Carlos Lozada is a columnist for The New York Times, and before that, the longtime nonfiction book critic for The Washington Post.
In 2019, Lozada won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism for a series of pieces that judges described as “trenchant and searching reviews and essays that joined warm emotion and careful analysis in examining a broad range of books addressing government and the American experience.”
Well, he's now collected nearly a decade of such reviews in what he calls “The Washington Book: How to Read Politics and Politicians,” which was released this week.
“If the art of politics can be to subtract meaning from language to produce more and more words that say less and less,” he writes, “then it is my purpose as a journalist to try to find that meaning and put it back.”
He reads a lot of books by politicians. As he likes to say, he reads all those books so that you don't have to.
But he's found a way to use those books to say something interesting about those same politicians.
So what does Carlos's close reading of the likes of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Mike Pence, Ron DeSantis and many others reveal about our politics in 2024?
It turns out quite a lot. On this week’s episode of Deep Dive, host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza sits down with Carlos in POLITICO's offices to find out more.
Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.
Carlos Lozada is an opinion columnist and co-host of the weekly “Matter of Opinion” podcast for The New York Times.
Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.
Alex Keeney is a senior producer for POLITICO audio.
Kiss your swing districts goodbye
CNN's Manu Raju vs. Jeff Flake: Cat and mouse
The strategists who made the “Youngkin Republican”
The activists outside Joe Manchin's houseboat
Meet D.C.'s 'Lobbyist Hunter'
Push it to the (debt) limit
The Biden family's secrets
Regulating crypto: The $2 trillion Rubik's Cube
Pelosi vs. everybody: Dems’ high-wire health care act
Biden’s abortion clash with the Catholic Church
These Republicans are going...big government?
How Kamala Harris is embracing — and changing — the system
The first true foreign policy test of Biden's presidency
Vote-a-rama drama and the national debt
The Democratic ‘civil war’ in Ohio
Strange but true: Bernie's pragmatic turn
Inside Biden’s slow-walk on Cuba
Biden’s student debt promise comes due
How the 'burbs turned blue
Weed is popular. So what's the holdup in Congress?
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Tiny Desk Concerts - Video
The Axe Files with David Axelrod
Left, Right & Center
The Jason Stapleton Program
Podcast for America