On the House: A Washington Memoir

by John Boehner Narrated by John Boehner

Overview

This program is read by the author.

* INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * #1 WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER *

“A rollicking, foil-mouthed” [memoir]....Boehner has delivered a classic Washington “tell-all,” albeit one with his typical jocular style.” --The Washington Post

Former Speaker of the House John Boehner shares colorful tales from the halls of power, the smoke-filled rooms around the halls of power, and his fabled tour bus.

John Boehner is the last of a breed. At a time when the arbiters of American culture were obsessing over organic kale, cold-pressed juice, and SoulCycle, the man who stood second in line to the presidency was unapologetically smoking Camels, quaffing a glass of red, and hitting the golf course whenever he could.

There could hardly have been a more diametrically opposed figure to represent the opposition party in President Barack Obama's Washington. But when Boehner announced his resignation, President Obama called to tell the outgoing Speaker that he'd miss him. "Mr. President," Boehner replied, "yes you will." He thought of himself as a "regular guy with a big job," and he enjoyed it.

In addition to his own stories of life in the swamp city and of his comeback after getting knocked off the leadership ladder, Boehner offers his impressions of leaders he's met and what made them successes or failures, from Ford and Reagan to Obama, Trump, and Biden. He shares his views on how the Republican Party has become unrecognizable today; the advice--some harsh, some fatherly--he dished out to members of his own party, the opposition, the media, and others; and his often acid-tongued comments about his former colleagues. And of course he talks about golfing with five presidents.

Through Speaker Boehner's honest and self-aware reflections, you'll be reminded of a time when the adults were firmly in charge.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Jaw-dropping...beyond interesting.” — Gayle King

“Former Speaker of the House John Boehner’s trademark brutal honesty is alive and well in his new memoir On the House, a pull-no-punches look at the people who control the corridors of power and a cautionary tale about who he says hijacked the GOP...He does not hold back.” — Whoopi Goldberg

“Preliminary evidence suggests this is the greatest book ever written.” — Seth Masket, professor of political science, University of Denver

“If the recipe to write a good political memoir is a few glasses of Merlot and then just turning on the tape recorder...we should just definitely try that more often.” — David Freedlander, New York Magazine

“Boehner finally calls it as he sees it.” — Nancy Sinatra

“Some juicy parts…candid…There’s so much great stuff in this book.” — Stephen Colbert

“No shortage of insults...Written in his folksy manner, On the House is certainly more entertaining than the standard “halls of power” narratives” — The New York Times

“The former Republican House speaker is good company throughout On the House... You can practically hear him uncorking another bottle of merlot as he literally curses the colleagues who made his job unbearable.” — Los Angeles Times

“It is unlike the classic Washington memoir, those soft-focus accounts extolling what-I-achieved in office.” — USA TODAY

“He writes like a guy chatting at a bar, and talks of his experience, including his experience with his fellow Republicans, using so much vulgarity that it would be hard for him to do a reading here on the radio.” — Steve Inskeep, NPR

"The former speaker of the House has all the best dirt; the tea he spills is refreshing in its honesty." — Hayes Brown, MSNBC

"....disarmingly funny...He has a taste for one-liners that blend the folksy with the sweary ... It is hard not to enjoy a memoir like this." — The Financial Times

“A very enjoyable read” — Jake Tapper, CNN

“A memoir that often reads like he's simply here to share some of his favorite tales over a couple of drinks….It's refreshing to read a memoir with a politician's honest accountings of repeated failures rather than self-inflated successes.” —NPR

Kirkus Reviews

2021-04-14
Much anticipated tell-all by the former speaker of the House of Representatives.

Boehner (b. 1949), the former Ohio congressman who served as speaker from 2011 to 2015, has a flair for the crude mot juste and a willingness to scrap, as when he told Don Young, a powerful, long-serving fellow Republican, “Fuck you.” Granted, Young had put a knife up to his throat—a knife, Young would later say, that grew longer and sharper every time Boehner told the story. The author, who grew up in his father’s Ohio bar, has plenty of stories to tell. Some of them come with grudging admiration: He never liked Trump, but he gives him credit for his ruthless political maneuvering. He laments the radical craziness of the current GOP, touting Mitt Romney as the kind of conservative who should have led the party “before the rabble-rousers decided he wasn’t a big enough lunatic for their liking.” Not that Boehner cares much for Obama and the left either, whom he accuses of arrogance—though he does write about his friendships with Teddy Kennedy and Joe Biden. Valuable lessons in crossing the aisle came from Gerald Ford, who kept him from becoming “a bomb-throwing Meadows/Mulvaney-type jackass.” In passing, after denigrating almost everyone in national politics, Boehner corrects his bibulous image. As he writes, he preferred beer when he came to D.C., learned that hard liquor was a recipe for disaster, and switched to red wine. “Drinking wine is a marathon, not a sprint, and makes sense for the more mature drinker,” he counsels. That, a pack of cigarettes, and a golf club, and he seems to have quite enough to keep him contented far from the fray.

Boehner doesn’t take himself too seriously, but this is a serious study in how our politics went so far off track.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172711961
Publisher:	Macmillan Audio
Publication date:	04/13/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

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