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Published Feb 2021
416 pages
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion
Publication Information
Jonathan Cohn's The Ten Year War is the definitive account of the battle over Obamacare, based on interviews with sources who were in the room, from one of the nation's foremost healthcare journalists.
The Affordable Care Act, better known as "Obamacare," was the most sweeping and consequential piece of legislation of the last half century. It has touched nearly every American in one way or another, for better or worse, and become the defining political fight of our time.
In The Ten Year War, veteran journalist Jonathan Cohn offers the compelling, authoritative history of how the law came to be, why it looks like it does, and what it's meant for average Americans. Drawn from hundreds of hours of interviews, plus private diaries, emails and memos, The Ten Year War takes readers to Capitol Hill and to town hall meetings, inside the West Wing and, eventually, into Trump Tower, as the nation's most powerful leaders try to reconcile pragmatism and idealism, self-interest and the public good, and ultimately two very different visions for what the country should look like.
At the heart of the book is the decades-old argument over what's wrong with American health care and how to fix it. But the battle over healthcare was always about more than policy. The Ten Year War offers a deeper examination of how our governing institutions, the media and the two parties have evolved, and the dysfunction those changes have left in their wake.
"[A]n engrossing behind-the-scenes account of the fight to pass the Affordable Care Act...This is a comprehensive and essential look at 'arguably the most important and controversial piece of legislation in the last few decades.'" - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"With writing that is lively, engaging, knowledgeable without being scholarly, detailed without being pedantic, Cohn is an exemplar of investigative, expository journalism at its best." - Booklist (starred review)
"An extensive and definitive account of competing visions of American health care that will be of particular interest to readers curious about the process of creating policy and those interested in reform. Cohn's accessible writing makes for an absorbing, fast-paced narrative." - Library Journal (starred review)
"In a book that took 10 years to research and write, journalist Cohn offers a thorough history of the persistent controversy over health care insurance in the U.S...A timely contribution to the literature on an urgent issue." - Kirkus Reviews
"No one has reported more deeply about the quest for universal health care than Jonathan Cohn. Now, in The Ten Year War, he has woven all that knowledge into a sweeping, riveting narrative. Cohn never loses sight of the enormous human stakes involved and tells a much larger story about the fight to save American politics." - David Grann, staff writer at the New Yorker, author of Killers of the Flower Moon
"A front row seat to the most important legislation passed in a generation, The Ten Year War brilliantly shares the roller coaster ups-and-downs. Just like its subject, this book is a Big Fucking Deal." - Mona Hanna-Attisha, founder of the Flint Pediatric Public Health Initiative, author of What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City
"The Affordable Care Act fight was the defining legislative battle of the modern era ― the one in which the true nature of our institutions and parties came into sharp relief, the one in which the strategies and ideologies that dominate politics now were forged and formed. Jonathan Cohn covered it brilliantly, and now he's written the authoritative account it deserves." - Ezra Klein, founder and editor-at-large of Vox, author of Why We're Polarized
This information about The Ten Year War 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.
Jonathan Cohn is a senior national correspondent at HuffPost, where he covers politics and policy. A former senior editor at the New Republic, he has written for the New York Times, Atlantic, and Self, among others. He has won several awards and was called "one of the nation's leading experts on health policy" by the Washington Post. A graduate of Harvard, Jonathan grew up in Florida and lived for years in the Boston area before moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he lives with his family.
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