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First published as All the Truth Is Out in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, in 2014
This edition HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
© Matt Bai 2014
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Motion Picture Artwork (cover) © 2018 CTMG. All Rights Reserved
Author photograph © Robyn Twomey
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
Matt Bai asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780008333218
Ebook Edition © December 2018 ISBN: 9780008333225
Version 2018-12-13
For Ellen
Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
—F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
CONTENTS
2 Tilting Toward Culture Death
5 “I Do Not Think That’s a Fair Question”
About the Publisher
ONE OF THE FIRST PEOPLE I CALLED after I decided to write this book in 2009 was Richard Ben Cramer. This was not a call I made lightly. I had, by this time, been writing about politics for The New York Times Magazine for the better part of a decade, so I was not exactly a journalistic unknown. But Richard was in a different category altogether. He was one of the greatest nonfiction writers of this or any age, and his seminal, 1,047-page chronicle of the 1988 presidential campaign—What It Takes: The Way to the White House—was arguably the greatest and most ambitious work of political journalism in American history.
We had talked by phone in the past, and I had written about him once, but never before had I sought his counsel. I feared finding out that one of my literary heroes was just another dismissive egoist—the business is full of them—who didn’t have time to dole out advice.
About thirty seconds into the conversation, Richard invited me to lunch at the old farmhouse he shared with his girlfriend (and later wife), Joan, on Maryland’s idyllic Eastern Shore. Anytime I liked, he said, just pick a day, he wasn’t doing much other than writing. The grace of that invitation wouldn’t have surprised anyone
