Ben Rhodes

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER`One of the most compelling stories I've seen about what it's actually like to serve the American people' BARACK OBAMAA revelatory, behind-the-scenes account of the Obama presidency from perhaps his closest collaborator, and a political memoir about the power of words to change our worldThis is a book about two people making the most important decisions in the world. One is Barack Obama. The other is Ben Rhodes. A young writer and Washington outsider, Rhodes was plucked from obscurity aged 29. For nearly ten years, he was at the centre of the Obama Administration - first as a speech-writer, then a policy maker, and finally a close collaborator. Here, Rhodes tells the full story of his partnership - and, ultimately, friendship - with a historic president. From the early days of the Obama campaign to the final hours in the Oval Office, he puts us in the room at the most tense and poignant moments in recent history. `Vivid, lucid, enjoyable... A compelling account of life in the Obama White House' Justin Webb, The Times`A stylish, beautifully written political memoir' Colum McCann

To be born American in the late twentieth century was to take the fact of a particular kind of American exceptionalism as granted - a state of nature arrived at after all else had failed. In the span of just thirty years, this assumption would come crashing down. After the fall, we must determine what it means to be American again. In 2017, as Ben Rhodes was helping Barack Obama begin his next chapter, the legacy they worked to build for eight years was being taken apart. To understand what was happening in America, Rhodes decided to look outwards. Over the next three years, he travelled to dozens of countries, meeting with politicians, activists, and dissidents confronting the same nationalism and authoritarianism that was tearing America apart. Along the way, a Russian opposition leader he spends time with is poisoned, the Hong Kong protesters he comes to know see their movement snuffed out, and America itself reaches the precipice of losing democracy before giving itself a second chance. After the Fall is a hugely ambitious and essential work of discovery. Throughout, Rhodes comes to realize how much America's fingerprints are on a world it helped to shape: through the excesses of the post-Cold War embrace of unbridled capitalism, post-9/11 nationalism and militarism, mania for technology and social media, and the racism that shaped the backlash to the Obama presidency. At the same time, he learns from a diverse set of characters - from Obama to rebels to a rising generation of leaders - how looking squarely at where America has gone wrong only makes it more essential to fight for what America is supposed to be - for itself, and for the entire world.