Peter Beinart

We all know them: politicians' books that read as ifthey've been cobbled together from old speeches. TheGood Fight is as far from that as it is possible to get.In a voice that is flinty, real, and passion-filled, SenatorHarry Reid tells the tale of two places, intertwining his own story,particularly his early life of deep poverty in the tiny mining townof Searchlight, Nevada—"a place that boasted of thirteen brothelsand no churches"—with the cautionary tale of Washington,D.C.: "If I can do nothing greater in this book than explain thosetwo places to each other, then I will have done something important."Reid is inspired by obstacles. Brought up in a cabin withoutindoor plumbing, he hitchhiked forty-five miles across opendesert to high school. He worked full-time as a Capitol Hillpoliceman to get through law school, after the school refusedhim financial aid, telling him he wasn't cut out to be a lawyer. Ashead of the Nevada Gaming Commission, he led an unrelentingfight to clean up Las Vegas, despite four years of death threats—and much worse. And in Congress, Reid's spent more thantwenty-five years battling those who would take the country inthe wrong direction: "The radical ideologues degrade our government,so much so that when they are in charge of it, they donot know how to run it."And, always, it all comes back to Searchlight: "Who I amnow, and what I am doing now, began in that town, with thosepeople, in those mines." This book is the story of a man whoknows what a good fight is, because he has had to fight like hellfor everything his whole life. It is populated by a rich and raucouscast of great and failed men, eccentrics, visionaries, gangsters,and presidents who make up his life and times. And it is for allthose who not only like a good story, but wonder what we shoulddo now in America.

In The Icarus Syndrome, Peter Beinart tells a tale as old as the Greeks — a story about the seductions of success. Beinart describes Washington on the eve of three wars — World War One, Vietnam, and Iraq — three moments when American leaders decided they could remake the world in their image. Each time, leading intellectuals declared that history was over, and the spread of democracy was inevitable. Each time, a president held the nation in the palm of his hand. And each time, a war conceived in arrogance brought untold tragedy.In dazzling color, Beinart portrays three extraordinary generations: the progressives who took America into World War I, led by Woodrow Wilson, the lonely preacher's son who became the closest thing to a political messiah the world had ever seen. The Camelot intellectuals who took America into Vietnam, led by Lyndon Johnson, who lay awake at night after night shaking with fear that his countrymen considered him weak. And George W. Bush and the post-cold war neoconservatives, the romantic bullies who believed they could bludgeon the Middle East and liberate it at the same time. Like Icarus, each of these generations crafted "wings" — a theory about America's relationship to the world. They flapped carefully at first, but gradually lost their inhibitions until, giddy with success, they flew into the sun.But every era also brought new leaders and thinkers who found wisdom in pain. They reconciled American optimism — our belief that anything is possible — with the realities of a world that will never fully bend to our will. In their struggles lie the seeds of American renewal today. Based on years of research, The Icarus Syndrome is a provocative and strikingly original account of hubris in the American century — and how we learn from the tragedies that result.