Days of Fire

Days of Fire is a history of the eight years George W. Bush spent in the White House with Dick Cheney at his side. Peter Baker, a senior White House correspondent for The New York Times, follows an untested president and his seasoned vice president as crisis after crisis arrives. The list runs from 9/11, Iraq, Katrina and jihad to nuclear proliferation, genocide and the economic collapse.

The book looks at two linked questions. One is how the administration handled those events. The other is how the bond between the two men changed over time. Cheney becomes the most influential vice president in history, then watches Bush drift away, and the two end up at odds over a wide range of fundamental issues.

Bush's early hopes of making Republicans the party of compassionate conservatism and building an ownership society give way under two consuming wars and a financial crash. Meanwhile his foreign policy abandons decades of pragmatism and recasts America's mission as a crusade to bring freedom to the world.

Baker builds the account from interviews with more than two hundred people: White House aides, cabinet secretaries, generals, senators and congressmen, and relatives and friends of both men. The result is narrative political history, told through anecdotes from inside the West Wing and aboard Air Force One. It covers the whole presidency rather than a single episode, and suits readers who want the internal conflicts behind the decisions.