What It Takes

What It Takes: the Rod to the White House about the 1988 USA Presidential election was written by Richard Ben Cramer. It’s n election year in the US so it seemed like the right time to read this book.

It’s a mammoth book (1051 pages of small print) following in depth the campaigns of Republicans George HW Bush and Bob Dole and Democrats Joe Biden, Michael Dukakis, Dick Gephardt and Gary Hart.

It’s frequently named as one of the outstanding political books. Rightly so in my view - the book gives a birds eye view of the lives and history of the candidates and first hand testimony from their campaigns.