📚🚨 Peril by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa
Not a Book Report
I enjoy reflecting on the movies, TV, books and other media that I consume. I’m notoriously sentimental. This series documents the books that I read. These aren’t reviews or recommendations. Just a list. For me. Mostly so that I can page through what I read, where I was, and when.
Why did I read it?
I flew across the Atlantic Ocean 22 times last year. Only 4 of those 11 distinct trips involved direct flights from Lisbon to my final destination. I spent a lot of time bored in airports. On one of those trips I strolled through the Book People store in the Austin airport searching for something to read on my AUS-EWR-LIS route, at least until I could sleep on the EWR-LIS leg. I saw this and grabbed it having read clippings of it in the news and I figured I could chew through it.
What is it?
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Title | Peril |
| Author | Bob Woodward and Robert Costa |
| Year Published | 2021 |
| Format | Hardcover |
| Pages | 418 |
| ISBN | 978-1-9821-8291-5 |
How did I read it?
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Date Started | August 27, 2022 |
| Date Finished | March 27, 2023 |
| Places Read | Austin United Flights Sintra Lisbon |
Notes - No Spoilers
- We have such short attention spans! Several events covered in this book, like the “upside down Bible military march to that church”, are things that I had almost forgotten. The entire time I read this book was mostly me just muttering “oh God, yeah, that happened too.”
- Some moments of the book were downright terrifying to revisit. We were so close to squandering the Experiment. What scares me now is the subtitle of this post - feels like we forgot that. Or, maybe we didn’t, but some decided to forget it.
- Watching many of these scenes from Portugal felt so weird at the time and reading this book, again mostly in Portugal, still feels odd. A strange survivor’s guilt. I was living this idyllic existence in a beautiful European country while a far right blowhard in horns and furs stood at the podium in Congress.
- I remember being on a call with a coworker as January 6th unfoled and we just wrapped up the meeting - we couldn’t focus on the work while we watched the Capitol under siege. The play-by-play in this book kept reminding me of how jaw dropping that evening felt.
- I put this book down frequently and read other things. I wound up clocking in at 7 months from start to finish. The book spends the last ~20% covering the Biden campaign and I struggled to keep paying attention. I know, I know - that part is supposed to be the uplifting third act that restores democracy. And I’m someone who had a teacher from my high school in Texas call my mom to warn her that I was a democrat! Shameful as this is, I mostly picked up the book to revisit the chaos.