"Game Change"

Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime (John Heilemann and Mark Halperin)

It's no secret that I love gossipy political trash, and here's a great example. This book covers the 2008 campaign, with about 50% of the book being Obama facing off with Hillary for the Democratic nomination, a small interlude where McCain brushes aside the joke campaigns of Guliani and Fred Thompson to lock up his own nomination, and then maybe the last third being the general election. This is well-written, entertaining trash - the charecters are outsized and there's never a dull moment. My one and only complaint is that I think a little too much time is given to the Democratic primary; I don't know if that's because the reporters had the best sources on this or they found it the most interesting, but I would have liked the ratios switched so the first third was the Democratic nomination fight, then the second half was the general election. That's really my only complaint - I re-read this recently, and even with the material now being rather dated (perhaps a concern for the new reader) and having read it before, I still had trouble putting it down.
Bonus! New words I learned from this book: "Ripshit" - this is a great word; Try using it at least once a day - and the cryptic terms "political big feet" and "thumbsuckers", applied to important members of the national press and government, I think (???)

Grade: A-