This analysis of the Bush administration reveals how the president willingly ceded power to a calculating vice president—with disastrous consequences. Under the relatively inexperienced president George W. Bush, Dick Cheney was perhaps the most powerful vice president in American history. In this excellently documented work, presidential scholar Shirley Anne Warshaw debunks the popular myth that Bush’s authority was hijacked or stolen. Instead, drawing on extensive research as well as personal interviews with White House Staffers and Washington insiders, she demonstrates how Bush and Cheney operated as nothing less than co-presidents. While Bush focused on building what he called a moral and civil society, anchored by a war on science and by the proliferation of faith-based programs, he allowed Cheney to lead in business and foreign policy. Warshaw highlights Cheney’s decades-long career in Washington and his familiarity with its inner workings to present a complete picture of this calculating political powerhouse. From Cheney’s unprecedented merging of presidential and vice-presidential authority to his abhorrence of what he deemed congressional interference, Warshaw paints an intriguing, and at times frightening, portrait.

In Days of Fire, Peter Baker, Chief White House Correspondent for The New York Times, takes us on a gripping and intimate journey through the eight years of the Bush and Cheney administration in a tour-de-force narrative of a dramatic and controversial presidency. Theirs was the most captivating American political partnership since Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger: a bold and untested president and his seasoned, relentless vice president. Confronted by one crisis after another, they struggled to protect the country, remake the world, and define their own relationship along the way. In Days of Fire, Peter Baker chronicles the history of the most consequential presidency in modern times through the prism of its two most compelling characters, capturing the elusive and shifting alliance of George Walker Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney as no historian has done before. He brings to life with in-the-room immediacy all the drama of an era marked by devastating terror attacks, the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, and financial collapse. The real story of Bush and Cheney is a far more fascinating tale than the familiar suspicion that Cheney was the power behind the throne. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with key players, and thousands of pages of never-released notes, memos, and other internal documents, Baker paints a riveting portrait of a partnership that evolved dramatically over time, from the early days when Bush leaned on Cheney, making him the most influential vice president in history, to their final hours, when the two had grown so far apart they were clashing in the West Wing. Together and separately, they were tested as no other president and vice president have been, first on a bright September morning, an unforgettable “day of fire” just months into the presidency, and on countless days of fire over the course of eight tumultuous years. Days of Fire is a monumental and definitive work that will rank with the best of presidential histories. As absorbing as a thriller, it is eye-opening and essential reading.

The landmark exposé of the most powerful and secretive vice president in American history Barton Gellman shared the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for a keen-edged reckoning with Dick Cheney's domestic agenda in The Washington Post. In Angler, Gellman goes far beyond that series to take on the full scope of Cheney's work and its consequences, including his hidden role in the Bush administration's most fateful choices in war: shifting focus from al Qaeda to Iraq, unleashing the National Security Agency to spy at home, and promoting cruel and inhumane methods of interrogation. Packed with fresh insights and untold stories, Gellman parts the curtains of secrecy to show how the vice president operated and what he wrought. An inspiration for the film Vice, starring Christian Bale, Amy Adams, and Steve Carrell.

This brilliantly argued and wonderfully written collection by twenty-two of the best political analysts in the US analyzes the extraordinary and unprecedented threat the White House and its allies present to civil liberties, civil rights, the Constitution, international law, and the future of the planet. Impeach the President unearths the stories behind election fraud in 2000 and 2004, the overt lies used to justify pre-emptive war on Iraq, the extensive, ongoing commission of war crimes and torture, the tragic failures in the lead-up to and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and lesser-known but equally alarming offences of propaganda and disinformation, illegal spying, environmental destruction, and the violation of the separation of church and state. Loo and Phillips chillingly reveal the full threat behind the radical right-wing force that has taken over the world’s most powerful office.

The riveting, disturbing exposé of the vice president who co-opted executive control over the U.S. government and became the “shadow president” of the George W. Bush administration. Dick Cheney was the most powerful yet most unpopular vice president in U.S. history. He thrived alongside a president who had little interest in policy and limited experience in the ways of Washington. Yet Cheney’s quiet, steady rise to prominence over a span of three decades occurred largely behind the scenes. He survived the collapse of the Nixon presidency, finding a position in the administration of Gerald Ford. He was then elected to the House of Representatives, and later he earned a spot in the cabinet of the first Bush presidency. But when he became George W. Bush’s running mate, Cheney reached a new level of influence. From engineering his own selection as vice president to his support of policies allowing torture as a permissible weapon in the “war on terror,” Cheney steered America consistently rightward. In Vice, veteran reporters Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein uncover startling revelations, including • the extraordinary intimidation of CIA officials by a vice president bent on obtaining intelligence to support a foregone conclusion: the invasion of Iraq • details on Cheney’s secret energy task force, including his meeting with Enron chief Ken Lay months before Lay was indicted—and how Cheney went to court to erode the powers of Congress • how Cheney helped to kill 2003 diplomatic overtures from Iran to discuss concessions on its nuclear program and policy toward Israel • Cheney’s role in engineering multibillion-dollar military contracts in Iraq to benefit Halliburton, the company he once ran In the words of one of Cheney’s colleagues from the House: “Dick keeps his own counsel. He’s completely in control. He’s completely sure of himself in everything he does. It’s what got him to where he is today: the most powerful vice president to ever hold office. It’s also what’s bringing about his downfall.”

During a forty-year career in politics, Vice President Dick Cheney has been involved in some of the most consequential decisions in recent American history. He was one of a few select advisers in the room when President Gerald Ford decided to declare an end to the Vietnam War. Nearly thirty years later, from the presidential bunker below the White House in the moments immediately following the attacks of September 11, 2001, he helped shape the response: America's global war on terror. Yet for all of his influence, the world knows very little about Dick Cheney. The most powerful vice president in U.S. history has also been the most secretive and guarded of all public officials. "Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?" Cheney asked rhetorically in 2004. "It's a nice way to operate, actually." Now, in Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President, New York Times bestselling author and Weekly Standard senior writer Stephen F. Hayes offers readers a groundbreaking view into the world of this most enigmatic man. Having had exclusive access to Cheney himself, Hayes draws upon hundreds of interviews with the vice president, his boyhood friends, political mentors, family members, reticent staffers, and senior Bush administration officials, to deliver a comprehensive portrait of one of the most important political figures in modern times. The wide range of topics Hayes covers includes Cheney's withdrawal from Yale; his early run-ins with the law; the incident that almost got him blackballed from working in the Ford White House; his meteoric rise to congressional leadership; his opposition to removing Saddam Hussein from power after the first Gulf War; the solo, cross-country drive he took after leaving the Pentagon; his selection as Bush's running mate; his commanding performance on 9/11; the aggressive intelligence and interrogation measures he pushed in the aftermath of those attacks; the necessity of the Iraq War; the consequences of mistakes made during and after that war; and intelligence battles with the CIA and their lasting effects. With exhaustive reporting, Hayes shines a light into the shadows of the Bush administration and finds a very different Dick Cheney from the one America thinks it knows.

President George W. Bush and Vice President Cheney deceived Congress and the people to drive us into a war in Iraq; they claimed the right to wiretap illegally and to eavesdrop on citizens; and they authorized torture, unilaterally upending laws and violating international treaty obligations. Yet, both Bush and Cheney are audaciously unapologetic about their crimes. In his recent memoir, President Bush makes no apologies for his decision to start a war in Iraq, though no weapons of mass destruction, the ostensible reason for the war, were found there. Regarding his approval of the waterboarding form of torture, he proudly said, "Damn right." Time and again throughout his term, President Bush proclaimed sternly "we do not torture." However, the 2009 release of secret torture documents revealed otherwise. The documents paint a bleak picture of the involvement of President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and top administration officials in unleashing, sanctioning, and conspiring in the infliction of torture. Holtzman and Cooper cite unlawful torture as only one of the many ways that the Bush-Cheney administration transgressed the law, trampled the Constitution, and harmed the image of the United States around the world. Bush and Cheney, the authors argue, authorized and condoned behavior and practices that starkly violate human-rights principles and the rights of American citizens. Congress chose not to pursue impeachment, despite multitudes of citizens advocating for it, Holtzman and Cooper among them. New revelations, however, about the extent and depth of their crimes make the need for accountability imperative. Holtzman posits that the failure to indict, prosecute, or hold accountable officials at the highest level makes a mockery of U.S. law and sets frightening precedents. With Holtzman's legal expertise and Cooper's bold journalism, Cheating Justice explains why the nation needs to address the Bush-Cheney administration's abuse of power and manipulation of the law. As a member of Congress and part of the committee that investigated and held hearings on the conduct of President Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal, Elizabeth Holtzman balks at Bush's echo of Nixon's claim that he was acting in the interest of national security. Using Watergate-era reforms as a model, Holtzman details the steps necessary to undo the damage that the Bush-Cheney administration inflicted and explains how we can establish new protections that will block future presidents from similarly abusing the law. Cheating Justice is a call to empower the American people, and a firm insistence that the nation's leaders are not above the law.

A new book by former Vice President and #1 New York Times bestselling author Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney.

For the past seven yearsThe New York Review of Bookshas critically examined the Bush administration’s policies at home and abroad. In this collection of essays, nine of the Review’s contributors assess the human and political costs of the war on terror and the occupation of Iraq, and look ahead to the issues shaping the 2008 election campaign. The presidency of George W. Bush, as Jonathan Freedland noted, has created a near consensus that the “invasion of Iraq was a calamity” and has “reduced America’s standing in the world and made the United States less, not more secure.” Joan Didion described Vice President Dick Cheney as “the central player in the system of willed errors and reversals that is the Bush administration.” Peter Galbraith argued that from the beginning of the occupation of Iraq, Bush “facilitated the very event he warned would be a disastrous consequence of a US withdrawal from Iraq: the takeover of a large part of the country by an Iranian-backed militia.” As the presidential campaign got underway, Michael Tomasky explained that “despite Bush’s failures and the discrediting of Republican governance, there is every chance that the next Republican president, should the party’s nominee prevail...will be just as conservative as Bush has been—perhaps even more so.” And Frank Rich predicted that it would take the Democrats’ “full powers of self-immolation” to lose the White House in 2008. The Consequences to Comecontributors: Joan Didion, Joseph Lelyveld, Mark Danner, Peter Galbraith, Jonathan Freedland, Jonathan Raban, Frank Rich, Michael Tomasky, Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

DIVEssays that examine the Bush adminstration's deployment of feminist rhetoric and the effects of the administration's policies on women, feminism, and gender roles in the U.S./div