Rating: 
Summary: Not what I expected
Review: Unlike, apparently, most of the reviewers here, I knew very little about Jeffrey Toobin before I picked up this book. For some reason I expected a somewhat unbiased analysis of the whole Florida situation. I was disappointed.I realized that there was a "slant" to this book when Toobin, early on, described Katherine Harris. He stated, in essence, that Ms. Harris had the condition common to many of those who grew up privileged-- a lack of self knowledge. In the context it was written in, this was a major slam. It was also without factual backing, in my experience. I've known people who grew up very well-to-do, and people who have grown up very poor. There may be a lot of differences between them, but "self-knowledge" is not one of them. In fact, the AAUW did a highly publicized study a few years ago on the attitudes of male and female students. Most media attention was focused on findings that girls had lower self-esteem and confidence in themselves as students. This led to the cry for teachers to pay more attention to girls, to help them "catch up" to boys in school. What was lost in the study, though, was another interesting statistic. The group that believed it was doing the best academically, and showed the most confidence in itself, was the group that was actually the lowest performing group. That group was African-american boys. Hence, there was a stunning lack of "self-knowledge" in that group. That group is not generally considered to have grown up in the same heady economic stratosphere as Ms. Harris. Mr. Toobin's generalization, then, is highly questionable. Unfortunately, his attack on Ms. Harris was consistent with the rest of the book. Al Gore and most of his people were noble but foolish. George Bush's people were nasty pragmatists. I've dealt with a great number of political people of both stripes over the years, including some very high officials. I've found a pretty fair mix of "types" in both parties. Toobin must have been in dreamland when he came up with these simplistic generalizations about these groups. That being said, the book is interesting. The nice thing about Toobin's bias is that it is blatant. One needn't guess at where he's coming from. The downside to this is that I ended up treating it more like a work of fiction. I think I need to find some other, less biased, books to try to find out (as much as possible) what REALLY happened in Florida in 2000.
Rating: 
Summary: Overgrown New Yorker Article, Lucid About The Election
Review: Written by probably America's most well-known media legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin takes on the Floridian debacle of 2000 in his short book "Too Close to Call." What it lacks in legal heft it makes up with journalistic breeze, with Toobin writing in the same lucid tone that he takes in the New Yorker, describing set pieces between Bush and Gore staffers not quite equally, but close enough. Perhaps Toobin is biased in his conclusions that Gore was jobbed, and this is where he may have wanted to shed some light on his own political views, ahem -- Democrat -- and this would clearly have strengthened his case. But after all is said and done, the guy lays enough foundation to support his theory that the Republicans were too ruthless and Al Gore was too spineless. "Too Close to Call" never describes evidence of out-and-out fraud, but presents the conclusion that it sure would have been nice if the great State of Florida would have taken the time and just truly recounted all the votes, and points out matter-of-factly that in this scenario, Gore most likely would have won. Whether or not you're a Democrat or Republican, the idea that democracy itself was circumvented in this case is extremely troubling, and that's the pitch-perfect note Toobin leaves the reader with. Surpisingly from a "legal" analyst, this book lacks strong legal analysis, or any legal background at all. There's hardly any references to appropriate statutes, case background, etc., that would really be advantageous for the discerning academic reader who wants to read something more substantive than an overgrown New Yorker article. But as a huge fan of the New Yorker, such an article draws no real complaints here.
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