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From the publisher:

Karl Rove has come to personify scorched earth political tactics and merciless, win-at-any-cost trickery. His status as the so-called architect behind Bush’s election victories has elevated him to a mythic kingmaker in the national imagination. Not since Mark Hanna, special assistant to President William McKinley, has someone not elected to public office played such a vital role in the governance of our nation.

We know the myth, but who is the man? In Machiavelli's Shadow, the full, unvarnished truth about the mastermind of the Bush administration is revealed as swirling scandals and Karl Rove's diminished power have freed people to speak candidly as never before. Acclaimed author and veteran journalist Paul Alexander tracks Rove's journey from consummate outsider to presidential consigliere, conducting firsthand interviews with A-list sources who have never gone on the record about Rove before now. The result is a gripping, no-holds-barred account of the man whose insistence on politicizing any area on which he has advised the president—from the war in Iraq to domestic issues like Social Security, energy, the environment, and hotly controversial judicial matters—has brought about his own fall from grace and an escalating crisis within the government and the nation.

Drawing on the author's extensive connections in the political arena and delving into all areas of Rove's life—political, business, psychological, and personal—this book stands as the definitive portrait of one of the most fascinating figures ever to emerge on the American political scene.

From an interview with the author in Publisher's Weekly:

When Paul Alexander began researching his book on Karl Rove, he expected to be publishing a look at a man who was still on the job, acting as the dominant political force of the Bush Administration. "I was surprised when Rove retired," Paul Alexander told PW in a telephone interview. "As one of my sources told me, he thought Barney [Bush’s dog] would go before Karl. As it turned out, Barney’s still there."

...."I’ve now been able to go back to people and get additional information because Rove is no longer in there," says Alexander. "They feel even more free to talk now. A lot of Republicans are very angry over the way that he’s handled the White House and the party for some time now."

The cut-throat brand of politics that bears his name was invented by the 15th century Italian Niccolo Machiavelli. Alexander said he collaborated with his editor Leigh Haber on the title. "We were talking about a title that would somehow capture the spirit of the story. Rove early on in his career, as part of his myth-making, would tell people that his favorite book was The Prince by Machiavelli. It occurred to me somehow let’s get an echo of Rove’s own myth-making in the title."

Alexander continues, "One of the things that this book is going to do is to go back and trace how part of the myth of Karl Rove has been created by Rove himself. There are a number of instances along the way where he claims to have mentorship by certain people. Or he claims to have invented some sort of special political tool that only he understands, that has turned out to be more a figment of Rove’s imagination than a real piece of historic fact."

So why did Rove leave Washington so suddenly? It may have something to do with the Democratic-controlled judiciary committees of the House and Senate. "One of the things that I’m doing—because it’s breaking right now and I think it’s going to break through the fall—is to really look at the whole unfolding U.S. Attorney scandal. People look at it and they haven’t quite figured out yet why it’s important," says Alexander. "It’s hugely important in the story of Karl Rove, but it’s also important in the story of the Bush White House, the Bush administration and the way the Bush administration is going to be viewed in history. Because as the full story unfolds, if the congressional committee hearings actually do occur, the public will get to see a side of Karl Rove and the Bush administration that they really haven’t understood was there yet."

Alexander wants to be clear that this is not a biography of Rove. "This book will probably have only one chapter that has biographical material," he said. "It’s a political book about Karl Rove. You shouldn’t buy this book thinking that you’re going to learn warm and fuzzy things about him in the sixth grade. That’s not going to happen. It’s really a book about what his master plan was when he came to Washington."

A revealing excerpt from the book can be found at Salon and deals with Rove's despicable handling of Katrina. Bush appears to have just put the disaster in Rove's hands, who wanted the crisis to deepen (more people die), so he could blame it on the Democratic governor of the state. You can read that section of the book here.

About the Author:

Paul Alexander is a former reporter for Time magazine and has written for Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, New York, The Village Voice, and The Guardian. He is the author of Man of the People: The Life of John McCain as well as biographies of Sylvia Plath, J.D. Salinger, and James Dean.

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