Recommended by 5 notable people, including Tom Hanks and Ezra Klein
Check price on AmazonRecommended by public sources
Amazon availability
See customer reviews on Amazon →An obsessively detailed, scene-by-scene account of the 1988 presidential race that builds intimate portraits of candidates, aides, and families. Its useful part is the depth of character reporting—small moments, contradictions, and private motives feel palpable. Its main limitation is scale: long digressions, repeated anecdotes, and thick backstory slow momentum and demand patience, so readers seeking tidy summaries or quick syntheses will likely find the narrative exhausting rather than clarifying.
This summary and audience guidance are AI-generated from the book's description and its recommendation history, last updated May 2026. Recommendations, quotes and sources elsewhere on this page come from published material and are not generated.
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 ...
Difficulty:hard
Check formats, pricing, and availability options for Kindle, physical print, or audiobooks directly.
View available editions on AmazonWhy recommended
Recommended by 6 sources and appears in Most Recommended Books, Politics, and History.
People and public figures who have recommended this book.
Recommendation proof is sourced from public posts, interviews, reading lists, and cited references.
Check formats, pricing, and availability options directly on Amazon.
Consider The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy. Recommended by 8 sources.
“Soft-spoken, heavily illustrated fable built from short dialogues and watercolor sketches. Each spread pairs a spare line of text with a loose drawing, so the pleasure is visual and aphoristic rather than narrative; readers collect felt-true sentences more than plot. Most useful when you want quick consolations, a prompt for conversation with a child, or a pause during a rough day. Limiting if you want sustained argument, concrete advice, or tightly plotted storytelling: the repetition of gentleness can feel sentimental or thin after a while.”
Each recommendation is collected from a public source — interviews, articles, or curated lists — and linked to its original URL. Books with many verifiable recommendations from respected people rank higher.
