Charlie Savage - Takeover: The Return of The Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy

Selected by Esquire as one of the years five best reads

Selected by Slate as one of the years best books

Savage has all the goods, with a real narrative flair and deep, factual detail that prompts alternate bouts of despair and rage at what has been done to American honor and the rule of law these past few years. Do yourself a favor: Read the book.

Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic

Astute and harrowing. A book that is important reading for anyone interested in how the current administration has amped up presidential power while trying to undermine Congresss powers of oversight and the independence of the judiciary. This volume is distinguished by [the authors] ability to pull together myriad story lines into a succinct, overarching narrative that is energized by [his] own legal legwork and interviews with key figures. Mr. Savage not only situates moves made by the current administration in historical perspective with earlier assertions of unilateral presidential power, but also shrewdly assesses those moves in terms of mainstream constitutional scholarship. At the end of this chilling volume Mr. Savage offers a concise and powerful conclusion: The expansive presidential powers claimed and exercised by the Bush-Cheney White House are now an immutable part of American historynot controversies but facts. The importance of such precedents is difficult to overstate.

Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

Scrupulously researched.

Christopher Dickey, Newsweek

In his illuminating and biting new book, Charlie Savage shows how Cheney has emerged as Bushs Richelieu, the most powerful vice president in history.

James Bamford, Washington Post Book World

A compelling tale that examines Bushs and especially Cheneys apparent obsession to expand the limits of presidential power to near-monarchical control. Savage presents explanations that have been previously missing in political discourse. Takeover, written clearly and documented meticulously, will doubtless appeal to the Jon Stewart Daily Show crowd, providing yet another rallying cry to opponents of the Bush administration.

Dinesh Ramde, Associated Press

A sobering and significant assessment of what the Bush-Cheney administration has done to the system of checks and balances so crucial to our constitutional democracy.

Laurence H. Tribe, Carl M. Loeb University Professor, Harvard Law School

This sadly comprehensive masterpiece spares nobody in providing the context for what the Bush administration has been after. Read it and realize that, in his careful, quiet way, Charlie Savage has described a revolution no less real than the one John Reed once watched in Moscow.

Charles P. Pierce, Esquire

Takeover reads like a thriller because it is one: the story of Dick Cheney and his hapless boss pushing the presidency off its constitutional foundation.

John W. Dean, former Nixon White House counsel and author of Worse than Watergate

Time was, conservatives relished their role as Americas designated worriers about concentrated and unchecked government power, especially in the uniquely potent office of the presidency. As Charlie Savage demonstrates, there are large new reasons for worrying. With meticulous reporting and lucid explanations of audacious theories invented to justify novel presidential powers, Savage identifies a growing, and dangerous, constitutional imbalance.

George F. Will

Charlie Savage depicts a presidency on steroids, pumped up by Vice President Dick Cheney. Savage has a real gift for amassing detail so as to reveal the thread that connects separate news stories. He is particularly good on the subject for which he won a Pulitzer Prize: presidential signing statements. Savage deftly lays out the significance of this shift: Bush has used signing statements as a stealth line-item veto and along the way explicitly augmented his own powers.

Emily Bazelon, New York Times Book Review

In the days of Vietnam, Americans could watch on their television screens what was happening in the jungles overseas, but only with the passage of time did they see that a second, secret war was being waged here at homean assault upon the constitutional order. In the end, the attacks on the rule of law became as dangerous to the nation as the quagmire on the battlefield. Are we witnessing history repeating itself today? Not exactly. George W. Bush is no Richard Nixon. But there are enough parallels between then and now that unless we pay close attention, we could badly damage our historic system of governance.

That warning emanates loud and clear from a spate of new books on the way the Bush-Cheney administrationlargely out of the public eyehas seized upon the war on terror to drive an unprecedented expansion in the powers of the presidency. The best and most comprehensive of the new works is Charlie Savages Takeover.

David Gergen, Boston Globe

A serious and scathing indictment of the hidden agenda of the Bush administration.

Glenn C. Altschuler, Baltimore Sun

Takeover shines much-needed light on how the notion of the rule of law has changed so dramatically in America, and why it has happened with so little comment.

Dahlia Lithwick, Slate

Until Takeover, no one has pieced together in such readable prose the systematic effort at constitutional revolution pressed by the Bush-Cheney administration since September 11. With this definitive account, a prizewinning journalist paints a chilling vision of an Imperial Vice-Presidency and the officials who built it. You will not put this book down until Savage snaps the last piece of the puzzle into place.

Harold Hongju Koh, Dean, Yale Law School, and former Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights

The past couple of years have seen a deluge of books taking on the Bush administration and its dismal legacy. The subject is certainly inexhaustible, but it raises the possibility of outrage fatigue setting in. It would be unfortunate if Charlie Savages