John B. Judis
October 13, 2011 | 12:00 am
Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President
by Ron Suskind
JOHN B. JUDIS on RON SUSKIND'S WHITE HOUSE PORTRAIT
Before turning to the substance of Confidence Men, I want to comment on these charges against this author. I think the book is filled with minor errors–the former Citicorp CEO was Walter Wriston, not Walter Wristen–and the initial third of the book rehashes material that readers could find in earlier books about the Obama campaign and the financial crisis. But I would argue that the errors and the inflated narrative reflect the current practices of some large American publishers, who spend little time or money on copy-editing or fact-checking and rush books out without much editorial pressure. As far as I can tell, Suskind’s errors are not discrediting—no more than was Weisberg’s and Slate’s error in publishing, along with Weisberg’s review, a photograph of former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill labeled as Suskind.
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