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Published Apr 2018
304 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
James Comey provides an unprecedented entry into the corridors of power, and a remarkable lesson in what makes an effective leader.
In his forthcoming book, former FBI director James Comey shares his never-before-told experiences from some of the highest-stakes situations of his career in the past two decades of American government, exploring what good, ethical leadership looks like, and how it drives sound decisions.
Mr. Comey served as director of the FBI from 2013 to 2017, appointed to the post by President Barack Obama. He previously served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and the U.S. deputy attorney general in the administration of President George W. Bush. From prosecuting the Mafia and Martha Stewart to helping change the Bush administration's policies on torture and electronic surveillance, overseeing the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation as well as ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, Comey has been involved in some of the most consequential cases and policies of recent history.
"Comey revisits his own big career moments — prosecuting mobsters, standing up to Vice President Dick Cheney and his consigliere David Addington over counterterrorism policies — with understandable pride. Yet he constantly worries he is too self-centered. 'I can be stubborn, prideful, overconfident, and driven by ego,' he admits. 'I've struggled with those my whole life.' That struggle continues in this book. Comey isn't just the kind of writer who quotes Shakespeare, but the kind who quotes himself quoting Shakespeare. He rejects the notion that 'I am in love with my own righteousness' yet notes that 'I have long worried about my ego.' (Consider the egotism of being preoccupied by your egotism.) 'I am convinced that if I could do it all again, I would do the same thing' given what he knew at the time, Comey says of the emails controversy, even if 'reasonable people' might have handled it differently. And he apologizes to Clinton in the least apologetic way possible: 'I have read she has felt anger toward me personally, and I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry that I couldn't do a better job explaining to her and her supporters why I made the decisions I made.' (Ironically, it's a very Clintonian apology.)" - The Washington Post, Carlos Lozada
"Most Americans will never go beyond the juicy bits trumpeted by the wall-to-wall Comey coverage this week – but they should. James Comey's book is more interesting and more important than the gossipy headlines make it out to be, albeit not necessarily for the reasons the author may have wanted." - Rolling Stone, Garrett M. Graff
"Comey's scathing arguments against Trump could hardly be more compelling, and Loyalty is infinitely more credible than Michael Wolff's gossipy best-seller. But the point remains: Not even a fundamentally decent, morally upright former FBI Director could resist the appeal of a little Trump gaslighting. B-" - Entertainment Weekly, David Canfield
"This is a troubling and important account of the clash between power and justice." - Publishers Weekly
This information about A Higher Loyalty was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
On September 4, 2013, James Comey was sworn in as the seventh Director of the FBI.
A Yonkers, New York native, Jim Comey attended the College of William and Mary and the University of Chicago Law School. After law school, Comey returned to New York and joined the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York as an Assistant U.S. Attorney. There, he took on numerous crimes, most notably Organized Crime in the case of the United States v. John Gambino, et al. Afterwards, Comey became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, where he prosecuted the high-profile case that followed the 1996 terrorist attack on the U.S. military's Khobar Towers in Khobar, Saudi Arabia.
Comey returned to New York after 9/11 to become the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. At the end of 2003, he was tapped to be the Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice (DOJ) under then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and moved to the Washington, D.C. area.
Comey left DOJ in 2005 to serve as General Counsel and Senior Vice President at Defense contractor Lockheed Martin. Five years later, he joined Bridgewater Associates, a Connecticut-based investment fund, as its General Counsel. In early 2013, Comey became a Lecturer in Law, a Senior Research Scholar, and Hertog Fellow in National Security Law at Columbia Law School.
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