Most Influential Book of the Year?

Worth Clicking: Blasts from the past wound Romney

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December 06, 2009

Most Influential Book of the Year?

The New York Times notes that before President Obama made his decision to send more troops to Afghanistan he had read Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam by Gordon Goldstein.

"The book had become a must read in the West Wing after Mr. Emanuel had dinner over the summer at the house of another deputy national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, and wandered into his library to ask what he should be reading. Among the conclusions that Mr. Donilon and the White House team drew from the book was that both President John F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson failed to question the underlying assumption about monolithic Communism and the domino theory -- clearly driving the Obama advisers to rethink the nature of Al Qaeda and the Taliban."

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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December 06, 2009