Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace - Hardcover

Leon Panetta; Jim Newton

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1594205965 ISBN 13: 9781594205965

Publisher: Penguin Press, 2014

Synopsis

It could be said that Leon Panetta has had two of the most consequential careers of any American public servant in the past fifty years. His first career, beginning as an army intelligence officer and including a distinguished run as one of Congress' most powerful and respected members, lasted thirty-five years and culminated in his transformational role as Clinton s budget czar and White House chief of staff. He then retired to establish the Panetta Institute with his wife of fifty years, Sylvia; to serve on the Iraq Study Group; and to protect his beloved California coastline. But in 2009, he accepted what many said was a thankless task: returning to public office as the director of the CIA, taking it from a state of turmoil after the Bush-era torture debates and moving it back to the vital center of America s war against Al Qaeda, including the campaign that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden. And then, in the wake of bin Laden's death, Panetta became the U.S. secretary of defense, inheriting two troubled wars in a time of austerity and painful choices.

Like his career, Worthy Fights is a reflection of Panetta's values. It is imbued with the frank, grounded, and often quite funny spirit of a man who never lost touch with where he came from: his family's walnut farm in beautiful Carmel Valley, California. It is also a testament to a lost kind of political leadership, which favors progress and duty to country over partisanship. Panetta is a Democrat who pushed for balanced budgets while also expanding care for the elderly and sick; a devout Catholic who opposes the death penalty but had to weigh every drone strike from 2009 through 2011. Throughout his career, Panetta's polestar has been his belief that a public servant s real choice is between leadership or crisis. Troubles always come about through no fault of one s own, but most can be prevented with courage and foresight.

As always, Panetta calls them as he sees them in Worthy Fights. Suffused with its author s decency and stubborn common sense, the book is an epic American success story, a great political memoir, and a revelatory view onto many of the great figures and events of our time.

About this title

Review:

'The US president's lack of leadership on withdrawal from Iraq left the country to slide into sectarian chaos, writes his former defence secretary Leon Panetta.' An extract from Leon Panetta's memoir appeared in The Sunday Times

'Writing kiss-and-tell memoirs is as old as the US republic. But few presidents have had to suffer as much from them while still in office as Barack Obama. The publication of Worthy Fights by Leon Panetta, Mr Obama's former Pentagon chief and head of the Central Intelligence Agency, marks the fifth such book by a senior official in Mr Obama's administration. Because it is written by a traditionally loyal and highly disciplined elder statesman, it will count as among the more damaging.' - Financial Times

'Leon Panetta says Obama administration brushed aside push for troops to stay behind in Iraq because it was 'eager to rid itself of' the war.' ---Daily Mail

About the Author:

Leon Panetta served as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2009 2011, and as secretary of defense from 2011 2013. An Italian American Democrat, he was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1977 1993, the director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1993 1994, and President Clinton's chief of staff from 1994 1997. He is the founder of the Panetta Institute for Public Policy, and has served as professor of public policy at his alma mater, Santa Clara University.

Jim Newton is editor at large of the Los Angeles Times, where he has worked for twenty-five years as a reporter, editor, bureau chief, and columnist. He is the author of two critically acclaimed biographies, Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made and Eisenhower: The White House Years.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1594205965
• ISBN 13: 9781594205965
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 512