How Not to Be a Politician by Rory Stewart

How Not to Be a Politician by Rory Stewart

The #1 Sunday Times bestseller, published in the UK as Politics on the Edge.

One of the best books on politics our era will see . . . A book of astonishing literary quality. --Matthew Parris, The TLS

Rory Stewart] walked across Asia, served in British Parliament, and ran against Boris Johnson. Now he gives us his view of what's wrong with politics, and how we can make it right. --Adam Grant, The 12 New Fall Books to Enrich Your Thinking

From a great writer--legendary for his expeditions into some of the world's most forbidding places--a wise, honest, and sometimes absurdist memoir of a most remarkable journey through British politics at the breaking point

Rory Stewart was an unlikely politician. He was best known for his two-year walk across Asia--in which he crossed Afghanistan, essentially solo, in the months after 9/11--and for his service, as a diplomat in Iraq, and Afghanistan. But in 2009, he abandoned his chair at Harvard University to stand for a seat in Parliament, representing the communities and farms of the Lake District and the Scottish border--one of the most isolated and beautiful districts in England. He ran as a Conservative, though he had no prior connection to the politics and there was much about the party that he disagreed with.

How Not to Be a Politician is a candid and penetrating examination of life on the ground as a politician in an age of shallow populism, when every hard problem has a solution that's simple, appealing, and wrong. While undauntedly optimistic about what a public servant can accomplish in the lives of his constituents, the book is also a pitiless insider's expos of the game of politics at the highest level, often shocking in its displays of rampant cynicism, ignorance, glibness, and sheer incompetence. Stewart witnesses Britain's vote to leave the European Union and its descent into political civil war, compounded by the bad faith of his party's leaders--David Cameron, Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss.

Finally, after nine years of service and six ministerial roles, and shocked by his party's lurch to the populist right, Stewart ran for prime minister. Stewart's campaign took him into the lead in the opinion polls, head-to-head against Boris Johnson. How Not to Be a Politician is his effort to make sense of it all, including what has happened to politics in Britain and the world and how we can fix it. The view into democracy's dark heart is troubling, but at every turn Stewart also finds allies and ways to make a difference. A bracing, invigorating mix of irony and love infuses How Not to Be a Politician. This is one of the most revealing memoirs written by a politician in living memory.

RORY STEWART is the best-selling author of The Prince of the Marshes and The Spaces in Between. He was awarded the Order of the British Empire for services in Iraq as the former director of the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy and Ryan Professor of Human Rights at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He is a Conservative member of Parliament for Penrith and The Border, a Northern Cumbria area where he and his wife live.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780593300329
ISBN 10	0593300327
Title	How Not to Be a Politician
Author	Rory Stewart
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Penguin Putnam Inc
Year published	2023-09-19
Number of pages	464
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.