In Brandon Sladder, author Jeffrey Frank has created one of the most memorable rogues in contemporary fiction. A prominent Washington columnist, Sladder has known just about everyone of importance. He has spoken on intimate terms with world leaders, been a witness to enormous change, and expressed weighty opinions on important matters of state. When former President Bush encourages him to write his memoirs, Sladder believes that his life story could add much more than a footnote to our age and attempts to burnish his image for posterity. What emerges instead is the story of an irresistibly loathsome man and the misadventures that got him to the top. Self-important, social climbing, and dangerously oblivious, Brandon Sladder is the type of character everyone loves to hate.

By turns hilarious and dismaying, The Columnist is a dead-on, elegantly written portrait of the media and politics of the second half of the twentieth century.