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Whistle Stopper - The Good Fight
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List Price: $25.95
Our Price: $12.96
Your Save: $ 12.99 ( 50% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Putnam Adult
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 328.73092
EAN: 9780399154997
ISBN: 039915499X
Label: Putnam Adult
Manufacturer: Putnam Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 2008-05-01
Publisher: Putnam Adult
Studio: Putnam Adult
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Read this book!
Comment: I would venture to say that most of the other reviewers of this book
(so far) haven't bothered to read it, but are instead just teeing off on
Harry Reid because they don't like his politics. I know, reading can be hard,
but do yourself a favor and ignore those other reviews. Read this book.
Like Harry Reid, don't like Harry Reid, whatever. Read this book. It's kind
of an unbelievable American story, shockingly candid, and well told. The odds
of anyone emerging from Searchlight, Nevada, when Reid came up there, and
to then go on to do anything of note, are infinitesimal. But the man we
only know as the soft-spoken, kind of opaque leader of the senate, has
actually lived an astonishing life. To be where he is, an impossible life.
Raised in a broken-down town with 13 whorehouses and no churches, taught honesty
by a "whoremonger" because his parents were too drunk to bother, hitchhikes
across the desert to high school, fist fights with his future father-in-law,
defends a murderer in a case right out of In Cold Blood, take on the mob in
Vegas (blacklists Lefty Rosenthal!) and gets a bomb planted in his car
for his troubles, and now faces his biggest problem - Bush. Unlike many
books by politicians, which are full of falsity and pomposity, The Good Fight
doesn't is told plainly and doesn't prettify anything, isn't pompous, and
doesn't read like a collection of tired speeches. This is a surprising book,
and a good story. Highly recommended.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Bad Reid
Comment: Not at all what I hoped for. Reid comes off more like Howard Dean, and that's not good. Reid's previous book was much better.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Where Are The Details About Nefarious Land Deals?
Comment: Much disappointed with Reid's book. It was hoped he would enlighten us on how to make a fortune on illegal land deals. But it must be that that is only for privileged US Senators and not to be divulged to common folk.
A weak book by a weak political leader. Leave this one behind.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Review should be of the book, not the man...
Comment: In response to the previous review, it is unfair to rate the book based on one's personal feeling about Reid. I have just begun reading the book and am moved by the very personal look at Reid and what has compelled him in this life. Reid does not present himself as perfect, but reveals the man he is - which is a man of honor, ethics, dedication, and love of country.
He has spoken out against George Bush's policies in a way that other members of Congress have failed to do. The passages that reveal insiders moments with George Bush offer personal snapshots of a President who is most probably the worst President so far that we've ever known. Reid shines a light on why that is true as he describes Bush's utter lack of interest during briefings and meetings - his inability to ask questions, a lack of curiousity that speaks of a lack of depth, of intelligence, of critical thinking skills, of leadership. It is frightening, nothing new, but frightening to have this nuanced understanding of what has been happening in the Bush White House.
Reid is eloquent and passionate and this book offers an inside look at the man and his politics. I recommend it to others who are feeling discouraged by the political system and its machinations - especially this election season - and who need a shot in the arm to energize them and help them roll their sleeves up and get back to work. Our country needs us!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Political memoir that can't overcome the man's own limitations
Comment: This book does a decent job of providing insight into the life, background, and personality of Harry Reid, one of America's most important present-day politicians but who has by and large flown under the radar of public consciousness. It is always inspiring to read about the ascent of a man from true poverty to national prominence. But this meek Mormon can explain and excuse his failure of will, and yes, it is a failure of sorts, but cannot change it. As a senator, he has brought home the bacon for his constituents and won important measures such as stalling the Yucca Mountain nuclear dump. As a Senate Majority leader, he has cobbled together a fragile, if late, majority in the Senate. But under his tenure, first as a whip, and then like Daschle before him as a leader, he has utterly failed at increasing party discipline, with the result that the Democrats have been a weaker minority than the Republicans are and a weaker majority than the Republicans were. The Democratic party of Harry Reid is, like himself, soft-spoken and ineffectual, doomed to lose any game of political chicken. Reid can't be blamed for the unenviable stack of cards he was dealt, but his nonresponse to the disastrous defection of Joe Lieberman is emblematic of the counterproductive results of this kind of pragmatism. Yes, Lieberman still caucuses with the Democrats, but he can campaign for McCain, condemn his own (former) party at every turn, and join with all the worst abuses of the Republican party without repercussion. No wonder there is no Democratic party discipline. If they wanted, they could always leave with no consequences. In the end, this fluffy political memoir will serve to document the tail end of a failed generation of politics. Reid may be nominally on the side of "Good," but he has hardly dirtied his fingernails in fighting for it.
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Editorial Reviews:
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One of the remarkable books of this season— a tough, plainspoken, deeply passionate narrative by one of our most important national figures.
We all know them: politicians’ books that read as if they’ve been cobbled together from old speeches. The Good Fight is as far from that as it is possible to get.
In a voice that is flinty, real, and passion-filled, Senator Harry Reid tells the tale of two places, intertwining his own story, particularly his early life of deep poverty in the tiny mining town of Searchlight, Nevada—“a place that boasted of thirteen brothels and no churches”—with the cautionary tale of Washington, D.C.: “If I can do nothing greater in this book than explain those two places to each other, then I will have done something important.”
Reid is inspired by obstacles. Brought up in a cabin without indoor plumbing, he hitchhiked forty-five miles across open desert to high school. He worked full-time as a Capitol Hill policeman to get through law school, after the school refused him financial aid, telling him he wasn’t cut out to be a lawyer. As head of the Nevada Gaming Commission, he led an unrelenting fight to clean up Las Vegas, despite four years of death threats —and much worse. And in Congress, Reid’s spent more than twenty-five years battling those who would take the country in the wrong direction: “The radical ideologues degrade our government, so much so that when they are in charge of it, they do not know how to run it.”
And, always, it all comes back to Searchlight: “Who I am now, and what I am doing now, began in that town, with those people, in those mines.” This book is the story of a man who knows what a good fight is, because he has had to fight like hell for everything his whole life. It is populated by a rich and raucous cast of great and failed men, eccentrics, visionaries, gangsters, and presidents who make up his life and times. And it is for all those who not only like a good story, but wonder what we should do now in America.
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