Alpha Dogs

James Harding

This is the story of two men who served as backroom strategists on every presidential contest from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush. David Sawyer was a New England aristocrat with dreams of becoming a filmmaker; Scott Miller, the son of an Ohio shoe salesman, had a knack for copywriting. Unlikely partners, they became a political powerhouse, directing democratic revolutions from the Philippines to Chile, steering a dozen presidents and prime ministers into office, and instilling the campaign ethic in corporate giants from Coca-Cola to Apple. The men of Sawyer-Miller were a small but extraordinary group who invented an American style of political campaigning and exported it around the world. Theirs is a story full of office intrigue, fierce rivalries, and disastrous miscalculations. And it is the tale of how world politics became American, and how American business became...