Review: This Town by Mark Leibovich

Title: This Town
Author: Mark Leibovich
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Publish Date: July 16, 2013
Source: Library

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "'The great thing about Washington is no matter how many elections you lose, how many times you're indicted, how many scandals you've been tainted by, well, the great thing is you can always eat lunch in that town again. What keeps the permanent government spinning on its carousel is the freedom of shamelessness, and that mother's milk of politics, cash. In Mark Leibovich’s remarkable look at the way things really work in D.C., a funeral for a beloved television star becomes the perfect networking platform, a disgraced political aide can emerge with more power than his boss, campaign losers befriend their vanquishers (and make more money than ever!), "conflict of interest" is a term lost in translation, political reporters are fetishized and worshipped for their ability to get one's name in print, and, well - we're all really friends, aren't we? What Julia Phillips did for Hollywood, Timothy Crouse did for journalists, and Michael Lewis did for Wall Street, Mark Leibovich does for our nation's capital.'"

My Two Cents:

Do you dream of being a part of the Washington you see on tv? Do you want to be a Washington Insider?  Do you like gossip? Then this book might be for you. This book is filled with gossip from Washington's hallowed halls. This book is full of a lot of anecdotes and is definitely fun and frothy but it has its flaws.

Now, I actually live in this area and I love Washington, D.C. and this book sort of sells this area short. This book is about a very select group of people who work in Washington. Not everyone falls into this place as Leibovich would make you think. This book is filled with some of the marquee names from this town but it's only a small sliver and therefore not a particularly good picture of this place.

This book is quite long and while it started with a bang for me, eventually it started tapering off for me about halfway through as some of the stories started to feel the same. Overall, this may have been better in a slimmed down dose.