Obama's Wars

Woodward’s method is to pile detail upon detail, noting the height and weight of almost everyone who walks into the Oval Office, but he avoids analysis or commentary. This approach can be infuriating – Christopher Hitchens famously described Woodward as “stenographer to the stars” – as

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can the author’s practice of reconstructing conversations he cannot have heard and even describing what his protagonists are thinking. “Any attribution of thoughts, conclusions or feelings to a person was obtained directly from that person, from notes or from a colleague whom the person told,” he says in a less-than-reassuring note to readers.

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