Review: What It Takes: The Way to the White House

User Review  - Daniel - Goodreads

"One of the things you realize fairly quickly in this job is that there is a character people see out there called Barack Obama. That's not you. Whether it is good or bad, it is not you. I learned ...

Review: What It Takes: The Way to the White House

User Review  - Kenny Cather - Goodreads

This book is gripping, fascinating, wonderful...I will never find enough adjectives for it. I love this book. The author did tons and tons of research to truly flesh out some of the men who were in ...

About the author

Richard Ben Cramer (1950–2013) was an award-winning journalist and author of five books, including the bestselling classic What It Takes (1992). A graduate of Johns Hopkins and Columbia Universities, he began his career as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun in 1973 before moving to the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he received the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Middle East in 1979. His work appeared in Time, Newsweek, the New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Esquire. 

Bibliographic information

• Title: What It Takes: The Way to the White House
• Author: Richard Ben Cramer
• Publisher: Open Road Media, 2011
• ISBN: 1453219641, 9781453219645
• Length: 1060 pages
• Subjects: Political Science / Political Process / Elections