Alpha Dogs

by James Harding, Atlantic Books, 384pp, £22. In 1978, a young man told the mayor of Boston, Kevin White, that everyone thought he was as an "aloof, arrogant, son-of-a-bitch bastard". The same man's firm, the political consultancy Sawyer Miller, then proceeded to get White re-elected, marketing him as "the loner in love with the city”. This was the dawn of a new era in electioneering, and Sawyer Miller was the... [read full story]