# Political fiction **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 4, 2008, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-fiction/471109 "2008-11-04T19:09:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2008, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-fiction/471109/21 "2008-11-06T03:55:45Z")
_First Among Equals_ by Archer is an excellent account of the careers of four British politicians seeking to become Prime Minister. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2008, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-fiction/471109/22 "2008-11-06T05:58:11Z")
Does it have to be realistic? Ayn Rand’s ATLAS SHRUGGED Taylor Caldwell’s CAPTAINS AND THE KINGS her OOP- THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATES Edward Mandell House’s PHILIP DRU: ADMINISTRATOR (Forget the Protocols of Zion, THIS was the Conspiracy’s agenda for the 20th century.) ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2008, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-fiction/471109/23 "2008-11-06T13:59:04Z")
> [@FriarTed](#): > > Does it have to be realistic? Preferably. I’m not touching Rand with someone else’s 24.5 foot pole. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2008, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-fiction/471109/24 "2008-11-06T16:27:30Z")
Aw, almost all of my favorites have already been mentioned. \*Advise and Consent \* is a wonderful look at the clubby U.S. Senate of the late 1950s. A classic of its day, and a time capsule of sorts, as the Senate’s nothing like that now. Haven’t read any of the sequels, but I hear, as **Exapno Mapcase** said, that they suck. _House of Cards_ is great, but the TV miniseries is actually far better than the book (and has a different ending, too, permitting the pretty good sequel _To Play the King_ and the so-so _The Final Cut_). In the series, Ian Richardson is just gripping as the amoral, murderously ambitious PM. Christopher Buckley’s books are good fun. His _White House Mess_ is about a totally hapless, snakebit administration where everything goes hilariously wrong. My favorite line: “This press statement isn’t just a tissue of lies; it’s an industrial broadloom carpet of lies.” _The Man_ by Irving Wallace is also pretty damn dated now, and is about the first (by accident) black President of the U.S. I read it in the mid-1970s and remember mostly liking it. _First Among Equals_ by Jeffrey Archer is just a wonderful, wonderful book. Jeez, I’ve probably read it a half-dozen times. It’s a real page-turner about four British MPs and their rise to power, from the 1960s to the early 1990s… but only one can be PM. Interestingly, the British and American editions have a different man winning in the end (Archer found his friends on each side of the pond were rooting for different candidates). Who wins in each, you ask? 😉 In the British edition, it’s Gould, the Labour candidate; in the American edition, it’s Kerslake, the Conservative. _Joshua, Son of None_ by Nancy Freedman is a fascinating, heartbreaking novel about the cloning of a certain unnamed President assassinated in Dallas; the child is raised in conditions very similar to those of his progenitor and is groomed over decades for the Presidency. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2008, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-fiction/471109/25 "2008-11-07T05:29:32Z")
thanks for reminding me of _Joshua_ - I wonder where my copy of it’s gone to? that was a fun read. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2008, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-fiction/471109/26 "2008-11-07T05:41:43Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > thanks for reminding me of _Joshua_ - I wonder where my copy of it’s gone to? that was a fun read. It was. I see it came out in 1973, a decade after JFK’s death. There was a battered old copy in the beach house I used to go to, and I re-read it just about every summer. It’s kind of a benign version of the basic plot of _The Boys from Brazil._ 😉 Amazon has some used copies. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2008, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-fiction/471109/27 "2008-11-07T05:56:52Z")
**Agent of Influence** by David Aaron was pretty spot-on. It was one of the last cold war thrillers written before the wall came down, a mildly satirical novel about a KGB colonel’s attempt to buy _The Washington Post_, from the POV of the Mergers and Acquisitions broker assigned to help him do it. It manages to went its way through every corridor of Washington power. Also, **The Gay Place** by Billie Joe Brammer. It’s set in Austin, TX and is a pastiche of th environment that spawned LBJ. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2008, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-fiction/471109/28 "2008-11-07T06:06:18Z")
> [@Scissorjack](#): > > Former Clinton staffer Joe Klein’s _Primary Colors_, a thinly fictionalised account of the trials and tribulations of a Bill Clinton {Jack Stanton, in the novel} campaign staffer during Clinton’s first run at the primaries is a pretty much indispensable read for an insider account of how the politics you see on TV is actually put together behind the scenes. Small correction: Klein was never a Clinton staffer. He covered the Clinton campaign for _Newsweek_, and those observations formed the source material for **Primary Colors**. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-fiction/471109.md?page=1)