What It Takes

The Way to the White House

By: Richard Ben Cramer

Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright

An American Iliad in the guise of contemporary political reportage, What It Takes penetrates the mystery at the heart of all presidential campaigns: How do presumably ordinary people acquire that mixture of ambition, stamina, and pure shamelessness that makes a true candidate?

As he recounts the frenzied course of the 1988 presidential race - and scours the psyches of contenders from George Bush and Robert Dole to Michael Dukakis and Gary Hart - Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Richard Ben Cramer comes up with the answers, in a book that is vast, exhaustively researched, exhilarating, and sometimes appalling in its revelations.

©1992 Richard Ben Cramer (P)2020 Tantor

Over the top narration

Because of the narration, I'm not sure if I liked the book all that much. 54 hours and the narration is SLOW! Worse than that, though, is how the narrator tries to imitate (badly) different speakers. Fake laughs, accents, gender tones, etc. Just read it straight, like we do in our heads, and the overall experience would be MUCH better. It takes someone with some very good acting chops to pull that sort of narration off (e.g. Ray Porter in Michael Herr's "Dispatches"). I've heard worse than this, but not much worse . . . especially for such a long book. I listened to the whole thing, and many times found it excruciating.

Great book and an AMAZING performance.

Great book and an AMAZING performance. Truly a Herculean feat to manage this many characters and voices as ably as Sellon-Wright did.

Political classic

This is a must read/listen for any political or historical enthusiast! A
Phenomenal deep dive into the 1988 presidential election.

A world class political saga

What an epic undertaking. "What it Takes" is an unrivaled chronicle of the 1988 presidential election and the 6 prominent candidates that take part in it. You will learn the stories of every one of those men with excruciating detail from childhood through to the months following the general election. This text has unparalleled insight into the political machines each candidate wielded in their careers, before and during the 1988 cycle. Truly a massive undertaking executed with precision and care. I was sad to hear the end credits, so immersed in the storytelling I was. I hope you enjoy it too.

The detail is insane

Robert Caro is the gold standard and RBC might have surpassed. One of, if not the, best political non-fiction I’ve ever read.