The hardest job in the world

By John Dickerson

John Dickerson is cut from the Walter Cronkite cloth of journalism. He is a good writer and pretty good at zooming in and out of the subject at hand.

The book was written to put trump years in perspective, but takes a circuitous approach.

He writes this book in late 2019 as part history of the office of modern presidency, part unique challenges of the job, part character of it's office holders and part the challenges of the institution of presidency itself in modern era.

He peppers the book with numerous little quotes, fun anecdotes and crazy outbursts by different presidents.

He also accomplishes two other goals along the way.

One - Without explicitly pointing too many of trump's flaws - and regaling us in stories of past presidents - he tells us how uniquely an outlier trump is and a how much of complete misfit at it.

Two - it's a great primer on leadership and I will probably end up re-reading parts of the book.

He did spend three chapters out of 25 going thru some of trump years, and god it's PTSD reading thru them.

Day after day, week after week, month after month of incessant chaos, while trump provides cover to some very destructive undoing of federal government in the background.

It's like people have collective amnesia or may be like parents of newborn baby, when they forget all the sleepless nights and troubles until the next baby.

You pick any ten random pages of the book, you will end up loving every president from Bush 43 to Nixon to Reagan, and hate one guy.

Love the book.