Curtis Wilkie has 3 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 3 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is The Fall of the House of Zeus.
The Fall of the House of Zeus
Summary
The Fall of the House of Zeus tells the story of Dickie Scruggs, arguably the most successful plaintiff's lawyer in America. A brother-in-law of Trent Lott, the former U.S. Senate majority leader, Scruggs made a fortune taking on mass tort lawsuits against "Big Tobacco" and the asbestos industries. He was hailed by Newsweek as a latter-day Robin Hood and portrayed in the movie The Insider as a dapper aviator-lawyer. Scruggs's legal triumphs rewarded him lavishly, and his success emboldened both his career maneuvering and his influence in Southern politics - but at a terrible cost, culminating in his spectacular fall, when he was convicted for conspiring to bribe a Mississippi state judge. Here Mississippi is emblematic of the modern South, with its influx of new money and its rising professional class, including lawyers such as Scruggs, whose interests became inextricably entwined with state and national politics. Based on extensive interviews, transcripts, and FBI recordings never made public, The Fall of the House of Zeus exposes the dark side of Southern and Washington legal games and power politics: the swirl of fixed cases, blocked investigations, judicial tampering, and a zealous prosecution that would eventually ensnare not only Scruggs but his son, Zach, in the midst of their struggle with insurance companies over Hurricane Katrina damages. In gripping detail, author Curtis Wilkie crafts an authentic legal thriller propelled by a "welter of betrayals and personal hatreds," providing large supporting parts for Trent Lott and Jim Biden, brother of then-senator Joe, and cameos by John McCain, Al Gore, and other D.C. insiders and influence peddlers. Above all, we get to see how and why the mighty fail and fall, a story as gripping and timeless as a Greek tragedy.
©2010 Curtis Wilkie (P)2010 Tantor
Arkansas Mischief
Summary
As Bill Clinton's political and business mentor, Jim McDougal, with his knowledge of embarrassing real-estate and banking deals, bribes, and obstructions of justice, long haunted the White House. McDougal's vivid self-portrait, completed only days before his death and coauthored by veteran journalist Curtis Wilkie, reveals the hidden intersections of politics and special interests in Arkansas and the betrayals that followed. It is the story of how ambitious men and women climbed out of rural obscurity and "how friendships break down and lives are ruined". Anecdotes fall like bright coins from a raconteur's rich purse. "Whitewater" is shown for what it was, a venture in land speculation that fell victim to mismanagement and high interest rates. Lies and cover-ups were the inevitable result. Vintage political history, Arkansas Mischief is a southern tragedy with lessons for us all.
©1998 Jim McDougal and Curtis Wilkie (P)1998 Blackstone Audiobooks
The Road to Camelot
Summary
A behind-the-scenes, revelatory account of John F. Kennedy's wily campaign for the White House, beginning with his bold failed attempt to win the vice presidential nomination in 1956. A young and undistinguished junior plots his way to the presidency and changes the way we nominate and elect presidents. John F. Kennedy and his young warriors invented modern presidential politics. They turned over accepted wisdom that his Catholicism was a barrier to winning an election and plotted a successful course to that constituency. They hired Louis Harris - a polling entrepreneur - to become the first presidential pollster. They twisted arms, and they charmed. They lined up party bosses, young enthusiasts, and fellow Catholics and turned the traditional party inside out. The last-minute invitation to Lyndon B. Johnson to be vice president in 1956 surprised them only because they had failed to notice that he wanted it. They invented The Missile Gap in the Cold War and out-glamoured Richard Nixon in the TV debates. Now, acclaimed, award-winning journalists Tom Oliphant and Curtis Wilkie provide the most comprehensive account, based on personal reporting, interviews, and archives. The authors have examined more than 1,600 oral histories at the John F. Kennedy library; they've interviewed surviving sources, including JFK's sister Jean Smith; and they draw on their own interviews with insiders including Ted Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. From the start of the campaign in 1955, when his father tried to persuade President Johnson to run with JFK as his running mate, The Road to Camelot reveals him as a tough, shrewd political strategist who kept his eye on the prize. This is one of the great campaign stories of all time, appropriate for today's political climate.
©2017 Thomas Oliphant and Curtis Wilkie (P)2017 Recorded Books