James A. Baker III

“This is like Hollywood Squares,” quipped Steve Clemons, Editor-at-Large The Hill, as he welcomed 500 Zoom guests to a book party in honor of Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, authors of The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III named a ‘Best Book of The Year’ by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fortune and Bloomberg.

“I read this book a couple of months ago and then just ran through it again and I found it to be so illuminating of the dimensions of serious policy-making and politics,” added Clemons. “It was more than just a regular political biography of Washington; it was really as much as a guide to how this town works. I think it’s a great lexicon of not only the times, but how politics works.”

Susan B. Glasser is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she writes a weekly column on life in Washington. Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times

About the book: “For a quarter-century, from the end of Watergate to the aftermath of the Cold War, no Republican won the presidency without his help or ran the White House without his advice. James Addison Baker III was the indispensable man for four presidents because he understood better than anyone how to make Washington work at a time when America was shaping events around the world. The Man Who Ran Washington is a page-turning portrait of a power broker who influenced America’s destiny for generations. His story is a case study in the acquisition, exercise, and preservation of power in late twentieth-century America and the story of Washington and the world in the modern era–how it once worked and how it has transformed into an era of gridlock and polarization. This masterly biography by two brilliant observers of the American political scene is destined to become a classic.” Doubleday