Alter Egos
Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the Twilight Struggle over American Power
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Narrated by:
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Jason Culp
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Mark Landler
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By:
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Mark Landler
About this listen
A deeply-reported, firsthand account of how Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have come to embody two competing visions for the role of the United States in the world - and what that means for the 2016 presidential election.
New York Times White House correspondent Mark Landler takes us behind the speeches and press conferences, to the Situation Room debates and picnic-table lunches, where Obama and Clinton honed their two competing worldviews: his, cautious, inward-looking, suffused with a sense of limits; hers, muscular, optimistic, unabashedly old-fashioned.
Alter Egos is about two ambitious political archrivals from very different backgrounds who became partners for a time, trailblazers who share a common sense of their historical destiny but who hold fundamentally different beliefs about how to project American power. With all the sweep of a grand history - and enlivened by an insider's access and plenty of news - Landler digs deep into the complex relationship between these two leaders and gives us a different way to think about Obama's legacy and Clinton's promise.
©2016 Mark Landler (P)2016 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
The Presidents Club was born at Eisenhower’s inauguration when Harry Truman and Herbert Hoover first conceived the idea. Over the years that followed - and to this day - the presidents relied on, misunderstood, sabotaged, and formed alliances with one another that changed history. The world’s most exclusive fraternity is a complicated place: its members are bound forever because they sat in the Oval Office and know its secrets, yet they are immortal rivals for history’s favor.
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Engaging subject, but fact-checking needed
- By loix on 04-25-12
By: Nancy Gibbs, and others
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The Hawk and the Dove
- Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War
- By: Nicholas Thompson
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 15 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Only two Americans held positions of great influence throughout the Cold War; ironically, they were the chief advocates for the opposing strategies for winning---and surviving---that harrowing conflict. Both men came to power during World War II, reached their professional peaks during the Cold War's most frightening moments, and fought epic political battles that spanned decades.
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Two outstanding people in the US Government
- By Nina Donnard on 11-05-09
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Known and Unknown
- A Memoir
- By: Donald Rumsfeld
- Narrated by: Donald Rumsfeld
- Length: 30 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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A powerful memoir from the late former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. With the same directness that defined his career in public service, Rumsfeld's memoir is filled with previously undisclosed details and insights about the Bush administration, 9/11, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It also features Rumsfeld's unique and often surprising observations on eight decades of history. Both a fascinating narrative and an unprecedented glimpse into history, Known and Unknown captures the legacy of one of the most influential men in public service.
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Inside view of five decades in politics
- By Brooks on 02-19-11
By: Donald Rumsfeld
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The War Within
- A Secret White House History 2006-2008
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrated by: Boyd Gaines
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Abridged
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As violence in Iraq reaches unnerving levels in 2006, a second front in the war rages at the highest levels of the Bush administration. With unparalleled intimacy and detail, Bob Woodward takes listeners deep inside the tensions, secret debates, unofficial back channels, distrust, and determination within the White House, Pentagon, State Department, intelligence agencies, and U.S. military headquarters in Iraq.
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Too short the story...
- By Mr. Miint on 10-21-08
By: Bob Woodward
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Berlin 1961
- Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth
- By: Frederick Kempe
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 20 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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A former Wall Street Journal editor and the current president and CEO of the Atlantic Council, Frederick Kempe draws on recently released documents and personal interviews to re-create the powder keg that was 1961 Berlin. In Cold War Berlin, the United States and the Soviet Union stand nose to nose, with the possibility of nuclear war just one misstep away.
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I am scared in retrospect
- By theenglishmajor on 06-26-11
By: Frederick Kempe
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The Netanyahu Years
- Translated by Ora Cummings
- By: Ben Caspit
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 17 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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A portrait of the current Israeli prime minister, one of Israel's more noticeable leaders in recent decades. Benjamin Netanyahu is currently serving his fourth term in office as prime minister of Israel, the longest serving prime minister in the country's history. Now Israeli journalist Ben Caspit puts Netanyahu's life under a magnifying glass, focusing on his last two terms in office.
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weak
- By kay on 06-11-18
By: Ben Caspit
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Hard Choices
- By: Hillary Rodham Clinton
- Narrated by: Kathleen Chalfant, Hillary Rodham Clinton
- Length: 26 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Hillary Rodham Clinton's inside account of the crises, choices, and challenges she faced during her four years as America's 67th Secretary of State, and how those experiences drive her view of the future. In the aftermath of her 2008 presidential run, she expected to return to representing New York in the United States Senate. To her surprise, her former rival for the Democratic Party nomination, newly elected President Barack Obama, asked her to serve in his administration as Secretary of State. This memoir is the story of the four extraordinary and historic years that followed.
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Senior Stateswoman in need of Editor
- By Cynthia on 07-20-14
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Reagan at Reykjavik
- Forty-Eight Hours That Ended the Cold War
- By: Ken Adelman
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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A dramatic account of the historic 1986 Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Iceland - the turning point in the Cold War - by Ken Adelman, Reagan's arms control director and a key player in that weekend's world-changing events. In October 1986, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met for a forty-eight-hour summit in Reykjavik, Iceland. Planned as a short gathering to outline future talks, the meeting quickly turned to major international issues, including SDI ("Star Wars") and the possibility of eliminating all nuclear weapons.
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Outstanding Tribute
- By MOV on 11-17-23
By: Ken Adelman
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The Wise Men
- Six Friends and the World They Made
- By: Evan Thomas, Walter Isaacson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Reese
- Length: 33 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Six close friends shaped the role their country would play in the dangerous years following World War II. They were the original best and brightest, whose towering intellects, outsize personalities, and dramatic actions would bring order to the postwar chaos, and whose strong response to Soviet expansionism would leave a legacy that dominates American policy to this day. In April 1945, they converged to advise an untutored new president, Harry Truman.
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Dull with poor narration
- By KD6161 on 03-31-17
By: Evan Thomas, and others
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Bibi
- By: Anshel Pfeffer
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 18 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Benjamin Netanyahu is embroiled in numerous scandals, all of his own making, and may soon be ousted from the office he has held longer than any prior Israeli prime minister outside of David Ben Gurion. But Bibi, as he is known by friend and foe alike, is no stranger to controversy. For many in Israel and elsewhere, he is an embarrassment, a threat to democracy, even a precursor to Donald Trump. He nevertheless continues to dominate Israeli public life - and he may yet survive his current crises, the most challenging of his career.
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Very biased.
- By Anonymous User on 10-14-22
By: Anshel Pfeffer
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The Gatekeepers
- How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency
- By: Chris Whipple
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The chiefs of staff, often referred to as "the gatekeepers", wield tremendous power in Washington and beyond; they decide who is allowed to see the president, negotiate with Congress to push POTUS's agenda, and - most crucially - enjoy unparalleled access to the leader of the free world. Through extensive, intimate interviews with 18 living chiefs (including Reince Priebus) and two former presidents, award-winning journalist and producer Chris Whipple pulls back the curtain on this unique fraternity. In doing so, he revises our understanding of presidential history.
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Interesting, but lacking in political objectivity
- By Stephen Watson on 09-04-17
By: Chris Whipple
What listeners say about Alter Egos
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Alnia Perpoz
- 05-26-16
A companion reader to Clinton's Hard Choices
Hillary's book is slightly better written and read because it benefits from details inaccessible to a journalist, even if he was in the state Dept. beat under Clinton. This book provides a third party perspective on her sometimes spinful boasts, without being critical.
The author's careful dance of not offending either politician sacrifices the point of view for the sake of neutrality.
Author is not a policy wonk, so no deep analysis here or anything you haven't already read in NYTimes plus Hard Choices.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Joanne
- 09-22-16
Rivals and Teammates
I only wish they were the leaders of the two parties instead of the extreme divisiveness of the Dems and the GOP. What an American story it would be to see party leaders working together across the aisle instead of the digging in of heels that gets us nowhere.
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- wallet lover
- 06-18-16
A must read for voting Americans
Don't pass this up because you're a republican or card caring Hillary or Obama hater. Worth the educational value alone, this book provides a reasonably unbiased insight to eight years of important policy and decision making regardless of which side of the fence you reside on the issues themselves.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Jean
- 07-14-16
Lots of Anecdotes
This book is an informative study of the relationship between Obama and Hillary Clinton. Mark Landler is the White House correspondent for the New York Times. His main question is: Would Hillary actually preside over a more robustly interventionist foreign policy than Obama? Or, is she simply adopting a hawkish viewpoint to swing voters?
Landler states there is no doubt tension exists between the two. There is a profound clash over foreign policy visions between them. When she was Secretary of State her requested aids were refused and she could never penetrate the Obama inner circle. Landler goes beyond the tracing of events to prove his thesis. In his view, Obama and Hillary “are more than just two of the most riveting political figures of our time. They are protagonists in a great debate over American power—one that will decide the direction the nation will take against the forces of disorder”. To me I do not think the difference is enormous between the two except Hillary maybe more of a pragmatist.
The book is well written and researched. Landler conducted many interviews as well as the usual basic data research. As a journalist he attempts to be neutral and just report his findings. The book does bring the reader into the inner circle of the Obama presidency.
Jason Culp does a good job narrating the book. Culp is a well know film and TV actor as well as a voice over artist and narrator of audiobooks.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Deb
- 10-12-16
Narrator
Riveting book on politics and diplomacy marred by narration. Please? do not attempt foreign accents.
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