TIP AND THE GIPPER When Politics Worked

This is a breezy, somewhat cursory examination of how conservative Republican President Ronald Reagan and liberal Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill bridged their differences to create compromise in the 1980s. Chris Matthews, a member of O'Neill's leadership staff, offers an engaging, well-articulated narration. Matthews's emphatic staccato sounds far less bombastic in this audiobook than it does on his "Hardball" television show. However, the listener occasionally has difficulty determining who is speaking as Matthews portrays events in the key participants' paraphrased words without any vocal differentiation. Matthews's theme is that O'Neill was ill equipped to measure up to Reagan in the early years of "all-media/all-the-time" politics. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine [Published: JANUARY 2014]