Tell Newt to Shut Up: Prize-Winning Washington Post Journalists Reveal How Reality Gagged the Gingrich Revolution

A blow-by-blow account of the "Republican Revolution" in Congress, which collapsed after little more than a year, this feast for political insiders includes moments both absurd (Newt Gingrich confessing to White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta that "I melt when I am around" President Clinton) and critical. (Gingrich's realization, at the start of 1996, that "He had grievously miscalculated his opposition and strategically botched the most important political battle of his speakership.") As an insider's analysis of what went wrong with the largest rightward tilt in the U.S. Congress in this century, Maraniss and Weisskopf's book is indispensable.