Walking In Wuhan

In the introduction, Stephen Marks takes great care to differentiate between himself, the author and what he did as a political consultant. Throughout the book he refers to himself as Oppo Man, short for opposition research. Basically, it was Marks' job for nearly 20 years to dig up information damaging to political candidates. He worked for Republican political candidates from long-shot Mayoral races to Jeb Bush's campaign in Florida.

I expected to read backroom deals and paying off people to talk about secret trysts with candidates. Instead, Marks goes through his work case by case, which might sound exciting, but there really weren't back room deals. He never wired anybody's car with explosives -- but rather spent his career sifting through state legislative voting records and tax records. While interesting, there really wasn't too much to confess, just the fact that he knew where to look in public records to damage political candidates. I enjoyed parts of the book -- especially the parts about former Nebraska congressman Jon Christensen, but left wondering where all the confessing took place.