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Allen Drury

Advise and Consent Hardcover – December 1, 1991

by Allen Drury (Author)

128 ratings

Book 1 of 6 in the Advise and Consent Series

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Product details

Hardcover
Publisher: Buccaneer Books (December 1, 1991)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1568490607
ISBN-13: 978-1568490601
Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.5 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
Customer Reviews: 113 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,015,687 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #805858 in Literature & Fiction (Books)

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Advise & Consent - still a political page turner.

Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Advise & Consent is the political novel and was the political novel of the year in 1959 winning a Pulitzer Price for is author Allen Drury.
A confession: I read this book when I was 12 or 13 years old and, interesting enough, remembered enough of it that the characters and situations remained in mind. Yet I thought I would give it a chance again after more than 56 years.
Essentially, the plot revolves around the nomination by the President of a leftish professor for the position of Secretary of State and the process of confirmation in the Senate.
The plot describes recognizable politicians or politicians with recognizable qualities engaged in a process in a very different Senate and a very different age. In that sense the novel is both archaic and a window on a world that no longer exists - both better and worse - with a Southern Democratic Racist Senator can be portrayed as sympathetic; Democrats and Republicans worked together; Senators were subject to internal discipline; and deals were cut.
However, this description does not give this fast paced engaging story its due even today.
Once picked up, you will not be able to stop turning the pages.

15 people found this helpful

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N. H.

The audio version with the narrator’s excellent job on creating the characters is perfect.

Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 2016

Format: Audible AudiobookVerified Purchase

Advise and Consent
Written by: Allen Drury
Narrated by: Allan Robertson
Length: 33 hrs and 17 mins
Series: Advise and Consent, Book 1
Unabridged Audiobook
Release Date:05-13-15
Publisher: ListenUp Audiobooks

When I was a teen in the 1970’s, and reading everything I could get my hands on, my mother suggested Advise and Consent by Allan Drury. I did not pick it up until I was 53 years old and my mother had been gone twenty-seven years. Mom, you were right. It is a fantastic book and well worth reading over and over.

The audiobook, narrated by Allan Robertson, is over 33 hours long. I was very impressed by the end of the first hour. Allan Robertson does a fantastic job narrating this book. His cast of characters range from the President to Senators from multiple states and regions to women. It was easy to hear which character was speaking. Mr. Robertson gave them individual, recognizable and authentic voices. No easy task with a book that involves so many characters.

The book itself, written in 1959, is a political thriller. It is also a very accurate look at how things get done in Washington behind the scene. The author gets it right how most of the work is done in committee and caucus meetings. Before the bill ever hits the full Senate, it has already gone through countless hours of negotiation. While this may sound boring, Drury makes it suspenseful and exciting.

The main plot of the story is the Senate deciding whether or not to confirm the President’s candidate for Secretary of State. Of all the cabinet positions, Secretary of State is the most visible and career enhancing. Several main characters are opposed to the nominee from the beginning, either through personal conflicts or ideological ones. When allegations arise that the nominee has communist sympathies (remember this is 1959 and there was still a very real Cold War with the USSR), the majority party is faced with the choice of doing what their party leader, the President, wants or doing what they feel is right for the country. Backroom deals and blackmail soon become the currency of securing the needed votes. It is still very relevant to the reader in 2016. The USSR may be gone into the history books, but the threats, perceived or real, to our country still exist.

The writing is excellent. One of my favorite quotes so far is, "who will do what and why, all the web of interlocking interests and desires and ambitions and arrangements that always lies behind the simple ultimate, final statement, 'The Senate voted today-." I love this one because it is so true. By the time the news reports what the Senate voted on, so much has happened to create those words. Another great quote is when the President is thinking about his mistake in supporting a Senator who is dishonest and power hungry. The President thinks, “He suspects he has created a baby Moloch who will continue to demand sacrifices.”

I highly recommend Advise and Consent. The audio version with the narrator’s excellent job on creating the characters is perfect. I just purchased the second book (Kindle and audio versions) in the series.

Story (Plot) 5
Performance 5
Production Quality 5
Attention Holding 5

I received Advise and Consent provided from Audiobook Jukebox in exchange for a fair review.

11 people found this helpful

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March boy

Truly one of the most powerful and emotionally gripping books I’ve ever read.

Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Warning: If you haven’t read the book or seen the film, don’t read this review because it will contain spoilers.

I was very impressed with Otto Preminger’s 1962 film Advise and Consent because of the careful, sensitive and intelligent way it treated the subject of politics and how it conveyed that the men behind the lofty positions are ordinary people, just like us with their share of easy and hard cards in life as well as strengths and weaknesses. I knew from research that the book by Allen Drury won the Pulitzer Prize of 1960 and since it was on my college library’s shelf, I decided to give it a shot. What I got was one of those sobering books that just socks you in the gut and leaves you pondering over issues and consequences that never seem to leave your mind afterwards.

Of course, every book is better than the movie but that is simply because film and literature are completely different mediums. The purpose of a book is to expound and cram every little detail possible while the purpose of film is to summarize the basic plot.
Here are the main differences:

1. In the movie, only Senator Fred van Ackerman blackmails Brigham Anderson. In the book, Bob Munson, Robert Leffingwell, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the President himself are all in on it.

2. In the movie, there are scenes in the slums of a big city where Brigham is looking for his former “best-friend-of-friends” in the army, Raymond Shaff. He catches him in an undercover minority group bar, obviously implying that Raymond is still living in sin. In the book, though, it’s implied Raymond is tormented by what he enticed Brig to do when they met in Hawaii during World War Two and has spent the past fifteen years trying to clean up his life just like Brig. The government men come knocking on his door in Indiana demanding he confirm the story about them. When he refuses they offer him money and since he is poor and out of a job he feels like he has no choice. At the end of Book Three, when Fred van Ackerman announces their story on television, Ray calls Brig up in tears and begs his forgiveness and they reconcile. Shortly afterwards, he commits suicide by jumping off a bridge. If you don’t cry reading this part of the book, I’d think something was wrong with you.

3. A fourth book is devoted to a senator named Orrin Knox who gives an impassioned eleventh hour speech to the President and the senate on how there are things America has stood for that will never change such as:

a. Ways of dealing with people that are decent, honest, honorable and just.
b. Kindness, forgiveness and tolerance towards our fellow man in all of his shortcomings and bearing in mind ONE'S OWN SHORTCOMINGS AS WELL.

The President offers Orrin a large sum of money for his next Presidential campaign if he will vote for Leffingwell for Secretary of State but Orrin refuses because he is too noble to accept a bribe. In the movie, Orrin is merely a cameo appearance.

In many ways, Advise and Consent is like the more gritty, realistic version of Mr. Smith goes to Washington. (1939)

1. The “good guys” like Jefferson Smith/Brigham Anderson don’t always win because they are not merely fighting a couple of “bad apples” in a fundamentally good and clean government—blackmail, fraud, slander, bribery, etc.) is just the way Washington works and the corrupt politicians often do succeed in bringing about bad outcomes.

2. The young, idealistic “rookie” senator (Jefferson Smith/Brigham Anderson) does not always come out on top and sometimes even the most decent, good-hearted and honorable people have a skeleton or two because every man has his Achilles' heel.

3. People are occasionally caught and expelled from the government for corruption but they never indict themselves in such a dramatic fashion at the end like Thomas Paine in Mr. Smith goes to Washington.

Bob Munson is close friends with Brigham Anderson and his family but has been steeped in politics for twenty years or so and chosen to associate with corrupt types like the President and Fred van Ackerman that his sense of right and wrong has been addled (again just like Thomas Paine) and he allows himself to be deluded into taking part in the blackmail to keep Brig in line with voting for the nominee for Secretary of State, Mr. Leffingwell.

One of my favorite parts is where the President demands Bob Munson show the picture of Brig and Ray and the letter Brig wrote begging Ray to let "bygones be bygones."

“I haven’t got it.” Says Bob nervously.

“OH NO.” says the President. “Oh no. YOU’VE GOT IT and the reason you’ve got it is that YOU’VE KNOWN subconsciously ALL ALONG that you WERE going to give it to me.”

And in the split second that Bob could have torn it up, he instead gives it to the President. It’s one of the most powerful scenes of the book because it shows that the President knew Bob BETTER THAN BOB KNEW HIMSELF--that Bob was spineless and pliable and could be easily reduced to his hatchet man.

“The Majority Leader felt for one wild second that he should turn and run, that he was so close to the absolute essence of the American Presidency, in the presence of a dedication so severe, so lonely and so terrible, so utterly removed from the normal morality that holds society together, that he should flee from it before the revelation proved too shattering and some great and dreadful damage was done to Brig, to him, to the President, the country and the world. But men do not often act on such impulses which are immediately thwarted by reminders that this is the workaday world, after all, and here they are, after all, and such gestures would be completely irrational, after all, and what in @#!*% are they thinking about, after all, and so they do not do them.”

The President and Fred van Ackerman confront Brig with the blackmail weapon and demand he vote for Robert Leffingwell or else. But Brig cannot bring himself to vote for Leffingwell, since he has proof that Leffingwell lied in a Foreign Relations Committee hearing when allegations were brought against him for being a Communist. Brig already has ONE BIG CROSS to carry for fifteen years and caving in against his conscience just to save his skin would give him SOMETHING MORE to live with for the rest of his life. Paralyzed with fear that his wife will take their child and leave him even though his wartime rendezvous happened LONG BEFORE HE MET HER, he shoots himself in the head. He has tried so hard to redeem himself, clean up his life and become a normal person by being a strong, devoted husband and father but now it all has crumbled into dust and ALL JUST BECAUSE a few greedy politicians HAD TO HAVE THEIR WAY.

Bob will never forgive himself for selling out his best friend for the sake of political gain. For the rest of his life he will ask himself why he didn’t tear up the picture and letter while he had the chance.

It is a very compelling twist because in the first two parts of the book, we think Fred van Ackerman (who has breathed venomous threats towards Brig even before Brig’s tired old sin came to his knowledge) is the demented monster while Bob Munson is the voice of peace and reason in the eye of the storm only to find out too late that the all-noble Munson is not so noble after all.

As Benjamin Franklin put it “An open foe may prove a curse but a pretended friend is MUCH WORSE.”

All in all, a truly outstanding book that presents the world of politics in a very realistic manner and tells the story of the absolute worst of human nature.

7 people found this helpful

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Very relevant right now

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 13, 2019

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This book gives an enthralling picture of the workings of the US Senate at a time when the Cold War was seen to be a big threat to the USA. Written with an eye for the ridiculous as well as the political drama, its as relevant today as it was back then

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glory

The best novel about American politics ever written in my view

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 13, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

The best novel about American politics ever written in my view. Have seen the film numerous times and love it but the book is, of course, more in-depth. As an American it rings true particularly how dirty American politics can get. This is a re-read for me though I originally read it over 50 years ago, together with the 3 further novels in the series. I enjoyed it as much the second time as the first. Would highly recommend.

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Jmb

A fascinating tale of political intrigue

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 3, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

While this book was written more than 50 years ago, it is still extremely relevant. A gripping read that is highly recommended.

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vee

Houses of cards

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 17, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Intelligent witty well written and has stood the test of time.

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Douglas McWilliams

The best Washington Novel ever

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 26, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Probably the best ever novel written about politics in Washington and one of the best about politics in any country. Pity the bipartisan times that it describes are history now. A great read.

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Peter R. Flounders

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 8, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

5 Stars decades ago. Nothing's changed

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Tricky Micky

A great read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 5, 2015

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A most enjoyable read. Characters were absolutely believable even the nasty ones were despicable but entertaining. Now four the next book.

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s taylor

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 11, 2015

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Efficient Dispatch and Delivery from USA

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 4, 2014

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I first read this book as a teenager over 50 years ago. Have loved rereading it and will move on to the rest in the series.

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Gianluca Carpiceci

More subtle and sohpisticated than House of Cards

Reviewed in Italy on May 18, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This is a loooong book, long and slow: you can assume the first third is just about setting the background, the second third starts seeing some seeds of action and only in the last third the novel picks up and becomes really engaging. But, if you have the patience to go through the lengthy and slow initial parts, the book can be rewarding.
On a literary level, the book is clearly a son of its times: the prose is very slow, enjoying itself in describing every minutiae in detail; the characters comes out as rather simple, 1-D, 2-D at best, but lacking in most cases depth and complexity, they don't see to know what subtlety is and, as a result of all this, often times they fall into clichés (plus, the author assigns a verbal tic - that of repeating the same exclamation two or three times in a row in the same sentence - to several characters, which contributed to flatten everybody's personality); moreover, inevitably enough, the society it portrays is one that has disappeared decades ago, and reading the dialogues - especially those in social situations - you feel like you are watching an episode of the Debbie Reynolds Show.
Since when the book was written, the man has conquered the moon, the Berlin wall has fallen, Communism has disappeared from the face of the earth, the internet and digital era have seen their dawn and rise, the Simpsons have replaced the Debbie Reynolds Show; yet, the political world, its dynamics, its psychology is still the same as 6 decades ago. You could easily replace the names of the characters, refresh a bit the prose and you would have a novel on politics of the XXIst century.
Whether, this is depressing, funny or just interesting, I leave it to personal reflexion; but that is one of the values of this book in my view.
Personally I don't think the book has an educational role in explaining the functioning of the Senate and of politics in general; maybe this was the case when the book was published, but I believe the awareness of how these things function (from all the work going on at committee level, the negotiations, the lobbying, the blackmailing, etc) is pretty high nowadays; with that said, I found the book of higher quality than House of Cards.

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Roy Krahn

A Lesson For Congress

Reviewed in Canada on October 7, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

One of the great novels on the machinations of the American Congress. A real page turner.

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Arindam Bhattacharjee

Awesome

Reviewed in India on September 3, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Remarkable & insightful.It presents a cynical view of contemporary politics.

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Victor Bourne

Don't play it again, Uncle Sam

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 2, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I read this book some time in the Sixties, and thought it a good read.
Having now looked at it again, my opinion has changed completely. I now find it very poorly written, long-winded, and with an underlying ethos strongly reminiscent of the Saturday Evening Post/Norman Rockwell falsely cosy view of the US.
Drury was a staunch conservative, and it shows. I cannot abide his weltanschauung.

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