Overview

"In this gripping, brilliantly reported, and sure to be news-making book, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind tells the complete story of the nation's financial meltdown and an untested new president charged with commanding Washington, taming ""Wall Street"", rescuing an economy on the verge of collapse, and restoring the confidence of a shaken nation. Suskind moves from the frenzied trading floors of lower Manhattan to the power corridors inside the Beltway and introduces a larger-than-life cast of politicians and advisors, titans of high finance, reformers, lobbyists, and others who faced a crisis that threatened not only a nation, but the entire world. Based on hundreds of hours of interviews and exhaustive research, filled with piercing insight and startling disclosures, Suskind's eye-opening book goes beyond the headlines and previous accounts, bringing into focus the unprecedented struggle between ""Wall Street"" and Washington, between hope and fear, that continues to roil the nation."

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9780061429255

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Reviews

The work that went into Confidence Men cannot be denied. Suskind conducted hundreds of interviews. He spoke to almost every member of the Obama administration, including the President. He quotes memos no one else has published. He gives you scenes that no one else has managed to capture. --Ezra Klein, The New York Review of Books Ron Suskind's book is . . . the one that makes the most sense. . . . The shudder-inducing bits of Confidence Men come when the team is too optimistic about how its policies will play out. The confidence allows them to move on too quickly. -- Slate The White House says Suskind talked to too many disgruntled former staffers. But he seems to have talked to a lot of gruntled ones, too. The overarching portrait of chaos, lack of intellectual depth and absence of political wisdom, from a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, rings true. -- The Wall Street Journal A[n] authoritative window on the inner workings of the administration and a useful management primer on how not to run an organization. . . . Confidence Men is crammed with interesting detail. -- Fortune The book paints a harsh, stark portrait of a president in over his head. . . . Suskind makes a compelling case that Obama was able to win the election because he was talking to the right people. -- The Daily Beast This is wonkish stuff, but the you-are-there, personality-driven nature of Suskind's writing is compelling. --Bethany McLean, The Washington Post This narrative. . . keeps you reading long after you've absorbed the White House's petty criticisms about the book. The portrait of Obama that emerges here is sympathetic, even though Suskind addresses the president's failings. . . . Though the book toggles between Washington and Wall Street, the freshest material comes from Suskind's deep access to the West Wing. -- Bloomberg Suskind is not calling Obama a confidence man here. Rather, he presents a president who is not up to the task of outmaneuvering a political and economic system that is packed full of confidence men. -- Time Written in sharp, cinematic scenes, in which the main players in the administration are captured in full-blooded, uncensored conversation, Confidence Men sprawls across the multiple crises of the opening two years of the Obama presidency. . . . Suskind's central thesis deserves to be taken seriously. -- Financial Times Suskind does a magnificent job explaining the way an economy centered on debt has decimated the middle class and made the top 1 percent of Americans impossibly wealthy. . . . Suskind describes a leader pulled off course by his staff. --Joan Walsh, Salon This portrait of the president's management of the economic crisis is an extraordinary story of ineptness, callowness and pitiful inexperience in office. . . . Indeed, the book represents some sort of watershed, a formal measurement of the distance between the perception of a vaunted political figure and the reality. --Michael Wolff, GQ Confidence Men doesn't just expose the secret goings-on that explain so much about how our government works. It also makes so much of the mainstream press coverage look shallow and credulous by comparison. --Dan Froomkin, The Huffington Post Savvy and informative. ... The most ambitious treatment of this period yet. ... Suskind s book often reads like Halberstam s The Best and the Brightest. But the quagmire isn t a neo-Vietnam like Afghanistanit s the economy. --Frank Rich, New York A searing new book. ... Suskind has a flair for taking material he s harvested to create narratives with a novelistic sense of drama. --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times No book about the Obama presidency appears to have unnerved the White House quite so much as Confidence Men by Ron Suskind, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has developed a niche in the specialized art of parting the curtain on presidential dealings. -- The Chicago Tribune A truly groundbreaking inside account. ... Penetrating in its analysis of why the administration s approach to the country s economic ills has been so lackluster. ... An important addition to the growing library of books about this president. --Joe Nocera, The New York Times Book Review The book of the week, maybe the book of the month, is Ron Suskind s Confidence Men. ... A detailed narrative of the Administration s response-sometimes frantic, sometimes sluggish, sometimes both-to the financial and economic catastrophe it inherited, as experienced from the inside. --Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker The work that went into Confidence Men cannot be denied. Suskind conducted hundreds of interviews. He spoke to almost every member of the Obama administration, including the President. He quotes memos no one else has published. He gives you scenes that no one else has managed to capture. --Ezra Klein, The New York Review of Books Suskind s account of the Obama administration is a marker of our times. It reveals a President unable to perform responsibly the duties of his high office. ... Suskind s contribution to this tale of woe is to give us a fine grained picture of Obama s passive place in deliberations. -- Huffington Post The Huffington Post My Book of the Year. A narrative tour de force. ... Journalism like this is all too rare in an ange in which reporters trade their critical faculties for access. And it s even rarer that skeptical reporting is turned into something lasting. --David Granger, Esquire This inside account of the Obama economic team contains enough damning on-the-record quotes to give it the ring of truth despite White House efforts to discredit the narrative of infighting and missed opportunities. Read it and weep. It reminds me of the post-Iraq invasion books that documented a similar failure to rise to the enormity of the problem, whether the insurgency was in Iraq or on Wall Street. --Eleanor Clift, Newsweek This inside account of the Obama economic team contains enough damning on-the-record quotes to give it the ring of truth despite White House efforts to discredit the narrative of infighting and missed opportunities. Read it and weep. It reminds me of the post-Iraq invasion books that documented a similar failure to rise to the enormity of the problem, whether the insurgency was in Iraq or on Wall Street. --Eleanor Clift, Newsweek My Book of the Year. A narrative tour de force. . . . Journalism like this is all too rare in an ange in which reporters trade their critical faculties for access. And it's even rarer that skeptical reporting is turned into something lasting. --David Granger, Esquire Suskind's account of the Obama administration is a marker of our times. It reveals a President unable to perform responsibly the duties of his high office. . . . Suskind's contribution to this tale of woe is to give us a fine grained picture of Obama's passive place in deliberations. --Huffington Post The Huffington Post The work that went into Confidence Men cannot be denied. Suskind conducted hundreds of interviews. He spoke to almost every member of the Obama administration, including the President. He quotes memos no one else has published. He gives you scenes that no one else has managed to capture. --Ezra Klein, The New York Review of Books The book of the week, maybe the book of the month, is Ron Suskind's Confidence Men. . . . A detailed narrative of the Administration's response-sometimes frantic, sometimes sluggish, sometimes both-to the financial and economic catastrophe it inherited, as experienced from the inside. --Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker A truly groundbreaking inside account. . . . Penetrating in its analysis of why the administration's approach to the country's economic ills has been so lackluster. . . . An important addition to the growing library of books about this president. --Joe Nocera, The New York Times Book Review No book about the Obama presidency appears to have unnerved the White House quite so much as Confidence Men by Ron Suskind, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has developed a niche in the specialized art of parting the curtain on presidential dealings. --The Chicago Tribune A searing new book. . . . Suskind has a flair for taking material he's harvested to create narratives with a novelistic sense of drama. --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Savvy and informative. . . . The most ambitious treatment of this period yet. . . . Suskind's book often reads like Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest. But the quagmire isn't a neo-Vietnam like Afghanistan--it's the economy. --Frank Rich, New York

Suskind does a magnificent job explaining the way an economy centered on debt has decimated the middle class and made the top 1 percent of Americans impossibly wealthy. . . . Suskind describes a leader pulled off course by his staff. --Joan Walsh, Salon

Confidence Men doesn't just expose the secret goings-on that explain so much about how our government works. It also makes so much of the mainstream press coverage look shallow and credulous by comparison. --Dan Froomkin, The Huffington Post

Author Information

Ron Suskind is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Way of the World, The One Percent Doctrine, The Price of Loyalty, and A Hope in the Unseen. From 1993 to 2000 he was the senior national affairs writer for the Wall Street Journal, where he won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. He lives in Washington, D.C.

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