Days of Fire

Bush and Cheney in the White House

By: Peter Baker

Narrated by: Mark Deakins

In Days of Fire, Peter Baker, Chief White House Correspondent for The New York Times, takes us on a gripping and intimate journey through the eight years of the Bush and Cheney administration in a tour-de-force narrative of a dramatic and controversial presidency.

Theirs was the most captivating American political partnership since Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger: a bold and untested president and his seasoned, relentless vice president. Confronted by one crisis after another, they struggled to protect the country, remake the world, and define their own relationship along the way. In Days of Fire, Peter Baker chronicles the history of the most consequential presidency in modern times through the prism of its two most compelling characters, capturing the elusive and shifting alliance of George Walker Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney as no historian has done before. He brings to life with in-the-room immediacy all the drama of an era marked by devastating terror attacks, the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, and financial collapse.

The real story of Bush and Cheney is a far more fascinating tale than the familiar suspicion that Cheney was the power behind the throne. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with key players, and thousands of pages of never-released notes, memos, and other internal documents, Baker paints a riveting portrait of a partnership that evolved dramatically over time, from the early days when Bush leaned on Cheney, making him the most influential vice president in history, to their final hours, when the two had grown so far apart they were clashing in the West Wing. Together and separately, they were tested as no other president and vice president have been, first on a bright September morning, an unforgettable "day of fire" just months into the presidency, and on countless days of fire over the course of eight tumultuous years.

Days of Fire is a monumental and definitive work that will rank with the best of presidential histories. As absorbing as a thriller, it is eye-opening and essential listening.

©2013 Peter Baker (P)2013 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Peter Baker tells the story of Bush and Cheney with the precision of a crack reporter and the eye and ear of a novelist. This is perhaps the most consequential pairing of a president and vice president in our history. And Baker captures it all - the triumphs and defeats, the partnership and eventual estrangement. It is a splendid mix of sweeping history and telling anecdotes that will keep you turning the page." (Chris Wallace, anchor of Fox News Sunday)

"9/11, two long wars, a crushing recession, neo-cons, and turf wars defined the first decade of 21st-century American politics. In the middle of it all, the president and his powerful vice-president. The complicated and then contentious relationship between Bush and Cheney is worthy of Shakespeare. Peter Baker’s Days of Fire is a book for every presidential hopeful and every citizen." (Tom Brokaw, author of The Greatest Generation)

The disconnect

This book is extremely informative. Growing up as a kid during this era, you could feel the fear and uncertainty and that the government had our best interest. The disconnect this administration had with the general public and its own intelligence is baffling. Intelligence should drive policy, not the other way around. I think Bush is thoughtful and overall a good leader. But he was in over his head and became aloof, strayed along by a disputing cabinet. I believe his presidency was the most decisive in the last 40 years.

Informative and entertaining

A comprehensive look at the entirety of Bush and Cheney's careers and time in office. It's in the form of a novel with the politicians seeming like characters of a story. It jumps around from topic to topic and never failed to hold my attention.

Great book!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The content and performance kept me coming back to listen to more.

Informative!

This book took me over a month to complete and at times I struggled to stay with it but it was so worth it. This is a very comprehensive account of the 8 years Bush 43 held the office of the president. I read Decision Points before this one and this really helped fill in any blanks there may have been. I feel like I know all there is to know about George W. Bush and most of his administration. Great book and finishing it makes for a sad day. It's been a part of my morning commute for quite some time. Definitely recommend, and will recommend Decision Points as well.

Best memoir of the Bush years

What did you love best about Days of Fire?

The author writes a very objective memoir of the Bush years. This is a great story because the author tells the interesting a relevant facts without bogging you down in details/dates/too many names.

An objective viewpoint

I hesitated in getting this book, I was not sure if the book was going to be a whitewash job or acrimonious, but instead I found it to be objective report. Peter Baker is a White House reporter for the New York Times. I find he has written a through, engaging and objective history of the Bush-Cheney years in the White House.

Baker states Vice President Cheney was the most powerful vice president in history. He did more than anyone to shape counter terrorism policy after the 9/11 attack and lead us into war in Iraq. In the second term Cheney looked and acted more like the traditional vice president. President Bush generally pursued a more centrist course on many or most of the issues-over Cheney’s objection. One of the questions in the book, was Cheney always an ultra conservative Republican or did the repeated heart problems cause him to change? Before Bush left office he set up the programs to bail out of the banks and the car companies in an attempt to slow down or stop the recession/depression. The historical judgments of the Bush administration are only beginning to take shape. It has taken several years for the key people to write their memoirs and for the presidents’ friend and subordinates to offer stories they wouldn’t volunteer at the time the Bush team was in the White House. Baker painstakingly worked through all the books published so far and interviewed over 200 people for this book.

I found the section of the book about selecting judges most interesting. I noticed that Bush selected the people whose job it was to find, obtain information on and interview attorneys for judgeship even before moving into the White House. He set about filling every vacancy on all Federal courts. He also had staff looking for a Supreme Court justice, at that time Chief Justice Rehnquist was ill and most likely would be resigning soon. Bush was surprised and pleased to be able to appoint two justices as that would change the balance of the Court. He was looking for someone who was conservative and would not change after being appointed as did Justice Souter. I noted Bush called and spoke to each person appointed to a judgeship, so they would know that he was involved in their appointment. Baker claimed no other president, had called to speak to appointees of the lower courts. Baker spent several chapters describing in detail the court selection process. As I have been reading about the Supreme Court and the legal system recently, I was excited to learn about the process from the viewpoint of the presiding President.

The book traces the upbringing and early careers of both Bush and Cheney and follows them to the end of their time in the White House. The author’s book is notable for its scope and ambition. I am sure it will become a reference source for historians in the future. The process of disillusionment which culminated in Bush’s refusal to pardon Cheney’s aid Scooter Libby forms the heart of the book. Mark Deakins did an excellent job narrating the book.

In depth for policy wonks

If you love details this is your book. It provides a thorough account of the Bush-Cheney years in the White House. An even-handed assessment that historians will rely on for years to come

Great insight!

This plays like a miniseries. Very compelling book on the Bush-Cheney partnership from 2001-2009.

Lots of details, characters, and surprises.

Changed my opinion Bush

So much has changed since the election of Donald Trump. I still dislike the vice president, Cheney, maybe even more so after listening to this book, George Bush made an awesome mistake invading Iraq chasing down something that didn’t exist even though at that time, I thought the United States should at least go into Iraq to look for weapons of mass destruction, but not Try to change Iraq into some sort of democracy. We should’ve just looked for the weapons and left after not finding them or if we did find them destroy them.

An Absolute Stunner

I grew up hating W. I was a fanatical viewer of Jon Stewart (at probably too young an age) and I soaked in every word my father said about switching to become a Republican in Ohio in 2000 just to vote against him in the Primary. He was stupid, boorish, ruined our alliances and every move he took was a mistake. It wasn’t Bush’s fault though anyway, he was an empty suit as Darth Cheney ran the Administration and destroyed America.

This endlessly fascinating, detailed and researched book is probably the most thorough confrontation of those beliefs I have ever had. In light of the last administration, I have been warming up as an adult to W. as a man, and this book was a game changer for me. On balance I still believe the Bush Presidency was a failed administration, but I walk away from this book believing it was not only nowhere near as bad as I had grown up believing but also largely a failure based on genuine positives of Bush himself as a politician and as a man.

The Bush revealed in this book may have been anti-intellectual, but not stupid. He was a deep thinker, well read, clever, but hated pretension and superiority complexes. He genuinely believed most of what he said, and when he attempted to play the cynical games of all American Politicians to win votes he would fail to find the passion or drive to push. In particular his pledge to ban same sex marriage as a second campaign promise, as he was personally opposed to federal involvement in such matters and loved many queer people in his life, but pushed the pledge nonetheless to win an Evangelical Base he only mildly related to. He genuinely cared for the education of all Americans despite race or language, and the failure of No Child Left Behind was born not of cynical politicking but of a genuine disconnect between the research of childcare and the policy makers. Big one: I get the build up to the war in Iraq, on Bush’s part. The war was a blunder that helped throw the entire region into turmoil, but for much of his second term especially the war seemed to be creating stability and ending in honor. Bush himself comes off as a real human being who fundamentally was not built for the role in history he was mantled with, and fundamentally he made mistakes born out of intentions I cannot argue against. He also admits that a lot throughout the book. He was self aware in ways many politicians fundamentally are not.

Cheney does not come off as well. The Machiavellian Darth Cheney of the Left’s (and my) imagination is far more of a dude’s dude, a quiet, brooding, old guard neocon paranoid who believed in the military as a fly swatter and in the divine right of the American Presidency. The Dick of Adam McKay’s Vice is also wrong: he’s not an evil genius. He’s a strongman and a bit of a jerk. The book’s main thrust largely becomes how the first term was born out of Cheney seeming like a level headed mentor for W., and the second term being George and Condaleeza Rice attempting to clean up the messes Dick left in his wake. Cheney would have, honestly, fit in very well in The Donald’s administration, and feels very much a last remnant of the Nixon Era (which is exactly what he was).

This book is also perhaps the most exhaustively researched Presidential Narrative I have ever read not written by either Caro or Chernow. Every detail is lifted from interviews, memos, legal documents or recordings. Occasionally a reference is made toward how much legal trouble it was to get some of the documents sourced.

This book is utterly brilliant, and to end I wish to have a damning revelation from this book, and an uplifting and enlightening one. Firstly, The Patriot Act, wherein the Government had been permitted to spy on its citizens without repercussions, was born out of an ill thought out and rushed proposal that was never fully thought through. Your basic civil rights to privacy and free speech are violated every day because the bill wasn’t properly vetted.
And an up: fundamentally I don’t think the world would be a better place without the Bush Administration’s efforts to fight AIDS and Malaria worldwide, especially in Africa. Going step by step through the work W. pushed in the region, it is actually shocking how much the man clearly cared and what a net positive his administration brought. We have one positive from those eight years that need not come with an asterisk.

Read this book. It’s incredible.