Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power

After seven years covering the White House for the New York Times, Chief Washington.

Correspondent David E. Sanger offers a clear, detailed and accessible analysis of the Bush administration's legacy, its few successes, and its stunning string of failures, many of them the collateral damage of the decision to invest so much of America's future on what once seemed like an easy mission in Iraq. Now, from rebuilding Afghanistan to preventing Iran and North Korea from becoming nuclear-armed states, cracking down on the proliferation of nuclear renegades, and reducing economic indebtedness to India and China, the challenges facing Barack Obama are more complex than those facing any other incoming president of the last half century.

Mapping the political landscape that Bush now vacates, this book examines the international arenas that will remain the focus of the entire western world throughout the years to come.