War

by Bob Woodward, Robert Petkoff (Read by)

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

War dives into our present day — one of the most tumultuous and pivotal periods in presidential politics, American history and the future of world diplomacy.

Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Woodward delivers an eye-opening, behind-the-scenes narrative exploring the intricate dynamics of Ukraine, the Middle East, and the American presidency, offering unparalleled insights into political intrigue and global strategy from one of the most authoritative voices in political journalism today.

War is a “harrowing, riveting” (The New York Times) account of one of the most tumultuous periods in presidential politics in American history.

We see President Joe Biden and his top advisers in tense conversations with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. We also see Donald Trump conducting a shadow presidency and seeking to regain political power ahead of the 2024 elections.

With unrivaled, inside-the-room reporting, Woodward shows President Biden’s approach to managing the war in Ukraine, the most significant land war in Europe since World War II, and his tortured path to contain the bloody Middle East conflict between Israel and the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

Woodward reveals the extraordinary complexity and consequence of wartime back-channel diplomacy and decision-making to deter the use of nuclear weapons and a rapid slide into World War III.

The raw cage-fight of politics accelerates leading up to the presidential election in 2024, starting between President Biden and Trump, and ending with the unexpected elevation of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for president.

War provides an unvarnished examination of the vice president as she tries to embrace the Biden legacy and policies while beginning to chart a path of her own as a presidential candidate.

Woodward’s reporting once again sets the standard for journalism at its most authoritative and illuminating.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781797189741
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster Audio
Publication date:	10/15/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 5.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Bob Woodward is the author of three consecutive #1 New York Times bestsellers on President Trump—Fear (2018), Rage (2020), and Peril (2021) with Robert Costa—and an audiobook of 20 interviews with Trump. He has authored 22 bestselling books, 15 of which have been #1 New York Times bestsellers, covering every president from Nixon to Biden.

Hometown:

Washington, D.C.

Date of Birth:

March 26, 1943

Place of Birth:

Geneva, Illinois

Education:

B.A., Yale University, 1965

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One ONE Thirty-five Years Later
As rioters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, President Donald Trump watched on television from his private dining room next to the Oval Office. His supporters climbed the walls of the historic building, shattered windows and attempted to force the front doors open with a battering ram.

Gallows were being set up outside. “Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence,” Trump’s supporters called for the vice president, who had refused to overthrow the certification of Biden’s 2020 election win.

“Where is the president?” Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was calling the White House, asking aides to connect him with Trump. McCarthy’s office was being vandalized. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s was being ransacked. Supporters took pictures with their feet on her desk. They left a note on her keyboard: WE WILL NOT BACK DOWN.

Congressional leaders, including McCarthy and Pelosi, had been rushed out by Capitol security and driven to a secure location, Fort McNair, a U.S. Army post a few blocks from the Washington Nationals baseball stadium. But their staff were still in there, hiding in various offices with the lights switched off, desks barricading the doors.

President Trump finally got on the phone.

“You’ve got to get out and tell these people to STOP! We’ve been run over,” McCarthy said. He was intense. “Someone just got shot.”

At 2:44 p.m., Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed by a police officer inside the Capitol as she and others tried to breach a door near lawmakers. Among the rioters were leaders of pro-Trump, far-right militia groups, the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, as well as conspiracy theorists from groups like QAnon. What began as a Trump rally had escalated into a violent attack on the constitutional order of the United States.

“I’ll put a tweet out or something,” Trump replied.

“They’ve taken over the Capitol!” McCarthy yelled at him. “You’ve got to tell them to stop. You’ve got to get them out of here. Get them out of here. Now.”

The president seemed not to grasp the gravity of the situation. “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,” Trump said.

The FBI later estimated that over 2,000 people entered the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Five people died, 172 police officers were injured, and more than 500 were arrested. The cost of the damage to the historic Capitol building exceeded $2.7 million.

It took President Trump 187 minutes to post a tweet telling his supporters to “go home.”

Two months earlier, Donald Trump had lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. But he rejected the loss. Instead, he said it was “rigged,” “a fraud on the American public,” and “stolen.”

Even now, 35 years after our interview, Trump was convinced any loss—even a presidential election loss—could be brushed aside if he simply didn’t fold.

At Trump’s “Save America” rally on January 6, he urged his supporters to “fight like hell.”

“We won this election, and we won it by a landslide.

“We will never give up. We will never concede.

“We are going to the Capitol.”

The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack later concluded that Trump “engaged in a successful but fraudulent effort to persuade tens of millions of Americans that the election was stolen from him.”

Garret Miller, a Trump supporter who brought a gun to the Capitol on January 6, said, “I believed I was following the instructions of former President Trump.”

Another supporter, Lewis Cantwell, testified that he had watched President Trump on TV “telling the world” the election was stolen. “What else would I believe, as a patriotic American who voted for him?”

Stephen Ayres, who also stormed the Capitol that day, said he was “hanging on every word [Trump] was saying.” Ayres had posted on social media that “Civil War will ensue” if Trump did not stay in power for a second term.

“You need to call Joe Biden and you need to do it today,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told Trump shortly after the attack.

No, Trump said. He claimed Biden only won because of fraud.

“Stop saying that,” McCarthy said. “Just stop saying that. You need to leave Joe Biden a letter in the desk.”

A tradition.

“Well, I haven’t decided,” Trump said.

McCarthy was emotional and exhausted. The violence on January 6 carried a shocking, traumatizing weight.

“Your legacies will be different now because of that day,” McCarthy warned him. “Call Joe Biden.”

No, Trump said.

McCarthy told him it was important for the country for some sort of conversation between the outgoing and incoming leader to take place. A president should acknowledge his successor.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Trump finally said. He wanted off the call with McCarthy, but McCarthy stayed on.

“What do you think your grandchildren are going to think of you if you don’t do this?” McCarthy said.

“Okay, okay,” Trump repeated.

The phone call to Biden never happened.

But on his last night in the Oval Office, January 19, 2021, Trump hand-wrote a two-page letter to Joe Biden. He finished it at 10:00 p.m., signed it Donald J. Trump and placed it inside the desk. Biden would later tell his White House press secretary Jen Psaki it was “shockingly gracious.”

Trump, with First Lady Melania, left the White House early on January 20, 2021, for their club and Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago. On board Air Force One, Trump took a call from Republican National Committee chairperson Ronna McDaniel. It was a farewell message on behalf of the committee.

“I’m done,” Trump said, cutting her off. “I’m starting my own party.”

McDaniel balked.

“You cannot do that,” McDaniel implored Trump on the phone. “If you do, we will lose forever.”

“This isn’t their Republican Party anymore. This is Donald Trump’s Republican Party,” Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr., had declared onstage at the “Save America” rally on January 6.

“Exactly. You lose forever without me,” Trump snapped at McDaniel. “This is what Republicans deserve for not sticking with me.” He wanted to take down the Republican Party.

The Republican National Committee leadership would later make clear to Trump’s advisers that the former president’s lust for revenge would hurt not only his legacy but his finances. The Republican Party threatened to cease paying Trump’s legal bills and destroy the value of his campaign’s email list that contained 40 million Trump voters. Trump had been selling the list to other Republican candidates. If he tried to use it they would give it away for free.

Trump backed down. He later denied to ABC News journalist Jonathan Karl that he’d ever even thought about starting his own party. “Oh, that is bullshit. It never happened,” Trump said. Karl later released the tape of his interview with McDaniel recounting Trump’s threat.

On Air Force One, the Trump family sat at the front of the plane, a bunch of his closest senior and junior staff at the back.

“They never came back,” a Trump aide said. Not the president, nor any of his family. Even among his closest aides, there was a sense of almost overwhelming shell shock. Many did not have a plan for what they would do next. Some didn’t know where they would live. Usually staff had about two and a half months, from the election to January 20, to prepare for life after the White House.

“For a lot of people that was compressed into 13 days,” an aide said because it wasn’t clear to them that Trump would leave the White House until after January 6.

At 11:59 a.m., January 20, Trump was in his cavernous apartment at Mar-a-Lago. No tweets. No speeches. At 12:01 p.m., as Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States, Secret Service agents began shrinking the fortified security set up around Trump’s estate.

Trump didn’t like it. He stayed in his quarters the rest of the day.

“Hey, it’s your all-time favorite president,” Trump said on the phone to House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy a few days later. “Look, I want to talk,” he said. “I’m down in Florida.”

McCarthy had said on the House floor on January 13 that Trump “bears responsibility” for the Capitol riot and called on him to “accept his share of responsibility.” Trump exploded with anger when he saw the TV replay but appeared to have gotten over it.

“I’ll stop by,” McCarthy said. He didn’t tell anyone he was going, not even his staff. McCarthy knew Trump had not been seeing many Republicans. He was moping. The media spotlight had dimmed over Mar-a-Lago.

Republican strategist Ed Rollins once said of Trump, “There’s only one thing you need to know about him. He watches television all day and then at night goes on television.”

Trump was now fighting for attention. He no longer had his Twitter feed or Facebook, having been kicked off the sites after his torrent of election lies. He began making surprise appearances at wedding receptions at Mar-a-Lago.

President Trump, in a dark suit and yellow tie, was grinning as McCarthy walked into Mar-a-Lago on January 28. “You know Melania said this has more press than when I met Putin,” he said. “There are four TV helicopters outside!”

McCarthy’s visit to the former president was all over the news. Having the top House Republican come for lunch showed Trump was still in control of the Republican Party.

“You know it’s good for you and me, right?”

“All right,” McCarthy said. “Whatever.”

McCarthy came with the hope of keeping Trump involved with the House GOP so Republicans could retake the majority in 2022. He needed to steer Trump away from stoking unnecessary primary fights and to lend his name to winnable seats. They sat down for lunch.

“You know, being off Twitter has kind of helped me,” Trump said.

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, a lot of people would say they liked my policy, didn’t like my tweets.”

“Yeah, like everybody.”

“My numbers have kind of gone up.”

Trump asked about his upcoming Senate impeachment trial. He was charged with inciting an insurrection.

“I don’t think it’s going anywhere,” McCarthy said.

It didn’t. On February 13, 2021, Trump was acquitted. While a majority of senators, including seven Republicans, voted to convict the former president, they failed to reach the two-thirds needed for conviction. It was merely symbolic since Trump was no longer president.

President Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, 59, with dark brown hair and a friendly, high-charging demeanor, had counseled Biden for more than 20 years. When Biden decided to run for president, he called Klain up to his home in Wilmington in early March 2019.

“I just feel like I have to do this,” Biden said. “Trump represents something fundamentally different and wrong about politics.”

Biden’s next words would stick forever with Klain: “This guy just isn’t really an American president.”

On the campaign trail, Biden had gone after Trump’s character and policies relentlessly. From his first day in the White House, Biden barely mentioned Trump’s name, referring to him in public as “my predecessor” and often in private as “that fucking asshole.”

Biden told his advisers he wanted his own presidency. Trump’s four years, his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the January 6 insurrection, were a trauma on the presidency.

The mission now, as Klain saw it, was to fix what Trump broke and move the country forward.

“We as a country still need to process this Trump thing a bit,” Klain said. “The way we’re doing it is by showing the American people that the presidency can work again. That they can have a decent person in the White House.

“In the end Donald Trump lost because he didn’t control the pandemic and the economy. Notwithstanding the stock market, the real economy, where people live got worse on his watch.

“Obviously there are some hard-core Trump supporters that are what they are and they’re not going to go away and that’s part of our country,” Klain said. But Biden “was elected to move this country forward post-Trump and that’s what he’s doing. That’s his mission.

“Donald Trump can stand in as many arenas as he wants and raise his arms as loudly as he wants,” Klain declared. He believed Trump’s early attempts at a shadow presidency would die out by the fall of 2021.

“Donald Trump will be a sideshow,” Klain said confidently.

Editorial Reviews

"Having narrated the three previous presidential histories by Bob Woodward, Robert Petkoff is familiar with the author’s cadence and tone. His reading of WAR is crisp, confident, and streamlined. He reports on the Biden presidency, focusing on three conflicts that will change the world: the Ukraine conflict and how the superpowers stumbled into it; the Israeli–Hamas dispute and how Netanyahu misled the U.S.; and the 2024 election, in which Woodward concludes that Trump is “unfit to run the country.” WAR also traces signs of Biden’s deteriorating health as early as June 2023. The audiobook was frightening to listen to before the election, but hearing WAR now, after all the ballots have been counted, may prove even more terrifying to some listeners."

AudioFile Magazine

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2024 BY ASSOCIATED PRESS, NEWSWEEK, NPR, AND PROGRESSIVE.ORG

"Bob Woodward books have been an election tradition for decades. “War,” the latest of his highly sourced Washington insider accounts, made news with its allegations that Donald Trump had been in frequent contact with Russian leader Vladimir Putin..."—Associated Press

"Legendary journalist Woodward compares the Biden and first Trump administrations with behind-the-scenes revelations. A critical read to understand the context of the past four to eight years of American politics, War delves into the psychology of two presidents who held the same office but starkly different views on government and what America is and should be, both at home and abroad."—Peter Aitken, Newsweek

"There is a certain wistful quality about reading the latest bestseller that Bob Woodward has written about a U.S. president and national security....[It] also includes a report on Woodward’s 1989 interview with Trump, conducted along with colleague Carl Bernstein from the Watergate era.... It reveals a Trump who, at 42, sounds remarkably like the Trump of today."— Ron Elving, NPR

"War by Bob Woodward is full of previously unreported tidbits showcasing the depths of Donald Trump’s derelictions. Most of all, it is a harrowing portrait of the scramble by the Biden Administration to stave off World War III. Read it and realize how fragile and complicated the task of promoting peace really is."—Ruth Conniff, Progressive.org

“The shocking, breaking news is the biggest Oct surprise of the 21st century”—Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC



“Explosive...juicy...so wow”—Jake Tapper, CNN



"this should be 'stop everything' stuff"—Nicolle Wallace, MSNBC

"fascinating book ... This is a great book no matter where you are on the political spectrum."—Neil Cavuto, Fox News Channel



"This Time, Bob Woodward Gets It Right: The Watergate journalist has taken a lot of hits—including from me. In his new Biden chronicle, War, he’s at his best."—Franklin Foer, The Atlantic



“This is harrowing, riveting stuff...Three weeks after War is published on Oct. 15, voters will provide raw material for the sequel. Though he specializes in real-time suspense, Woodward doesn’t write cliffhangers. His impulse — his talent — is to impose an arc and a moral on the mess and sprawl of very recent history. This time around, his stated conclusions are unambiguous: 'Donald Trump is not only the wrong man for the presidency,' he writes, 'he is unfit to lead the country.' In contrast, 'Biden and his team will be largely studied in history as an example of steady and purposeful leadership.' Those judgments sound authoritative. They also sound wishful."—A.O. Scott, New York Times



"...the legendary reporter, who, at age 81, has more energy and puts in more shoe leather than reporters half his age."—Peter Bergen, CNN.com



"[War] sports all the familiar Woodwardian trademarks—the anonymously sourced accounts of Top Secret meetings, the profanity-laced dialogue (in quotation marks, as if heard by a fly on the wall), the portrait of high politics as a clash of colorful characters: a fun, often compelling first (at times, second) draft of history. Yet, compared with the previous volumes, this latest is in some ways more interesting (if a bit less sensational), and it offers a more (though far from completely) coherent narrative....Woodward uncovers intriguing new facts about the conflicts or, at times, adds color and dimension to stories that others have reported in mere bits and pieces."—Fred Kaplan, Slate



“...reducing the book to scoops trivializes Woodward’s ambitions for this sprawling, occasionally blinkered but timely book. If the nuggets were the meal, then the headlines would make the book itself redundant ... a reader who understands these perspectives can adjust for any slants the sources may seek to provide. And even if most of the sources Woodward spoke to for the book are residents or friends of Bidenworld, he is too good a writer and too experienced an observer to let the book’s lessons be dictated by his sources ...it is because it thrums with the urgency Woodward must feel of persuading the electorate not to make the same mistake — or a worse one — again."—Paul Musgrave, Washington Post



"Bob Woodward’s new book War is a sober but alarming must-read"—Lloyd Green, The Guardian

From the Publisher

★ 2024-10-15
Documenting perilous times.

In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”

An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.

Kirkus Reviews