The Center Holds

In The Center Holds, Jonathan Alter provides the first full account of America at the crossroads. With exclusive reporting and rare historical insight, he pierces the bubble of the White House and the presidential campaigns in a landmark election that marked the return of big money and the rise of big data. He tells the epic story of an embattled president fighting back with the first campaign of the Digital Age.

Alter relates the untold story behind Obama's highs and lows, from the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound to the frustration of the debt ceiling fiasco to his unexpected run-ins with black and Latino activists. Alter takes us inside Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan's Boston campaign as well as Obama's disastrous preparation for the first debate. We meet Obama's analytics geeks working out of "The Cave" and the man who secretly videotaped Romney's infamous comments on the "47 percent." The Center Holds deepens our understanding of the Obama presidency and the future of the country.

About the Author

Jonathan Alter is an analyst and contributing correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC. He is a former senior editor and columnist for Newsweek, where he worked for twenty-eight years, writing more than fifty cover stories. He has also written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, and other publications. He is the author of The Promise: President Obama, Year One and The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, both New York Times bestsellers, and Between the Lines, a collection of his Newsweek columns.