Absolute Power

The most comprehensive biography of Prime Minister Helen Clark and her nine year Labour administration ever published - and the most entertaining.

This #1 bestseller sold more than 20,000 copies. The political left saw it as "a hatchet job" while the right saw it as hard evidence of political corruption.

As a former spin doctor for the 1984-87 Lange Labour administration, author and journalist Ian Wishart was well placed to draw on extensive sources and contacts within Labour for the real story behind one of the most powerful political 'brands' in modern New Zealand history.

FROM THE BACK COVER:

What you are about to read will go further than anyone has gone before - digging up a Prime Minister you didn't even know existed.

The Helen Clark we see today is a carefully manufactured, airbrushed political brand. She's also New Zealand's most powerful politician, ever. Absolute Power strips away the facade to find out what makes the real Helen Clark tick, and explores the track record of a government that boasted it would bring a new age of 'frugality and integrity', and an end to 'cronyism, sleaze and dishonesty'.

Absolute Power is not just about what happened publicly and what played out in the news each night. It is much more about what was going on behind the scenes - the power plays, the dirty tricks, the Machiavellian maneuvers. The bits the daily media missed.

Lord Acton once wrote that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and that the great "are almost always bad". Is Helen Clark the exception to that rule? Judge for yourself in this decade's most controversial political book...