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Double Down: Game Change 2012 Audiobook
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Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times: "Those hungry for political news will read Double Down for the scooplets and insidery glimpses it serves up about the two campaigns, and the clues it offers about the positioning already going on among Republicans and Democrats for 2016 ... The book testifies to its authors’ energetic legwork and insider access... creating a novelistic narrative that provides a you-are-there immediacy... They succeed in taking readers interested in the backstabbing and backstage maneuvering of the 2012 campaign behind the curtains, providing a tactile... sense of what it looked like from the inside." In their runaway bestseller Game Change, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann captured the full drama of Barack Obama’s improbable, dazzling victory over the Clintons, John McCain, and Sarah Palin. With the same masterly reporting, unparalleled access, and narrative skill, Double Down picks up the story in the Oval Office, where the president is beset by crises both inherited and unforeseen—facing defiance from his political foes, disenchantment from the voters, disdain from the nation’s powerful money machers, and dysfunction within the West Wing. As 2012 looms, leaders of the Republican Party, salivating over Obama’s political fragility, see a chance to wrest back control of the White House—and the country. So how did the Republicans screw it up? How did Obama survive the onslaught of super PACs and defy the predictions of a one-term presidency? Double Down follows the gaudy carnival of GOP contenders—ambitious and flawed, famous and infamous, charismatic and cartoonish—as Mitt Romney, the straitlaced, can-do, gaffe-prone multimillionaire from Massachusetts, scraped and scratched his way to the nomination. Double Down exposes blunders, scuffles, and machinations far beyond the klieg lights of the campaign trail: Obama storming out of a White House meeting with his high command after accusing them of betrayal. Romney’s mind-set as he made his controversial “47 percent” comments. The real reasons New Jersey governor Chris Christie was never going to be Mitt’s running mate. The intervention held by the president’s staff to rescue their boss from political self-destruction. The way the tense détente between Obama and Bill Clinton morphed into political gold. And the answer to one of the campaign’s great mysteries—how did Clint Eastwood end up performing Dada dinner theater at the Republican convention? In Double Down, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann take the reader into back rooms and closed-door meetings, laying bare the secret history of the 2012 campaign for a panoramic account of an election that was as hard fought as it was lastingly consequential.
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“Word lovers and political junkies,rejoice, and listeners who keep a dictionary for that occasional unfamiliarlocution, make sure it’s close by. This fascinating examination of the 2012presidential election is chock-full of intriguing facts and juicy tidbits, aswell as being an exceptional lexicon. Robert Fass’ narration blends the rightamount of well-paced vocals with emotional candor as the candidates plan theirstrategies, melt down, implode, and explode. Using information garnered fromhundreds of interviews, the authors present a thorough investigation as thecandidates' fortunes rise and fall during the campaign.”
— AudioFile
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“Compulsively readable follow-up to Game Change...A chronicle of the freak show that was the 2012 presidential election, the book illustrates how profoundly personality shapes history....Double Down amply demonstrates how our forty-fourth president earned every one of those brand-new gray hairs.”
— People -
“Journalists Halperin and Heilemann don’t lack for access, delivering another down-and-dirty account of an election that plays out like high-stakes high school cafeteria politics…A tantalizing prequel to 2016.”
— Entertainment Weekly -
“Based on hundreds of interviews, Double Down refreshes our interest in a campaign that exhausted us all.”
— Barnes & Noble, editorial review -
“Many juicy disclosures…[a] near-flawless narrative.”
— USA Today -
“The book testifies to its authors’ energetic legwork and insider access…creating a novelistic narrative that provides a you-are-there immediacy...They succeed in taking readers interested in the backstabbing and backstage maneuvering of the 2012 campaign behind the curtains, providing a tactile...sense of what it looked like from the inside.”
— New York Times -
“Chock-full of anecdotes, secret meetings, indiscreet remarks...No one can compete [with Halperin and Heilemann]. That’s what it means to own the franchise. It’s a small club: these two guys and Bob Woodward. And with this book, they’ve earned their admission.”
— New York Times Book Review -
“A joyous romp through the seedy underbelly of presidential campaigning....It’s also a marvel of reporting. Any time three staff members met in a room to bad-mouth a colleague or a candidate admitted to a moment of stress or self-doubt…John Heilemann and Mark Halperin appear to have been sitting in the corner, scribbling notes.”
— Washington Post -
“The well-connected authors have worked their sources thoroughly to give readers a warts-and-all look at what went on behind the scenes…Halperin and Heilemann give readers a real sense of why things shaped up the way they did, why events fell one way or the other, and who got clobbered as a result.”
— Booklist -
“A highly entertaining, dishy read, full of astonishing revelations about the strengths and, most intriguingly, the foibles of the nation’s political stars and egos…Like crack for political junkies.”
— Kirkus Reviews -
“The fine performance by veteran narrator Robert Frass makes for easy listening.”
— Library Journal (audio review)
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About the Authors
Mark Halperin is an editor at large and a senior political analyst for Time magazine and a senior political analyst for MSNBC. He is also the coauthor of Double Down: Game Change 2012. Halperin, who has covered seven presidential elections, received his BA from Harvard and resides in New York City with Karen Avrich.
John Heilemann is the national political correspondent and columnist for New York magazine. An award-winning journalist and the author of Pride before the Fall: The Trials of Bill Gates and the End of the Microsoft Era, he is a former staff writer for the New Yorker, Wired, and the Economist. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
About Robert Fass
Robert Fass is a veteran actor and twice winner of the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. He has earned multiple Earphones Awards and been named in AudioFile magazine’s list of the year’s best narrations for six years.