A distinguished journalist assesses the profound impact of governmental and presidential lies on American culture, revealing how such lies become ever more complex and how such deception creates problems far more serious than those lied about in the beginning, and focuses on four specific instances involving FDR, Kennedy, LBJ, and Ronald Reagan. 60,000 first printing. In 1964, as Congress prepared to vote on the Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing the use of force in Vietnam, Senator William Fulbright said that he simply did not "normally assume" that "a President lies to you." That was a mistake, according to Alterman's compendious history of Presidential lying. Alterman, a columnist for The Nation, refers to the Bush Administration as a "post-truth Presidency," but in general he is hardest on Democrats. He writes of Roosevelt's "deliberate mendacity" at Yalta and Kennedy's "nasty double game" during the Cuban missile crisis—tactics that, respectively, he claims, started and deepened the Cold War. Alterman argues that such behavior, whatever its justification, invariably exacts a price—L.B.J.'s lies about the Tonkin incident consumed his Presidency—and that the greatest dangers come when an Administration starts to believe its own lies. Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker Although we are occasionally shocked upon learning that a president has lied, Alterman maintains that presidents routinely lie, often with consequences that shape and reverberate through our history. Alterman focuses on four key presidential lies: Franklin Roosevelt and the Yalta accords, John F. Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis, Lyndon Johnson and the second Gulf of Tonkin incident, and Ronald Reagan and Central America in the 1980s. Looking beyond the moral aspects of the deceptions, Alterman examines the destructive consequences: Yalta, for example, led to 40 years of cold war. For each lie, he offers details of the particular deception and the long-term effects for the president, his party, and the nation. "Without exception, each of the presidencies (or successor presidencies) paid an extremely high price for its lies," he notes. The nation, of course, has paid a price as well. He concludes with a chapter that examines President Bush's posture on the war in Iraq in the broader context of presidential deception. A timely and insightful book. Vanessa Bush Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Crack political journalist Alterman ... throws bones worth chewing on long and hard. -- Kirkus Eric Alterman is the “Stop the Presses” columnist for The Nation , the “Altercation” Web logger for msnbc.com (www.altercation.msnbc.com), and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress . Called “the most honest and incisive media critic writing today” by the National Catholic Reporter , he holds a BA from Cornell, a master’s degree from Yale, and a doctorate from Stanford. Eric Alterman is Professor of English at Brooklyn College of City University of New York. Signed by the author, Eric Alterman, fine hardcover, with fine dust jacket