Alter Egos Lib/E: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the Twilight Struggle Over American Power

The deeply reported story of two trailblazers who share a common sense of their historic destiny but hold very different beliefs about how to project American power--from veteran New York Times White House correspondent Mark Landler In the annals of American statecraft, theirs was a most unlikely alliance. Clinton, daughter of an anticommunist father, was raised in the Republican suburbs of Chicago in the aftermath of World War II, nourishing an unshakable belief in the United States as a force for good in distant lands. Obama, an itinerant child of the 1970s, was raised by a single mother in Indonesia and Hawaii, suspended between worlds and a witness to the less savory side of Uncle Sam's influence abroad. Clinton and Obama would later come to embody competing visions of America's role in the world: his, restrained, inward-looking, painfully aware of limits; hers, hard-edged, pragmatic, unabashedly old-fashioned. Spanning the arc of Obama's two terms, Alter Egos goes beyond the speeches and press conferences to the Oval Office huddles and South Lawn strolls, where Obama and Clinton pressed their views. It follows their evolution from bitter rivals to wary partners, and then to something resembling rivals again, as Clinton defined herself anew and distanced herself from her old boss. In the process, it counters the narrative that, during her years as secretary of state, there was no daylight between them, that the wounds of the 2008 campaign had been entirely healed. The president and his chief diplomat parted company over some of the biggest issues of the day: how quickly to wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; whether to arm the rebels in Syria; how to respond to the upheaval in Egypt; and whether to trust the Russians. In Landler's gripping account, we venture inside the Situation Room during the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, watch Obama and Clinton work in tandem to salvage a conference on climate change in Copenhagen, and uncover the secret history of their nuclear diplomacy with Iran--a story with a host of fresh disclosures. With the grand sweep of history and the pointillist detail of an account based on insider access--the book draws on exclusive interviews with more than one hundred senior administration officials, foreign diplomats, and friends of Obama and Clinton--Mark Landler offers the definitive account of a complex, profoundly important relationship.

About the Author :
Mark Landler has covered American foreign policy for the New York Times since the inauguration of Barack Obama, first as diplomatic correspondent and since 2011 as White House correspondent. In twenty-four years at the Times, he has been the newspaper's bureau chief in Hong Kong and Frankfurt, European economic correspondent, and a business reporter in New York. Mark Landler has covered American foreign policy for the New York Times since the inauguration of Barack Obama, first as diplomatic correspondent and since 2011 as White House correspondent. In twenty-four years at the Times, he has been the newspaper's bureau chief in Hong Kong and Frankfurt, European economic correspondent, and a business reporter in New York. Jason Culp, an Earphones Award-winning narrator, has been acting since the age of ten, and his credits include a variety of television, theater, and film roles. He is best known for his role as Julian Jerome on General Hospital. In addition to audiobooks and voice-over work in national commercials, he has also narrated documentaries for National Geographic and the History Channel.

Review :
"[A] lively and informative study of the relationship between Obama and Clinton." -- "New York Times Book Review" "Full of compelling narrative and telling anecdotes." -- "Sunday Times (London)" "Landler has written an excellent book, the definitive examination to date of, among other things, a president who has tried to extract the US from the Middle East." -- "Atlantic"