Rating: 
Summary: I really enjoyed this book
Review: I had to read this book for my 9th grade gov't class. I'm glad I did. I found the book very intriguing, always making me turn the page to see what happened next. It is very possible that the situations in Greenfield's book could actually happen. I enjoyed the characters, especially Dorothy Ledger and Alan Viegle. My project on this book is due tommorow so...
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting shades of 2000
Review: I heard about this book when Judy Woodruff commented about it while talking to Jeff on air on CNN during the 2000 election. So I finally picked up the audio version and gave it a listen all in one night. Four double sided tapes is a bit long, but it was an amusing listen.Let me say that this was an excellent book. But... My first complaint though right off was that Mr. Greenfield reads way too fast. Understandably he was the one who wrote it and therefore knew it nearly by heart. It had already sunken into his mind. But to me as he sped through scenery and other descriptions I couldn't get a hold of it in my mind. He was already on to the next paragraph. Perhaps if it was not read by the author it would have been a better listen. But the book itself seemed to be well written. The only problem I had with his style was that he seemed to put the 'heroes' into situations that were unrealistically impossible. Not just one or two. But seemingly every situation. The road blocks were immense and then he would proceed to write the characters out of the problem though yet another miraculous turn of events. The very nature of the story was supposed to be unreal. But it seemed like every situation the 'heroes' of our story ran into tried to feel like they had no hope of escape. Its used by many authors to portray a sense of excitement and drama. Especially when they are faced by these great odds and seem to triumph time and again. Real life just isn't that interesting. But this is fiction. :) I was a little disappointed in the ending. I would have preferred to see perhaps the opposite candidate get in. I would have preferred to see the showdown they had talked about through the whole book. I would have even preferred to have seen perhaps a third party candidate involved in this some how just to spice things up. All that aside, it was worth the money and its better than 99% of the other political garbage writing that is out there. I highly recommend it. The ending, though not my preferred ending, was still a nice surprise. Who would have thought that he would show that kind of character? In the end Mr Greenfield could never have guessed the actual level that real life politicians and deal makers would stoop to win the 2000 election. At least his characters followed the laws.
Rating:
Summary: Surpisingly good book!
Review: I heard this book mentioned a number of times during that seemingly endless election we had not too long ago. I started out expecting yet another "political thriller"--Primary Colors left a bad taste in my mouth, and most other such books were spy novels disguised as political novels. "The People's Choice" does suffer from some of those things that other political novels do. One glaring similarity is the number of characters used in the book. Nearly all political books feel the need to introduce dozens of characters, lest their campaign atmosphere seem inauthentic. TPC is no exception. No character is ever flushed out; before one is introduced, another one has to be rammed through so the author can get them all in. Greenfield is not alone in this; Primary Colors did it too. Greenfield also suffers in his novel writing. One device I found particularly irritating was the sudden, if not exactly frequent, shifts from third to first person. They are cordoned off by chapter, thankfully, but some rather distracting "explanations and history lessons" are inadvertently added in. And, as other reviewers have pointed out, much of this info, and the dialogue from the characters, seems to be of the "hey! here's an interesting anecdote I learned in grad school! Let's work it in!" variety. With all this, though, the book is pretty good. Admittedly, it gets better as you go along; the first chapter is appalingly bad; the second chapter is pretty good; and the third is excellent. Surprisingly, as the procedural mechanisms are slowly realized, the suspense gets better. It also has one of the most fun--if not believable--endings I've ever seen in such a book. The book is done in fun, of course, but the facts are straight and presented nicely. It's obvious that Greenfield has an anti-electoral college bent, but it's not so overt as other reviewers have said; in fact, it's only directly touched on briefly at the end. The dialogue is fun, if not real-life, and the last third of the book is pretty fast-paced, interesting, and holds up with the best. If you can slog through the first chapter, the rest falls into place; it's worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Life imitates art, again?
Review: I remember reading this a few years back, enjoying Greenfield's breezy style and the "what-if" longshotedness of the premise. Not so far-fetched now, and well worth a look. Todus
Rating:
Summary: Funny and Educational in a Workmanlike way...
Review: I'm not usually one to read so-called "Washington" novels, whose plots revolve around politics and its attending infrastructure. This one, however, is probably worth the short time it takes to read. It bears the subtitle "A Cautionary Tale" and rightfully so, for the novel is simply a fictional device to deliver the message that the American system of employing an electoral college is seriously flawed and outdated. With workmanlike prose, Greenfield presents a tale in which a president-elect is killed in the time between the popular election and the actual election by the college of electors. What is exposed is the complete failure of the system to account for any such anomaly as first one elector refuses to vote for VP-elect to fill the dead president-elect's position. Greenfield manages to make all the normal Washington-insider dealings, media coverage, and so forth, somewhat interesting and entertaining. Check it out, you might learn something.
Rating:
Summary: Very interesting and timely, well researched
Review: If you think that voters elect presidents, well think again. The dangers inherent in the Electoral College is the subject of this book. Mr. Greenfield takes pock shots at all the sacred cows of American politics and media. Sometimes political thriller, sometimes political satire, "The People's Choice" is a timely choice as the country enters yet another election year
Rating:
Summary: This is to C-SPAN junkies what ID4 was to action fans
Review: It is seldom that I finish any book in half a day, but this is exactly how long it took me to read "The People's
Choice." I simply couldn't put it down. Actually, this story is kind of interesting. Being somewhat a fan of the
Electoral College, I couldn't resist but wondering what
really would happen if this took place. Because Greenfield
is in the media and the media sadly controls the "conventional wisdom", I have a feeling that Greenfield's portrayal
of the media frenzy surrounding this scenario is really on
target. If you ever wanted to learn about who really elects
our presidents, The People's Choice is a history lesson you'll never forget. (Extensive review of this at http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~pruffini/greenfield.htm )
Rating: 
Summary: The People's Choice
Review: It took me four months to read up to chapter five. Talk about "I have a life, Thank God." Dry, boring, and waste of time. This was a ridiculous assignment!
Rating:
Summary: The Hole in our Constitution
Review: Jeff Greenfield is best known as a political commentator for ABC. He uses his enormous experience to craft an intriguing yarn which is basically about how the Electoral College works. Dry subject, great book. Some of the characters are thinly-veiled caricatures of real people, and it was great fun guessing who was who (Avi DuPois is a great name for Limbaugh, but is the "Distinguished Commentator" supposed to be Brinkley or George Will?). It's all too believable that something like what's in the book could happen. Must-read for all politics junkies.
Rating: 
Summary: Book works as political theater, less so as literature
Review: Jeff Greenfield is not primarily a fiction author by trade, and it shows in this effort. While he occasionally comes up with laugh-out-loud funny scenarios, he is more often than not doing workman's duty to fill out a fairly convoluted plot about what would happen if the president-elect died before the electoral college members officially cast their ballots. Only some of the characters are very interesting, and none are particularly complex. Greenfield is at his best when he describes the news media covering the politics beat, and the novel is ultimately successful for its target audience of political news junkies. At times, the characters engage in unbelievable and dry conversation designed to let Greenfield speak directly to the reader and set up his various premises--but the language is exactly the sort of dull, mind-numbing analysis of minutiae that politics fans love to watch and spew. To that extent, one could say the book works as satire, but it is clearly not meant as such. Greenfield has written the kind of book he would like to read, I expect. Heavy on event-oriented plot and light on its stumbling and ineffective efforts at examining the people behind the story, the book is exactly like television news. If you enjoy CNN, give it a read.
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