The Good Fight (Hardcover)

by Harry Reid (Author), Mark Warren (Author) "I AM NOT A PACIFIST..." (more)
Key Phrases: searchlight school, gaming license, Las Vegas, White House, President Bush (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
Reid became the leader of the Democrats in the Senate in 2004 when his friend, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, lost his reelection in a bitterly contested race as the Republicans pushed for the kind of domination that White House advisor Karl Rove hoped would last a generation or longer. Reid was part of the push back as Democrats began defying President Bush, most prominently on issues of the war in Iraq and efforts to privatize Social Security. Reid recalls his own support of the war, his regrets, and the sickening realization that Congress had been misled. He is blunt in his criticism of Bush, acknowledging that the animosity is likely mutual. Reid alternates between details of political battles in Washington, D.C., and the struggle of growing up in the hardscrabble gold-mining town of Searchlight, Nevada. The town had no steady schoolteacher but plenty of prostitutes, and no indoor plumbing in most houses. The reader might expect the switch between the two to be jarring, but both arenas are populated with interesting characters and hard-fought battles. --Vanessa Bush

Product Description
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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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Adult (May 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039915499X
• ISBN-13: 978-0399154997
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.4 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #544,520 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Good Fight Is Not a Good Read, September 19, 2008

By	Jake "Weekend Political Junkie" (St. George, UT) - See all my reviews

While I enjoyed Senator Reid's narrative of his life experiences (growing up in Searchlight, his education, his religious conversion, his career as a Las Vegas attorney, and his time spent on the Nevada Game Commission), I was disappointed with the events he shares during his time in the Senate. He repeatedly descends into partisan politics and hyperbole. For example, he writes that, "George W. Bush will rank among the worst presidents--if not the worst--in the history of our country." While I do not agree with much of President Bush's tenure, Reid's assessment is disrespectful, mean-spirited, and certainly over the top. I also read Clarence Thomas' biography, My Grandfather's Son, who admirably avoids this type of bashing. Reid spends 6 pages (a bit much) discussing Jim Jeffords change in party affiliation. He praises Jeffords for his "act of bravery". It seems it would have been braver for Senator Jeffords to resign his senate position since he felt he could no longer represent those who voted for him.

Reid is quite candid about some of his personal failings, but he does not mention how he has personally benefited from his powerful position. What about his land deal? Or how his son and son-in-law were generously paid as special interest lobbyists? Positions they would not have enjoyed had they not been related. What about his several other embarrassing missteps?

As someone who shares a religion with Senator Reid, I had hoped he would do a better job explaining why I should not doubt his honesty or integrity. It seems to me he merely represents why so many of the American public are dissatisfied with their elected officials.

27 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Review should be of the book, not the man..., May 7, 2008

By	Truth Speaker "zoezoe" (St. Louis, MO United States) - See all my reviews

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!

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars excellent on Bush but can't match the ones abroad, August 14, 2008

By	Siegfried Sutterlin "a diplomatic and economi... (midwest) - See all my reviews

Harry Reid came from a totally non-religious, squalid background in the tough Nevada mining town of Searchlight. His father, a miner, abused both alcohol and his wife. Reid and his brothers "took him down" once to stop the abuse. Eventually, Harry rose through hard work, 75 to 80 hours per week, and, with some networking help, became a lawyer.

His parental home, a shocking shack far worse than Elvis Presley's parental shack in Tupelo, Miss., had no equivalent in most advanced nations in '39, the year of his birth. The question that immediately arises is why does Reid fail to address the fact that slum houses were so prominent, so widely dispersed across the U.S. at that time and still constitute, at the present, a major feature of slumerica. Here arises a subtle theme of Reid's book, namely, one works oneself out of slumerica, but one doesn't understand why slumerica continues. Reid never once focuses on this issue. Instead, he uses it for grandstanding, for hooking onto the log-cabin-to-the-White-House myth, the Horatio Alger myth, the aspirational sentiments of most in spite of the fact that downward mobility is the reality of many Americans far more than in most advanced nations. (See the number of university educated people living in marginal trailer homes or having jobs that are performed by grade-school grads in other nations or check economic research summarized in "The Economist" re upward mobility among the poor in the EU being far better than in the U.S.)

Reid values education, but it was of the type that is used for career advancement, for escaping the slum and squalor of slumerica. In spite of becoming credentialed, he failed in being educated. He absorbed and never weaned himself of the crude values of the coarse and tough mining town. He revered turning out for football and boxing and adulated coaches. Yet, in the absence of ethical-philosophical growth, the true qualities of becoming educated, he never once (like autobios or even scholarly accounts of Nixon, Ford, LBJ, Eisenhower, etc.) focuses on becoming educated. Turning out for football and boxing and being subordinated to the exploitative bureaucratic processing of sports bureaucracies is all dominating. Reid does not grasp that organized sports bureaucracies have bludgeoned the educational system. Coaches at many universities may earn 2 to 8 times more than their presidents and academic corruption related to sports is epidemic across the U.S. It is crucial to grasp the fact that senior American politicians totally avoid this issue and cannot even admit it nor understand it nor reform it. In this sense, Reid is like the ones he correctly criticizes, namely, Bush, Rumsfeld, et al.

Like Bush, Reid has a history degree and like Bush exhibits few signs of having learned the wisdom of history. Instead, as most senior politicians, he perpetuates the myth of the "Great Country," the myth of U.S. soldiers being "the most thoughtful" and "poised 18 year-olds anywhere." (He needs to read Chalmers Johnson, et al. and look at comparative crime rates of U.S. bases abroad, for a start). Above all, he adheres to the invalid and dangerous notion--which one doesn't find in most nations--that the military dispenses liberties. While advocating not using the Yucca site for nuclear storage, he evades completely how nuclear tests and other military activities have spread nuclear contamination and toxicities not just across his home state Nevada, but across all of the U.S. so that the clean-up cost will bludgeon the living standard and tie millstones around the necks of all U.S. taxpayers--if such contamination can even be cleaned up. Amazing how he is totally unaware that military-derived poisons across the U.S. have become a noticeable cause of diseases and deaths.

After marrying, Reid embraced religion though he does not tell why, leaving the suspicion it was, as is the case with many politicians, for political posturing. He entitled his book "The Good Fight" which may have been derived from the Bible though it may also echo his coarse background and patronizing boxing fights of Mohammed Ali in Las Vegas' ambience.

Nevertheless, Senator Reid acquires unquestionable moral stature in the direction of Fulbright during the Vietnam era when he, with sincerity, exposes, criticizes and tries to correct Bush's massive deceptions, violation of laws and war crimes. This is THE crucial and most important issue and here Reid redeems himself successfully.

But again, had he familiarized himself with the facts before the Iraq war broke out by reading foreign news accounts (which gave plenty of correct info), he could have avoided voting for the war. Thus, the excuse that Bush misled Congress won't fly. It was the pressure of the junior high school political pep rally mentality which kow-towed Congress into submission.

Reid does not seem to be aware that social security and other policies, which he affirms and defends are adopted from foreign countries. He states that they made "America great." The fact that ecological policies are also coming from abroad (as corrective measures did with the car industry, with inflation and the educational system, etc.) denies the validity of Reid's characterization that the U.S. is as "self-correcting as any society ever to have existed." The fact remains that slumerica has not been corrected since his birth: 75 to 80 hour work-weeks are more common here than abroad, the infrastructure is dilapidated, huge overwhelming debts everywhere, massive trade deficits, a constantly declining dollar and no savings rate.

Thus, the greatest failing of Reid's book, namely, no focus on America's economic conditions, nothing about the mortgage mess, the stock market corruption and the S and L imbroglio, etc. and, above all, no comparison how other nations without many resources have no grinding poverty that characterizes slumerica. For someone who came from slumerica, this is puzzling and should cause him to read "Why the U.S. Needs an Economic Miracle" accessible at "http://comparativegems.blogspot.com/".