A Long Time Coming [Hardcover]

Evan Thomas (Author), Staff of Newsweek (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1586486071 | ISBN-13: 978-1586486075 | Publication Date: January 9, 2009 | Edition: Revised

Since 1984, Newsweek has been renowned for its vivid, in-depth special election coverage of the ordeal of running for the presidency. A year before the election, Newsweek assigns reporters to get inside the campaigns of the Republican and Democratic candidates. Newsweek promises not to publish any information until after the votes are cast, and in exchange, the reporters receive remarkable access. They travel with the candidates, are there at crucial turning points and confidential meetings, and uncover stories not covered in day-to-day reporting.

In this book, a compelling narrative by Evan Thomas, Newsweek shares the inside stories from one of the most exciting elections in recent history, illuminating the personalities and events that influenced the outcome, and taking stock of the key players and key issues for the new administration. This will be an absorbing read for anyone interested in American politics.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Newsweek editor Thomas gathered the gleanings of various Newsweek colleagues to create an adroitly distilled chronicle of the 2008 presidential campaign and the election of Barack Obama, the first African American president of the U.S. This easily devoured, crisply anecdotal account, spiked with revealing, side-of-the-mouth comments, charts the most cautious and reckless of political maneuverings and provides in-action portraits of the major players, both obvious and behind-the-scenes. Hillary Clinton is indecisive; Bill Clinton is “disastrous.” John McCain, crabby and truculent, allows his “inner Dennis the Menace” to take over. And, most vividly, here is Barack Obama, reflective and restrained, a “relentless self-improver” with a “think-first instinct” and “ironic detachment.” Thomas and company observe Obama meeting with his disciplined staff, writing his speeches longhand, prepping for debates, and striving to avoid the pitfalls of campaigning, from fatty food to taking the bait of adversaries. Readers catch telling glimpses of surefire Axelrod and the Obama nerd squad and are privy to inside-the-tent discussions of race and get-out-the-vote strategies. Thomas writes that Obama, an avid reader and gifted writer, sees himself as “a figure out of literature,” and, indeed, real-life stories don’t get more compelling than this. --Donna Seaman

Review

Alan Brinkley, New York Times Book Review, January 18, 2009
“For sheer speed and competence, the most impressive of these recent books is Evan Thomas's "Long Time Coming," compiled from the reporting of the political writers of Newsweek (a magazine for which I occasionally write). A perceptive, smoothly written, and generally fair minded account of both presidential campaigns, it is, nevertheless, a contribution to the creation of the superhero image that has surrounded Obama over the last six months."

Shelf Awareness, January 7, 2009
“Briskly told, entertaining.”
 

Donna Seaman, starred Booklist review
“An adroitly distilled chronicle of the 2008 presidential campaign and the election of Barack Obama….This easily devoured, crisply anecdotal account, spiked with revealing, side-of the-mouth comments, charts the most cautious and reckless of political maneuverings and provides in-action portraits of the major players, both obvious and behind-the-scenes….Thomas writes that Obama, an avid reader and gifted writer, sees himself as ‘a figure out of literature,’ and, indeed, real-life stories don’t get more compelling than this.”
 

Chris Matthews, MSNBC “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” January 20, 2009
“…candy.”

PoliticsUSA.com, January 28, 2009
“A clear, concise, and fast read…The editors did a fantastic job weaving together a storyline that is both clear and compelling. It is all here, the calm of the Obama campaign, the dysfunction and infighting of the Clinton campaign, and the McCain campaign’s constant internal battle over competing directions and narratives…We all know how the story of the 2008 election ended. The fun in this book is the behind the scenes account of how we got there.”
 

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs; Revised edition (January 9, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586486071
• ISBN-13: 978-1586486075
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,016,686 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Evan Thomas is one of the most respected historians and journalists writing today. He is the bestselling author of six works of nonfiction: Sea of Thunder, John Paul Jones, Robert Kennedy, The Very Best Men, The Man to See, and The Wise Men. Evan Thomas was made editor at large of Newsweek in September 2006 and is the magazine's lead writer on major news events and the author of more than a hundred cover stories.
Thomas has won numerous journalism awards, including a National Magazine Award in 1998 for Newsweek's coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In 2005, his 50,000-word narrative of the 2004 election was honored when Newsweek won a National Magazine Award for the best single-topic issue.
Thomas is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow of the Society of American Historians. He is a graduate of Harvard and the University of Virginia Law School. He lives with his wife and two children in Washington, DC.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Incredibly disappointing. A word-for-word reprint of the original Newsweek article., January 13, 2009

By 

Jennifer in Cincinnati - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Long Time Coming (Hardcover)

As a political junkie, I always look forward to the Newsweek Election Book. Newsweek has always called this reporting "The Project;" it's a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the presidential campaign, and it never fails to deliver.

After this historic election, one of the most intriguing ever, I just could not WAIT for the Newsweek book to come out! I was thrilled when, the day after the election, Newsweek.com published on their webpage what I thought was a very, very huge "excerpt" of the forthcoming book, always released in early January following an election. The November 17th, 2008 issue print edition of Newsweek was almost entirely composed of this "The Project" and I was happy to have the issue so I could preserve the original "excerpt."

So, imagine my surprise when I purchased "A Long Time Coming" for $[...] and settled into what I hoped would be a long evening of reading the book and filling in all the details that were left out of the magazine and online versions. With just a simple glance through the book, I realized ever chapter was titled the same as the November article, and was presented in the same sequential order as in the book. So, starting to feel pretty disappointed, I pulled out my Nov. 17th Newsweek and got to comparing the two.

Down to the punctuation, this book is merely a reprint. Word for word! The book includes a pretty lame "Epilogue" as well as a rather uninteresting interview with President-Elect Obama at the end, but other than these additions, the book is just a complete copy of the original article! Including the photographs!!

Of course I'm returning the book. Why pay $[...] when I have the original Newsweek issue for $[...]? Heck you can read the entire book for free online at Newsweek.com, still!

I find it incredibly dishonest of Newsweek to not alert purchasers of this book that it is just a reprint of the original piece.

One final nitpick... you'd think that by printing the book, they would have corrected some of the major factual errors that appeared in the original piece. For example, in the original version the writers wrote that Hillary Clinton's sniper fire exaggeration occurred in April, when it occurred in March. This error was not corrected in the hardback edition of the book I purchased.

So, gentle readers, please avoid this book and try to just find a backissue of that Newsweek. Or go online. But don't waste your money on this disappointing book.

36 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Same as the magazine article - agh!, January 7, 2009

By 

Amy Kennedy - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Long Time Coming (Hardcover)

I bought this for $22.95 believing it was different than the lengthy Newsweek article done just after the election by Evan Thomas and others, still available at the magazine's website for free. It looks to be exactly the same. There is no mention in the book that it is merely a reprint. Very disappointed.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Behind the Scenes, January 26, 2009

By 

Publius (Utopia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Long Time Coming (Hardcover)

Barack Obama's historic election in 2008 may mark the resurgence of a dormant liberalism philosophy that has been dormant since the breakdown of Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. If this turns out to be true, the 2008 campaign will be studied, analyzed and written about for many years from now. "A Long Time Coming" is probably the first in a long and interminable line of books about the election. It is often said that journalism is the first draft of history and as such, this book provides the closest understanding we have of the inside players and the decisions that made the election of Obama possible. There is an old saying that "victory has a hundred fathers, but defeat is an orphan." As such, the conventional wisdom was that almost every strategic decision that McCain and his inner circle made tended to be disastrous. But, if one takes a closer look at the numbers, and especially the battleground states of Colorado, Virginia, Ohio and Florida, the switching of a few thousand votes may have made a huge and ultimately monumental difference in the outcome. If those votes had been switched around, the narrative may have been how John McCain pulled off an historic upset on the scale of Truman in 1948. However, it didn't happen that way, so every mistake that McCain made, from the picking of Sarah Palin to the short lived suspension of his campaign in September is magnified ten thousand times over. Whereas , everything that Obama did was brilliant from focusing on the caucus states early on to using the internet to woo new voters and most especially donors. In the appendix to this book, Mr. Obama, in an interview even says that there was a lot of on the job training going on in 2007, and but for his triumphal speech at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Iowa in late 2007, we may have just inaugurated the first Woman president, rather than the first African American one.
However, the point that Mr. Evans makes, and makes rather well, is that in politics, the simple things matter. Obama was probably the most effective candidate, in recent memory, at staying on message throughout his campaign, while McCain's campaign was reduced to a series of gimmicks that unfortunately stand at odds with the selfless patriot and hero that McCain was. This book was, for the most part, taken from the Newsweek cover story in the week after the election, and does not expand on it, except for a brief introduction by Newsweek editor Mr. Meachem and an interview with Mr. Obama conducted during the middle of the election. But in a year that saw the greatest economic meltdown since the Great Depression, the party that represented the status quo had a tough road, but certainly the infighting in Mr. McCain's campaign did not help, and may have made Obama's victory a sure thing. In fact, the author writes that McCain's inner circle knew it was over a month before the election. The real history of this election, is that if someone like a John Kerry had won the nomination, there is probably a very good chance that he could have won with the way the economy was going, but the fact of the matter is that we will never know. In the future, the ebbs and flows of the 2008 campaign will be memorialized in books, documentaries and probably movies, but read this book and prepare for the tumult ahead as the facts become more legend then anything grounded in reality.