THE WASHINGTON BOOK

An insider’s account of the nation’s capital based on the political literature surrounding it.

As a Pulitzer Prize–winning book critic, Lozada collects observations on the countless books he’s inhaled concerning the city’s power politics. “Not just masochism—transcendent masochism,” he writes, gamely. “That’s what people think it is like to read political books.” Nonetheless, most people want to know what these books say, even if they’re written by people far down the pecking order. They’re not interested in the quality of the work so much as the news that the books contain. Lozada is admirably evenhanded: He shakes his head at Mike Pence’s ability to find excuses for the boss who wasn’t troubled by the prospect of him being hanged in front of the Capitol, just as much as he bemoans Kamala Harris’ “eagerness to stay on both sides of difficult questions.” Not content to read everything ever committed to print on Reagan, Clinton, and their fellow denizens of the Oval Office, Lozada wishes for books that don’t exist, such as a memoir by George H.W. Bush. “Perhaps he feared that his difficulties articulating a vision in speeches would recur on the page,” he ventures, while allowing that the lack of such a book makes the record incomplete. The books of Washington reveal a lot, whether Obama’s early obnoxiousness, tempered in later years by a welcome gravitas; Trump’s braying self-regard, which is no news to anyone but still annoys, even in the form of a précis; or the theorizing of scholars such as the well-known Samuel Huntington and the less well-known Albert O. Hirschman. The author’s audience is self-selecting, but they’ll be well served by his catholic survey.

Those who like to read about national politics will be rewarded, and even entertained, by Lozada’s pages.