A great book: Race of a lifetime.

I’m going to do something odd here. I’m going to recommend a book even though I’m only a third the way through it, but I’m enjoying it so much that I thought I might as well let it out there for you guys.

“Race of a lifetime” by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann tells the inside story of the 2008 US presidential campaign from all sides, and is, quite simply, one of the best inside accounts of an election campaign I have ever read. It manages to be highly readable, fast paced, full of juicy inside quotes and details and just enough gossip to make it as entertaining as it is informative. On top of that, it’s written in such a way that I think even a non-political junkie could enjoy it. This is the book, by the way, that the HBO movie “Game Change” staring Ed Harris and Julianne Moore was based on.

Is it slanted slightly? Hmm. Certainly, Obama comes out of it the best, and John Edwards and his wife come out of it as awful people, with Bill and Hillary as Democratic royalty who seem to be completely stunned by the Obama insurgency. 

I haven’t even got to the Republicans yet, and that was the bit that got all the publicity. But this is a great book.