MixedThe Washington PostIf Barack Obama is a writer stuck inside a politician, Chris Matthews may be a politician stuck inside a writer ... history is not a roll-call, and a near-perfect attendance record at the major events of the past 50 years does not make a memoir. And the book, while capably written, offers neither new historical insight nor true personal intimacy. Reading it can feel like shuffling through a bunch of postcards from the past, pictures of famous monuments accompanied by a jotted note saying \'I was there!\' ... while Matthews proved an able historian in his three books about the Kennedys and one about political opponents Ronald Reagan and Thomas P. \'Tip\' O’Neill Jr., his memoir fails to convey the complexity and nuance of being a real person living through a historical time. The book seems to be written for political junkies like himself; it feels at times like a string of names and dates, descriptions of long-forgotten bills and long-gone political operators, a yearbook for Washington insiders, meant to be read index-first. The problem is that Matthews was often straddling the line between politics and journalism, as he suggests himself when he contemplates a 2010 run for Senate: \'How could I cover politics while at the same time preparing to jump into it myself?\' ... This is the great tension of Matthews’s life, one that has propelled his career and enlivened his show but hobbles this book. Although he was never successfully elected to office himself, it’s clear that Matthews is a political creature at heart. He has a politician’s recollection for obscure names and banal anecdotes, a relentless forward propulsion and limitless confidence, a firm grasp of the political upsides and downsides of any situation. He also has a politician’s lack of introspection, aversion to showing any weakness, and general lack of curiosity about anything unrelated to the machinations of power. The book reads like a 300-page stump speech in a one-man campaign to be elected Guy Who Knows the Most About Politics ... Despite Matthews’s repeated insistence that politics is all about \'personal connection,\' at nearly every turn he pivots away from private observations or intimate details and toward information that was already publicly known. The decades he spent behind the scenes in the 1970s and ’80s yield few new insights about the political history of that time, often focusing on obscure legislative maneuverings too outdated to be relevant to a 21st century audience. The anecdotes are toothless and largely flattering to the subject, making the reader wonder what kind of juicy details he’s picked up after a lifetime in politics that he’s keeping to himself ... he seems so wrapped up in the minutiae of his own career that he often misses the more interesting narratives in his path ... It’s the love of the game that has animated Chris Matthews’s life and career, and This Country is more about the players’ vital stats and scores than the feeling in the stands. But that political game — hardball — has changed. The rules are different now, and so are the stakes. Matthews knows this but, in typical fashion, he steers clear of any real soul-searching over his sudden departure from television ... His book is best read as a snapshot of a certain kind of player in a certain kind of game. He saw his share of plays, he knows the strategy better than anyone, and when history happened, at least he can say he was there.
Amy Chozick
PositiveThe New York Times Book Review\"In Chasing Hillary, Chozick has written neither a raw personal memoir nor a biography of Clinton, but rather an account of all the elements that came between Clinton and the journalists condemned to cover her. Her impressions of Clinton are less about the woman herself and more about the brutally effective apparatus that shielded her from public view ... With her lively voice and eye for detail, Chasing Hillary is an enjoyable read, like The Devil Wears Prada meets The Boys on the Bus ... Political junkies will enjoy deciphering her various pseudonyms for Clinton staffers, history junkies will find a valuable first-person account of an extraordinary campaign, media junkies will devour the backstage antics of the traveling press corps ... ordinary readers may find themselves swimming in references to journalists and staffers who are far from household names ... Chasing Hillary is a portrait of two women with shared hopes and weaknesses, both driven and blinded by an ambition that could be possible only in the 21st century, bound by history but not by love. This book won’t make you know Hillary any better. But it will help you understand why you don’t.\
