How Whipple measures the president’s progress... matters a bit less than Whipple’s own accomplishment: publishing a serviceable second draft of history less than two years after Biden took the oath of office ... At its best, Whipple’s comprehensive approach adds dimension to the news stream ... At its worst, the book’s iterative structure feels like scrolling a dated Twitter timeline in which the vaccination drive is defeating Covid-19, and Biden’s effort to curb climate change is doomed to failure ... Whipple shines when, like the documentarian he is, he lets people talk ... For any future writer eager to describe Biden’s first two years, this will be the book cited first and most often. Those eager to really understand the historic impact and import of the Biden presidency, however, will likely require a sequel.
Whipple... [is] really not here to wrestle with complexities. He’s traveling the well-worn path of a reconstructed narrative based on insider accounts — a methodology that’s been widely discredited in recent years, as political operatives have grown ever more savvy at manipulating it ... As for the actual writing, the book generally reads like a capable AI rendering of the formulaic reconstruction ... Reading The Fight of His Life, I became convinced that Whipple actually had a better book in his voluminous notes.
Though Whipple’s friendships within the Washington press corps prevent him from saying so, this is a book-length rebuke of the incompetence of legions of reporters who have persistently underestimated this extraordinary president.
Chris Whipple has taken a crack at assessing Biden midstream, and his credentials make him an excellent candidate to do so ... The Fight of His Life is very much told from Biden’s point of view, and this is the book’s considerable strength ... Whipple is by and large sympathetic to Biden’s two biggest blunders—the poorly executed withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and his premature celebration of “independence from a deadly virus” on July 4, 2021 ... Yet there is something about Joe Biden that does not engender awe.
Closely observed account of the accomplished yet beleaguered Biden White House ... Whipple delivers a few dishy bits of inside baseball, including an increasingly difficult relationship between Biden and Kamala Harris ... There’s more to the current administration than meets the eye, and Whipple is a reliable, readable interpreter.
Whipple provides a balanced assessment of the administration’s successes and failures ... Distinguished by Whipple’s impressive access and incisive character sketches, this is a valuable first draft of history.
