This Town; Two Parties and a Funeral--Plus Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America's Gilded Capital

New York, N.Y.: Blue Rider Press [A Member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.], 2013. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. [12], 386, [2]pages. Maps. Mark Leibovich (born May 9, 1965) is an American journalist and author. He is the chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, based in Washington, D.C. He is known for his profiles on political and media figures. He also writes the Times magazine's "Your Fellow Americans" column about politics, media, and public life. Leibovich got his start as a journalist writing for Boston's alternative weekly, The Phoenix, where he worked for four years. He moved to California and worked as a reporter at The San Jose Mercury News. Leibovich then moved to Washington to work at The Washington Post, where he spent nine years, first covering the national technology sector for the Post's business section, then serving as the lead political writer for the paper's style section. In 2006, Leibovich was hired by The New York Times where he was a national political correspondent in the New York Times' Washington Bureau. He then became Chief National Correspondent at The New York Times Magazine. Lebovich appears frequently as a guest on MSNBC's Morning Joe, NPR's On the Media, and other public affairs programs. Leibovich presents a blistering, stunning, examination of our ruling class's incestuous "media industrial complex." We discover how the funeral for a beloved newsman becomes the social event of the year. How a disgraced Hill aide can overcome ignominy and maybe emerge with a more potent "brand" than many elected members of Congress. And how an administration bent on "changing Washington" can be sucked into the way of This Town with ease. This Town debuted at #1 on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list in July 2013, and remained on the Times best-seller list for 12 weeks. Leibovich discussed "This Town" on "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart, ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos, Charlie Rose, PBS's Moyers and Company and NPR's "Weekend Edition". He also appeared as a contestant on NPR's "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me". In a February 2014 edition of Jeopardy! This Town was the answer to a clue in a category titled "2013 Bestsellers". In advance of its July 2013 release, Politico published an article describing This Town as a "chronicle" of the "incestuous ecology of insider Washington." Leibovich, according to the story, is nicknamed "Leibo," and the book's original sub-title was "The Way it Works in Suck Up City." Fareed Zakaria as reviewer for Washington Post praises it as "hottest political book of the summer", containing " juicy anecdotes" and a tell-tale core of "corruption and dysfunction". Richard McGregor of the Financial Times described Leibovich as "like a modern-day Balzac." In his book review for the New York Times, novelist Christopher Buckley described This Town as a series of "mini-masterpieces of politico-anthropological sociology." The Economist said This Town "may be the most pitiless examination of America's permanent political class that has ever been conducted." The book attracted controversy when an aide to Representative Darrell Issa was fired for sharing reporters' e-mails with Leibovich without their knowledge. Derived from a Kirkus review: What happens when a Washington political journalist stops being polite and starts getting real? If you read the metacoverage, you would think all hell had broken loose in the aftermath of this Beltway tell-all by Leibovich, the chief national correspondent for the New York Times Magazine. This amalgam of embedded reporting and cutting humor is largely a fascinating read devoted not just to the movers and shakers, but also to the machinery that makes the broken clockwork sort-of work. Leibovich captures all of his salient theses-the rise of new media, the immovable entrenchment of the Washington establishment dubbed "The Club," and a portrait of "the modern cinematic version" of "Suck-up City," warts and all. And the author can be startlingly funny. In the wake of the BP oil spill, he writes, "Washington becomes a determinedly bipartisan team when there is money to be made-sorry, I mean a hopeful exemplar of Americans pulling together in a time of crisis." Moreover, his portraits of figures ranging from fellow journalists to socialites to the president are disarmingly candid. Harry Reid is portrayed as a former street fighter-turned-fixer. A scathing indictment of the system comes in the story of Kurt Bardella, an ambitious congressional aide who rises and falls and rises again. A kid from Rolling Stone brings down a U.S. Army general. From the elections to the absurdity of TV news, this litany of socialites, power brokers and fallen icons makes for a hell of a read while Rome burns. A vivid depiction of full-tilt folly that is sure to have its narcissistic cast poring through it for their own names.