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Double Down

Nov 15, 2025 4:37 PM

Author:John Heilemann,Mark Halperin

Double Down

‘What am I supposed to do when he starts spewing his bullshit?’ Barack Obama preparing for his first debate with Mitt Romney

In their runaway bestseller Game Change / Race of a Lifetime, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann captured the full drama of Barack Obama’s improbable, dazzling victory over the Clintons, John McCain and Sarah Palin. With the same masterly reporting, unparalleled access, and narrative skill, Double Down picks up the story in the Oval Office, where the president is beset by crises both inherited and unforeseen – facing defiance from his political foes, disenchantment from voters, disdain from the nation’s powerful finance figures and dysfunction within the West Wing. As 2012 looms, leaders of the Republican Party, salivating over Obama’s political fragility, see a chance to wrestle back control of the White House – and the country.

So how did the Republicans screw it up? How did Obama survive the onslaught and defy the predictions of a one-term presidency? Double Down follows the gaudy carnival of Republican contenders – ambitious and flawed, famous and infamous, charismatic and cartoonish – as Mitt Romney, the straitlaced, can-do, gaffe-prone multimillionaire from Massachusetts, scraped and scratched his way to the nomination, while Obama is seen storming out of a White House meeting with his high command after accusing them of betrayal, and gradually transforming a tense détente with Bill Clinton into political gold.

Double Down takes you into back rooms and closed-door meetings, laying bare the secret history of the 2012 campaign in a panoramic account of an election that was as hard fought as it was lastingly consequential.

Reviews

Explosive

—— Daily Mail

Compelling

—— The Observer

An energetic and entertaining account of the knives-out behind-the-scenes living during the world’s most hard-fought election

—— The Irish Times

Full of page turning details … translates insider politics for mass-market readers

—— Washington Post

The authors ability to get inside the campaigns and dramatise them make the book essential reading for those addicted to US politics

—— Financial Times

Vigorous … gripping

—— New Statesman

The book testifies to its authors’ energetic legwork and insider access ... creating a novelistic narrative that provides a you-are-there immediacy

—— The New York Times

it’s beautiful fragments coalesce to form an elaborate, haunting portrait of urban Pakistan, rich with acute sociological detail and subtle existential contemplation

—— Hirsh Sawhney , Guardian

The Martian kicked my ass! Weir has crafted a relentlessly entertaining and inventive survival thriller, a MacGyver-trapped-on-Mars tale that feels just as real and harrowing as the true story of Apollo 13.

—— Ernest Cline , New York Times bestselling author of Ready Player One

Weir’s debut is easily the best SF novel of the year so far

—— Financial Times

An impressively geeky debut novel ... the technical details keep the story relentlessly precise and the suspense ramped up

—— Entertainment Weekly

Strong, resilient, and gutsy. It's Robinson Crusoe on Mars, 21st century style. Set aside a chunk of free time when you start this one. You're going to need it because you won't want to put it down.

—— Steve Berry

Think Apollo 13 ... on Mars! ... A saga of courage, ingenuity and humour - and utterly convincing thanks to superb research. The best space disaster story since Clarke's A Fall of Moondust.

—— Stephen Baxter

jaw-clenchingly gripping ... a modern-day Apollo13

—— Stuff Magazine

Brilliant…a celebration of human ingenuity [and] the purest example of real-science sci-fi for many years…Utterly compelling.

—— Wall Street Journal

Don’t be put off thinking this is a sci-fi book – it’s so much more than that. Utterly brilliant.

—— Bella

One of the best thrillers I’ve read in a long time, an incredible story about an astronaut marooned on Mars. This is no science fiction tale: the technology is beautifully researched and based on what is currently envisioned for a manned flight to Mars. It feels so real it could almost be nonfiction, and yet it has the narrative drive and power of a rocket launch. This is Apollo 13 times ten. I could not put this book down.

—— Douglas Preston , #1 New York Times bestselling author of Impact and Blasphemy

Gripping…shapes up like Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe as written by someone brighter.

—— Larry Niven, multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of the Ringworld series and Lucifer’s Hammer

The tension simply never lets up, from the first page to the last, and at no point does the believability falter for even a second. You can't shake the feeling that this could all really happen.

—— Patrick Lee, New York Times bestselling author of The Breach and Ghost Country

Weir has fashioned in Mark Watney one of the most appealing, funny and resourceful characters in recent fiction ... gripping

—— Huffington Post

one of the best survival stories you’ll ever read (think Robinson Crusoe on Mars only more extreme).

—— Martin Sorenson , Publishers Weekly

Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.

—— Kirkus

Apollo 13-meets-Robinson-Crusoe-on-Mars, and I guess for those who enjoyed the films Gravity or Moon, this one will be a literary equivalent ... I was, in the end, totally won over by this book in its celebration of how humans can deal with anything the harshness of science and extreme environments can pose, and it kept me reading longer than I meant to

—— SFFworld.com

one of the most thrilling and absorbing novels I have ever read

—— Sfcrowsnest

Riveting...a tightly constructed and completely believable story of a man's ingenuity and strength in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

—— Booklist

Weir combines the heart-stopping with the humorous in this brilliant debut novel... the perfect mix of action and space adventure.

—— Library Journal (starred)

An exciting, insightful science- based tale [that] kept me turning the pages to see what ingenious solution our hero would concoct to survive yet anotherimpossible dilemma

—— Terry Brooks

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