THE WAR WITHIN A Secret White House History 2006-2008

In his fourth, and most disturbing, analysis of the Bush presidency, Bob Woodward looks at the years 2006 to 2008, during which the nation's chief executive hunkers down with a failing strategy in Iraq. This time around things get positively King Lear-ish as a fawning national security advisor and a yes-woman secretary of state enable an unblinking, righteously guided president, who, by his own admission, is uninterested in diplomacy and obsessed with enemy body counts. Narrator Boyd Gaines, who has read the past three Woodward books, captures the essence of each of the players' voices without using mimicry—right down to Bush's mispronunciation of "nuclear." The result is one of those exceptional author-reader combinations that makes you wish the series wouldn't end. On the other hand . . . R.W.S. 2009 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2008]