The Price Of Politics

The Price Of Politics, by Bob Woodward, details last year's tortuous negotiations between President Obama and House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner over the rise in America's debt ceiling. Woodward reconstructs the meetings between the two sides in considerable detail, supplemented by interviews with Obama and Boehner. (Woodward also interviewed Obama for his last book, Obama's Wars.)

The exhaustive detail limits the book's scope: the negotiations are covered in depth, but this sidelines any coverage of wider economic issues. (Ron Suskind's Confidence Men had a broader scope.) Also, Obama and Boehner's disputes are already familiar, and their bargaining and quibbling don't exactly make for a riveting read.