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Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy have uncovered a “powerful secret fraternity” that for decades has guided the actions of almost every one of our sitting presidents, said Bill Desowitz in USA Today. But don’t break out the tinfoil hats just yet. In this “brilliant investigative work,” the two Time editors detail conversations and meetings in which members of this shadow organization have consistently put aside ideological differences to advise the presiding commander in chief on significant policy matters. Unofficially, this informal club was founded when Harry Truman, after suddenly ascending to the presidency, reached out to his only living predecessor, Herbert Hoover, for advice. The tradition has been generating odd alliances ever since.
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At least one ex-president seems to have been “just plain trouble,” said Janet Maslin in The New York Times. “Some of the book’s livelier moments” detail Jimmy Carter’s “rogue efforts to operate as a one-man State Department.” But there aren’t enough such passages. The author’s simple theme—that each president enters office as a know-it-all, gets in over his head, and eventually develops respectful relationships with his predecessors—would be enough to carry a Time cover story. But the relationships aren’t all that deep, and Gibbs and Duffy try to paper that over with “a closing burst of canned lyricism about eternally simpatico commanders in chief learning to take the long view.” In fact, they’ve created a compilation of mildly interesting anecdotes about the modern presidency, but not much more.