Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace

Leon Panetta · Jim Newton

Oct 2014 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Leon Panetta

About this audiobook

The New York Times bestselling autobiography of a legendary political and military leader.
 
It could be said that Leon Panetta has had two of the most consequential careers of any American public servant in the past 50 years. His first career, beginning as an Army intelligence officer and including a distinguished run as one of the most powerful and respected members of Congress, lasted 35 years and culminated in his transformational role as budget czar and White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration. But after a brief “retirement,” he returned to public service in 2009 as the CIA director who led the intelligence war that killed Osama Bin Laden and then became the US secretary of defense, inheriting two troubled wars in a time of austerity and painful choices. Like his career, Worthy Fights is a reflection of Panetta’s values. It is also a testament to a lost kind of political leadership that favors progress and duty to country over partisanship.

Leon Panetta calls them as he sees them in Worthy Fights. Suffused with its author’s decency and common sense, the book is an inspiring American success story, a great political memoir, and a revelatory view onto many of the defining figures and events of our time.

About the author

Leon Panetta served as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (2009–2011) and as secretary of defense (2011–2013). An Italian-American Democrat, he was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1977–1993), the director of the Office of Management and Budget (1993–1994), and President Clinton’s chief of staff (1994–1997). He is the founder of the Panetta Institute for Public Policy, and was a professor of public policy at his alma mater, Santa Clara University.

Jim Newton is a veteran journalist who began his career as clerk to James Reston at The New York Times. Since then, he has worked as a reporter, bureau chief, and editor of The Los Angeles Times, where he presently is the editor at large. He also is an educator and author whose acclaimed biography of Chief Justice Earl Warren, Justice for All, was published in 2006. He lives in Pasadena, California.