This was an excellent book, based on Barton Gellman's Pulitzer Prize winning 2008 investigations and writings on National politics. As a Washington Post writer, Mr. Gellman had access to many in Cheney's inner circle and the Bush White House to put together this informative description of the Vice President's role in setting the tone and direction of the Administration. We've seen political cartoons over the past eight years with Dick Cheney as the ventriloquist, pulling the strings and putting words into the mouth of the Bush puppet sitting on his knee. A harsh depiction, perhaps, but as this book shows, there were some reasons for how that view became popular. How much of that stereotype was true, and how much was false was hard to know, until this book became available. This book answers a lot of those questions. It truly filled in a lot of gaps in the my understanding of the inner workings of the Bush Administration. Cheney had widely been reported to be the most powerful Vice President in American history. Few, if any, recent books explore the dynamics between the President and Vice President. Gellman does, and paints a clear picture of Cheney and his power, consistent with everything we've heard and read over these past eight years. The book also talks of other key members of Cheney's team, like David Addington, who was so central to many of the more unpopular and controversial initiatives of the Bush years. Gellman also points out some of the few in the Administration who were able to stand up to the powerful Cheney / Addington team such as Deputy Attorney General James Comey. (Comey was acting Attorney General who did not give in to the pressure from the White House to sign off on "illegal" spying when Ashcroft was hospitalized). If you're interested in understanding how Bush, who entered the Office as a Candidate envisioning policies such as "compassionate Conservatism", limiting global-warming, being a Uniter, championing Education reform and limited government, and then seemed to evolve into one of the Nation's most unpopular chief executives, should find this book very interesting. As Steve Clemons in the American Conservative stated, this is "an indispensable volume without which the Bush Presidency can't be understood".

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I didn't like this book because I like Dick Cheney, I liked it because it finally satisfied my curiousity about how things worked during the Bush/Cheney years. It was fascinating to read how Cheney, in true Machievellian fashion, used his knowledge of how government works -- gathered over years as an administration insider -- to move forward his own agenda, often without Bush's full understanding of what was going on. He was brilliant and masterful at manipulating information and people to get his policies adopted, without things being tracable to him. The book gives a clear sense of Cheney's motives and philosophies, and where he and Bush differed. He was brilliant, devious, secretive and powerful. Too bad his ideology was so negative. ( )

This detailed look at the Cheney vice-presidency comes across as a balanced, but damning, look at the consummate staffer's eight years as vice president of the United States. Some of what Gellman documents will surely provide fodder for later analysis, so this is a book well worth reading. ( )

The man is truly the Prince of Darkness. ( )

Largely a gossipy book focused on the personalities surrounding the Vice President. The author mentions the central, post-9/11 legal issues without seriously considering the different reasoning underlying the various viewpoints of those legal issues. The book was somewhat entertaining. ( )