The World As it Is: Inside the Obama White House
by Ben Rhodes (Bodley Head, £20)
There is a biographical detail about Ben Rhodes, the former foreign affairs adviser to Barack Obama, that his critics often mention: he has an MFA in fiction writing. This fact allows those critics—who range from Fox News types to Washington’s foreign policy establishment—to dismiss Rhodes, and by extension Obama, as a mere storyteller, someone more interested in spinning a yarn than dealing with the harsh realities of a dangerous world.
But as Rhodes’s memoir of his eight years at the White House shows, storytelling plays a vital role in government. Obama used his speeches as a way of formulating his thoughts, painting the bigger picture that placed his day-to-day decisions in context. (Storytelling, it turns out, is pretty useful for authors too—this is that rare beast, an engaging and wonderfully written book on foreign policy.)
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