Dick Cheney Popular Books
Dick Cheney Biography & Facts
Richard Bruce Cheney ( CHAY-nee; born January 30, 1941) is an American retired politician and businessman who served as the 46th vice president of the United States from 2001 to 2009 under President George W. Bush. Often cited as the most powerful vice president in American history, Cheney previously served as White House Chief of Staff for President Gerald Ford, the U.S. representative for Wyoming's at-large congressional district from 1979 to 1989, and as the 17th United States secretary of defense in the administration of President George H. W. Bush. He is the oldest living former U.S. vice president, following the death of Walter Mondale in 2021. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Cheney grew up there and in Casper, Wyoming. He attended Yale University before earning a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in political science from the University of Wyoming. He began his political career as an intern for Congressman William A. Steiger, eventually working his way into the White House during the Nixon and Ford administrations. He served as White House chief of staff from 1975 to 1977. In 1978, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and represented Wyoming's at-large congressional district from 1979 to 1989, briefly serving as House minority whip in 1989. He was appointed Secretary of Defense during the presidency of George H. W. Bush, and held the position for most of Bush's term from 1989 to 1993. As secretary, he oversaw Operation Just Cause in 1989 and Operation Desert Storm in 1991. While out of office during the Clinton administration, he was the chairman and CEO of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000. In July 2000, Cheney was chosen by presumptive Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush as his running mate in the 2000 presidential election. They defeated their Democratic opponents, incumbent vice president Al Gore and senator Joe Lieberman. In 2004, Cheney was reelected to his second term as vice president with Bush as president, defeating their Democratic opponents Senators John Kerry and John Edwards. During Cheney's tenure as vice president, he played a leading behind-the-scenes role in the George W. Bush administration's response to the September 11 attacks and coordination of the Global War on Terrorism. He was an early proponent of invading Iraq, alleging that the Saddam Hussein regime possessed weapons of mass destruction program and had an operational relationship with Al-Qaeda; however, neither allegation was ever substantiated. He also pressured the intelligence community to provide intelligence consistent with the administration's rationales for invading Iraq. Cheney was often criticized for the Bush administration's policies regarding the campaign against terrorism, for his support of wiretapping by the National Security Agency (NSA) and for his endorsement of "enhanced interrogation techniques" which several critics have labeled as torture. He publicly disagreed with President Bush's position against same-sex marriage in 2004, but also said it is "appropriately a matter for the states to decide". Cheney ended his vice presidential tenure as an unpopular figure in American politics with an approval rating of 13 percent. His peak approval rating in the wake of the September 11 attacks was 68 percent. Early life and education Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, the son of Marjorie Lorraine (née Dickey) and Richard Herbert Cheney. He is of predominantly English, as well as Welsh, Irish, and French Huguenot ancestry. His father was a soil conservation agent for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and his mother was a softball star in the 1930s; Cheney was one of three children. He attended Calvert Elementary School before his family moved to Casper, Wyoming, where he attended Natrona County High School. He attended Yale University, but by his own account had problems adjusting to the college, and dropped out. Among the influential teachers from his days in New Haven was H. Bradford Westerfield, whom Cheney repeatedly credited with having helped to shape his approach to foreign policy. He later attended the University of Wyoming, where he earned both a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts in political science. He subsequently started, but did not finish, doctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In November 1962, at the age of 21, Cheney was convicted of driving while intoxicated (DWI). He was arrested for DWI again the following year. Cheney said that the arrests made him "think about where I was and where I was headed. I was headed down a bad road if I continued on that course." In 1964, he married Lynne Vincent, his high school sweetheart, whom he had met at age 14. When Cheney became eligible for the draft, during the Vietnam War, he applied for and received five draft deferments. In 1989, The Washington Post writer George C. Wilson interviewed Cheney as the next secretary of defense; when asked about his deferments, Cheney reportedly said, "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service." Cheney testified during his confirmation hearings in 1989 that he received deferments to finish a college career that lasted six years rather than four, owing to sub-par academic performance and the need to work to pay for his education. Upon graduation, Cheney was eligible for the draft, but at the time, the Selective Service System was not inducting married men. On October 26, 1965, the draft was expanded to include married men without children; Cheney's first daughter, Elizabeth, was born 9 months and two days later. Cheney's fifth and final deferment granted him "3-A" status, a "hardship" deferment available to men with dependents. In January 1967, Cheney turned 26 and was no longer eligible for the draft. In 1966 Cheney dropped out of the doctoral program at the University of Wisconsin to work as staff aide for Governor Warren Knowles. In 1968 Cheney was awarded an American Political Science Association congressional fellowship and moved to Washington. Early career Cheney's political career began in 1969, as an intern for Congressman William A. Steiger during the Richard Nixon Administration. He then joined the staff of Donald Rumsfeld, who was then Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity from 1969 to 1970. He held several positions in the years that followed: White House Staff Assistant in 1971, Assistant Director of the Cost of Living Council from 1971 to 1973, and Deputy Assistant to the president from 1974 to 1975. As deputy assistant, Cheney suggested several options in a memo to Rumsfeld, including use of the US Justice Department, that the Ford administration could use to limit damage from an article, published by The New York Times, in which investigative reporter Seymour Hersh reported that Navy submarines had tapped into Soviet undersea communications as part of a highly classified program, Operation Ivy Bells. White House Chief of Staff Cheney was Assistant to the President and White House Depu.... Discover the Dick Cheney popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Dick Cheney books.
Best Seller Dick Cheney Books of 2024
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The Dark Side
Jane MayerThe Dark Side is a dramatic, riveting, and definitive narrative account of how the United States made selfdestructive decisions in the pursuit of terrorists around the worlddecis...
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Days of Fire
Peter BakerIn Days of Fire, Peter Baker, Chief White House Correspondent for The New York Times, takes us on a gripping and intimate journey through the eight years of the Bush and ...
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Vice
Lou Dubose & Jake BernsteinThe riveting, disturbing exposé of the vice president who coopted executive control over the U.S. government and became the “shadow president” of the George W. Bush administra...
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Conspiracy of Fools
Kurt EichenwaldFrom an awardwinning New York Times reporter comes the full, mindboggling true story of the lies, crimes, and ineptitude behind the Enron scandal that imperiled a presidency, des...
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To Start a War
Robert DraperOne of BookPage's Best Books of 2020“The detailed, nuanced, gripping account of that strange and complex journey offered in Robert Draper’s To Start a War: How the Bush Administrat...
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The Burn Pits
Joseph Hickman & Jesse Ventura“There’s a whole chapter on my son Beau… He was colocated [twice] near these burn pits.”–Joe Biden, former Vice President of the United States of AmericaThe Agent Orange of the 21s...
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The Ground Truth
John FarmerFrom the senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, a mesmerizing realtime portrayal of that day, why we weren?t told the truth, and why our nation is still at risk. As one of the prim...
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First in Line
Kate Andersen Brower“An intimate, compulsively readable account of the dynamics that have shapedand sometimes destroyedrelations at the top of the American political hierarchy.... [and] a valuabl...
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Dick Cheney Shot Me in the Face
Timothy OLearyThe collection fearlessly distills for the reader tinctures of joy, pain, madness, heartbreak, greed, and other components of the human capacity for good and evil, for beauty and u...
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Spoken from the Heart
Laura BushIn this brave, beautiful, and deeply personal memoir, Laura Bush, one of our most beloved and private first ladies, tells her own extraordinary story. Born in the boomandbust ...
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The Gatekeepers
Chris WhippleNow with a new chapter on the chaos in the Trump administration, the first indepth, behindthescenes look at the White House Chiefs of Staff, whose actionsand inactionshave defined ...
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The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence“The most extensive review of U.S. intelligencegathering tactics in generations.” Los Angeles TimesMeticulously formatted, this is a highly readable and fully searchable edition of...
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An American Life
Ronald ReaganRonald Reagan’s autobiography is a work of major historical importance. Here, in his own words, is the story of his lifepublic and privatetold in a book both frank and compellingly...
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The Great Rift
James MannThe Great Rift is a sweeping history of the intertwined careers of Dick Cheney and Colin Powell, whose rivalry and conflicting views of U.S. national security color our political d...
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One Percent Doctrine
Ron SuskindPulitzer Prizewinning journalist and bestselling author Ron Suskind takes you deep inside America's real battles with violent, unrelenting terroristsa game of killorbekilled, from ...
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The War Conspiracy
Peter Dale ScottPeter Dale Scott examines the many ways in which war policy has been driven by “accidents” and other events in the field, in some cases despite moves toward peace that were directe...
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Death of a Nation
George Grundy & Dylan AveryWas 9/11 engineered and designed to allow the Bush administration to hijack America’s democracy? Did fear mongering allow the US government to convince the American public that con...
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Plan of Attack
Bob WoodwardPlan of Attack is the definitive account of how and why President George W. Bush, his war council, and allies launched a preemptive attack to topple Saddam Hussein and occupy Iraq....
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Dark Money
Jane MayerNATIONAL BESTSELLERONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEARWho are the immensely wealthy rightwing ideologues shaping the fate of America today? From the bests...
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Give Me Liberty or Give Me Obamacare
Michael RamirezFrom twotime Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez comes a collection of conservative political cartoons forming a satirical history of the Obama era, with a foreword b...
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The Commanders
Bob WoodwardIt is impossible to examine any part of the war on terrorism in the twentyfirst century without seeing the hand of Dick Cheney, Colin Powell or one of their loyalists. The Commande...
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Dead Certain
Robert DraperIn this ambitious work of political narrative, Robert Draper takes us inside the Bush White House and delivers an intimate portrait of a tumultuous decade and a beleaguered adminis...
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Reporter
Seymour M. Hersh"Reporter is just wonderful. Truly a great life, and what shines out of the book, amid the low cunning and tireless legwork, is Hersh's warmth and humanity. This book is essential ...
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The Price of Loyalty
Ron SuskindA Pulitzer Prizewinning reporter's explosive account of the inner workings of the George W. Bush administration, the most secretive White House of modern times. This vivid, unfold...
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Exceptional
Dick Cheney & Liz CheneyA new book by former Vice President and #1 New York Times bestselling author Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney.
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The Washington Book
Carlos LozadaThe Pulitzer Prize–winning opinion columnist at The New York Times explores how people in power reveal themselves through their books and writings and, in so doing, illuminates the...
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Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics
Peter Dale ScottPeter Dale Scott has written extensively on the Kennedy assassination and other dark corners of the American political scene. His encyclopedic knowledge enables him to connect the ...
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Bush
Jean Edward SmithA Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of the YearDistinguished presidential biographer Jean Edward Smith offers a “comprehensive and compelling” (The New York Times) account of...
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Courage and Consequence
Karl RoveFrom the moment he set foot on it, Karl Rove has rocked America’s political stage. He ran the national College Republicans at twentytwo, and turned a Texas dominated by Democrats i...
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Angler
Barton GellmanThe landmark exposé of the most powerful and secretive vice president in American history Barton Gellman shared the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for a keenedged reckoning with Dick Chene...
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Heart
Dick CheneyFormer Vice President Dick Cheney and his longtime cardiologist, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, share the story of Cheney’s thirtyfiveyear battle with heart diseaseproviding insight into the...
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The War Within
Bob WoodwardBob Woodward once again pulls back the curtain on Washington to reveal the inner workings of a government at war in his fourth book on President George W. Bush.The War Within provi...
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The Burn Pits
Joseph Hickman, Jesse Ventura & David Talbot“There’s a whole chapter on my son Beau… He was colocated [twice] near these burn pits.”–Joe Biden, former Vice President of the United States of AmericaThe Agent Orange of the 21s...
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Why the Right Went Wrong
E.J. DionneFrom the author of Why Americans Hate Politics, the New York Times bestselling and “notably fairminded” (The New York Times Book Review), story of the GOP’s fracturingfrom the 1964...
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We the People
Lynne CheneyNow in paperback, Lynne Cheney’s New York Times bestselling illustrated history of how the Constitution came to be. “I am mortified beyond expression when I view the clouds which h...
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Known and Unknown
Donald RumsfeldA powerful memoir from the late former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld With the same directness that defined his career in public service, Rumsfeld's memoir is filled wit...
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State of Denial
Bob Woodward"Insurgents and terrorists retain the resources and capabilities to sustain and even increase current level of violence through the next year." This was the secret Pentagon assessm...
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Unjustifiable Means
Mark FallonThe book the government doesn’t want you to read. President Trump wants to bring back torture. This is why he’s wrong.In his more than thirty years as an NCIS special agent and cou...
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The Patch
Chris TurnerBestselling author Chris Turner brings readers onto the streets of Fort McMurray, showing the many ways the oilsands impact our lives and demanding that we ask the question: In ord...
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Hubris
Michael Isikoff & David CornThe real story behind the investigation of Iraq, and the basis for the MSNBC documentary of the same name hosted by Rachel MaddowFilled with newsmaking revelations that made it a N...
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Fly Fishing with Darth Vader
Matt LabashOne of the most gifted and entertaining journalists writing today, Matt Labash can extract comic humanity from even the most wary politicians, con artists, and rogueswhile shedding...
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Mother American Night
John Perry Barlow & Robert GreenfieldJohn Perry Barlow’s wild ride with the Grateful Dead was just part of a Zeliglike life that took him from a childhood as ranching royalty in Wyoming to membership in the Internet H...