Advise and Consent (Drury)

Advise and Consent
Allen Drury, 1959
Doubleday
616 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385054195


Summary
Winner, 1960 Pulitizer Prize

Advise and Consent is a study of political animals in their natural habitat and is universally recognized as THE Washington novel. It begins with Senate confirmation hearings for a liberal Secretary of State and concludes two weeks later, after debate and controversy have exploded this issue into a major crisis. (From the publisher.)

Over the course of the novel, we follow four of the primary players in the U.S. Senate: Bob Munson, the affable and skilled Senate Majority Leader; Seab Cooley, the hornery Senator from South Carolina who carries a personal grudge against the nominee; Brigham Anderson, the talented and idealistic young Senate from Utah who heads up the subcommittee hearings; and Orrin Knox, Senator from Michigan who burns with an intense rivalry toward the man who sits in the White House.

Each man, and others, must make a decision to follow their party dictate or their own moral compass. Fifty years after it was written Advise and Consent still speaks to us about the difficult trade-offs and compromise at the heart of governing.