THE PRESIDENT'S THERAPIST [Kindle Edition]

John Wareham (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

PRESIDENT’S THERAPIST DISCLOSES SECRET OVAL OFFICE SESSIONS
Political thriller details George W. Bush relapse and treatment for alcoholism

Truth may be stranger than fiction, but the lines are blurred in THE PRESIDENT’S THERAPIST, a riveting, about-to-be released political thriller in which readers share an insider’s portal into President George W. Bush’s closet alcohol addiction, leadership travails, marital woes, and more, through the first-person account of the president’s psychotherapist.

THE PRESIDENT’S THERAPIST by eminent leadership consultant John Wareham, delivers an eerily accurate portrayal of the 42nd president, as lead character psychotherapist Dr. Mark Alter attempts to help the failing president address his clandestine addiction to alcohol and reverse the course of the disastrous Iraq War. Along the way, Dr. Alter also engages in cathartic marriage counseling sessions with First Lady Laura Bush, and heated arguments with Vice President Dick Cheney and political strategist Karl Rove.

The novel’s uncanny realism stems from Wareham’s lifetime of experience as confidential counselor to corporate leaders, and his meticulous research into the psyche of George W. Bush. Through Dr. Alter, Wareham presents balanced, authentic insights into perhaps the most tragic president in modern times, and shows precisely how his presidency might have been rescued. THE PRESIDENT’S THERAPIST is a brilliantly original psychological journey, whose cliffhanger ending will satisfy mystery lovers, literary sophisticates, and political junkies from both sides of the aisle.

"The President’s Therapist by John Wareham, a “what if” novel wrapped in layers of reality, offers an unnerving “case study” of alcoholism in the White House. We enter a series of psychological and forensic intelligence forays engendered by the US Secret Service along with a certain Dr. Mark Alter, leadership psychologist and wizard at “coaching” damaged CEOs into restoring their acumen and performance. In this case, however, the patient is none other than President George W. Bush. Wareham’s 231-page book is a winner." –Jess Maghan / Christian Science Monitor.

About the Author

JOHN WAREHAM is an eminent leadership consultant, lecturer, and writer. He has authored several bestsellers, including Secrets of a Corporate Headhunter, Anatomy of Great Executive, and the lifechanger, How to Break Out of Prison. His novel, Chancey On Top, was ranked in The New York Observer as among the best novels ever.

He has published widely, including articles and Op Ed pieces for the New York Times and the Financial Review.

In addition to his corporate work, he is founder and president of The Eagles Foundation, a not-for-profit dedicated to developing leaders from within the prison population. He makes his home in New York.

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 399 KB
• Print Length: 237 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1566499542
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: Welcome Rain Publishers; Ist edition (January 20, 2009)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B001TK3M7S
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #448,947 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

John Wareham is a leadership psychologist, lecturer, writer, and poet whose work transcends genre. His latest work, Sonnets for Sinners, Everything One Needs to Know About Illicit Love, uses poems by classic and modern poets, to illustrate the perils of love-triangles. His prior work, a novel, The President's Therapist, as only fiction can, examines the troubled psyche of the 43rd United States President, George W. Bush. Earlier works include Secrets of a Corporate Headhunter, a popular business bestseller, The Anatomy of a Great Executive, a 13-language reference classic, How to Break Out of Prison, a life-changer, and Chancey On Top, a critically acclaimed novel that explores themes of leadership, love, and enlightenment.

John draws upon vast experience, having counseled top business leaders on three continents, and, at the other end of the social spectrum, transformed the lives of prison inmates in New York's toughest prisons. His firm, Wareham Associates, specializes in corporate leadership selection and development. He is also founder and chief executive of The Eagles Foundation of America, a non-profit organization dedicated to developing leaders within the prison population. He makes his home in New York.

Insight and wit hallmark his writing. "If I'd not entered the consulting world I flatter myself that I might have been a full time novelist," he says. "I wrote my first book to promote my firm. When it was nominated for a national award I got hooked on the process, and just kept on going. It was a treat to see my business books become bestsellers, and I also got a lot of pleasure from the reaction to How to Break Out of Prison. It was a challenge to write a cross-over self-development work for overachievers and prison inmates alike. It's always satisfying when people say that you helped them get what they want from life.

"All in all, however, I'm proudest of my novels, The President's Therapist and Chancey On Top, both of which chronicle the psychological journeys of flawed leaders. My publisher says the only good poet is a dead poet, but the chance to inject a little poetry into the passion seemed too good to miss, and I've been excited by the warm reaction of literary critics to this conceit. I was happy, too, with how both books played out. The test of a novel is credibility and a denouement that satifies and surprises the reader, and critics say I reached that lofty plateau. I just have to confess that, even to me, both endings came as shockers."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I couldn't put it down!, January 1, 2009

By 

Robert S. Babecki - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The President's Therapist (Hardcover)

As the administration of George W. Bush slips into history, many people are happy to be done with him. The man inspires vitriol as few can. One recalls Cindy Sheehan's media events outside his Crawford ranch during the summer of 2005 when each enunciation of his surname was a veritable expectoration. His almost unprecedented unpopularity reached its symbolic nadir with the November 2008 ballot initiative in California known as Proposition R which proposed to rename the City of San Francisco's Oceanside Water Treatment Plant after him. So to write a piece of historical fiction about him runs twin risks: to focus attention on a subject most people are only too eager to forget or to be seen as piling on long after the heavy hits have been made and the play has been whistled dead. I believe these reasons may dissuade readers from buying The President's Therapist and that would be a shame because it is a fascinating read without being tendentious or cruel.

In the beginning of the story the author engages our interest by introducing Dr. Alter, a sympathetic protagonist. In addition to being very good at what he does, he has also suffered two huge personal tragedies with grace. We like him and want him to succeed, but can he? He faces a tough challenge with a very brief opportunity to work the problem. So far we have an ordinary work of fiction, but then as Dr. Alter assembles the mosaic of Bush's life from pieces everyone knows and some that very few people know, we come to realize that we are reading something that goes far beyond mere storytelling. Through Dr. Alter's analysis the author leads us to see with startling clarity the culminating event of Mr. Bush's life. (It was not an election victory.) The truth of this insight gripped me, made me believe in Dr. Alter, and kept me turning pages to find out how the story will end.

I heartily recommend The President's Therapist. The psychological insights are profound and the story is well crafted. The dialogue always rings true; I could not help but hear George and Laura Bush speaking their lines as I read them. The author maintains dramatic tension throughout the plot, and this kept me reading until I had finished it in one sitting. Buy the book even if (especially if) you don't like George W. Bush.

44 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars advice that helps, January 18, 2009

By 

stewart mackay (new zealand) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The President's Therapist (Hardcover)

Multi-talented John Wareham, leadership counselor, writer, poet and sophisticated Freudian has created a self-help guide for presidents, or perhaps just for one. The President's Therapist, an in-depth examination of George W. Bush's travails--inner and outer--is wise and insightful. In spite of--or perhaps because of--being a compassionate, apolitical study of W, the work is ultimately devastating--and, of all the Bush books, the most informative so far. Wareham reveals a deeply troubled individual who never left childhood: a boy who for sport blew up frogs with firecrackers; a man, (allegedly, deeply religious) who chose to start a mindless game of "shock and awe" that sent 4000 young U.S. soldiers--and countless Iraqi citizens--to their deaths; a born-again Christian proud to be semi-literate. Wareham's insights are based on succinctly stated scholarly searching and researching, a meticulous trolling of the disconnections of W's words and deeds. We watch in awe, as Wareham brilliantly and gently holds up mirror in which the naked cowboy suddenly catches sight of his own impotence. Along with W, we are shown precisely how and why he handled his role so badly. As noted, Wareham is a savvy Freudian analyst, so be prepared for passages that reference that theoretical framework. Readers hoping for a full color portrait will be gratified. This work is lucid, honest and laced with a darkly wicked wit reminiscent of Truman Capote's "non-fiction novel", In Cold Blood. In this case, however, using novelistic license, and his alter-ego self in the form of the fictional Dr. Mark Alter, Wareham delivers empathetic, authentic insight into W's otherwise inexplicable mix of fundamentalism, cockiness, truculence, didacticism, obsequiousness--and alcoholism. Of particular interest is how Wareham characterizes much of the American public and media as enablers, responding as children to an alcoholic parent. Dr. Alter's encounters with Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove--and some delicious marital counseling sessions with Laura Bush--offer even more chilling insights. In all, The President's Therapist is a heady confection of piercing insight and black humor that presents the reader with a sometimes frightening but always tempting cocktail from which every truth-seeker of should drain the last drop

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "WHAT IF" SCENARIO WRAPPED IN LAYERS OF REALITY, December 29, 2008

By 

Jesse L. Maghan (Chester, Connecticut USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The President's Therapist (Hardcover)

The PRESIDENT'S THERAPIST
(And the secret intervention to treat the alcoholism of GEORGE W. BUSH)
John Wareham - Welcome Rain Publishers, New York, 2008

John Wareham's staging of a "what if" scenario, wrapped in layers of reality offers an unnerving "case study" of alcoholism in the White House. We enter into a series of psychological and forensic intelligence forays engendered by the U.S. Secret Service along with a certain Dr. Mark Alter, leadership psychologist and wizard at "coaching" damaged C.E.O.s into restoring their acumen and performance, with the "patient" being none other than President George W. Bush. It gets even better. We become a fly-on-the-wall in Dick Cheney's office; the private quarters of the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas; and, within the ranks of the president's high echelon secret service agents. Like a calculated hornet's nest, the movements of all these characters are fine tuned into a plot in which the restorative treatment expertise of Dr. Alter circuitously sways President Bush into writing an EXECUTIVE ORDER constituting a global message of apology for the war in Iraq and an announcement of the immediate withdrawal of all troops. (I will leave the fate of Dr. Alter to you). This striking possibility theory classic will leave the reader roiling in a rapture of the truth and the comics. Even those Bushwhacked among us will find this book offering an antidote to the nightmare of the Bush years. Moreover, Wareham has deployed a new generation version of Keats' 1817 perspective of negative capability now so popular in today's leadership training. Eureka! The anxious phantoms that provoke our intuition are not foes but friends after all. Like the missing final piece to a puzzle, Wareham's 231-page bonzer will continue to delight your future parlor games. I would further submit that, The President's Therapist, is one hell of a collector's item

Jess Maghan, PhD
Professor and Director
Forum for Comparative Correction
Chester, CT - December 29, 2008