Slate eBooks, Third Edition. Copyright 2000 by Nicholas Lemann.

Our first electronic book, Sons, contains the two most influential and talked-about articles of the campaign season: "The Redemption" and "Gore Without a Script." These incisive profiles—of George W. Bush and Al Gore, respectively—were written by Nicholas Lemann and originally appeared in The New Yorker earlier this year.

Nicholas Lemann, born and raised in New Orleans, is a veteran writer of long-form journalism who now works as a staff writer for The New Yorker. He lives in Pelham, New York, with his wife, Judith Shulevitz, and two sons. This is his fifth book and first e-book.

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Introduction:

I've spent my whole career rather self-righteously avoiding what at least used to be the main event in journalism, presidential campaign coverage. Only overlooked social issues for me! So when, shortly after I joined the staff of The New Yorker in the spring of 1999, my new boss, David Remnick, began nudging me to write a profile of George W. Bush, I resisted. Did Remnick relentlessly break my will, first with regard to Bush and then with regard to Al Gore? Well, not exactly. It was more that I started to wonder what exactly was so wrong with writing about the presidential election, especially at a time when people seem to need to be reminded of the centrality of politics, government, and public life in our society. So off I went.

These two pieces were researched and written at two different phases of the campaign--the Bush during a relative lull in mid-to-late 1999, the Gore during the hectic runup to the Democratic Convention in the spring of 2000. But the real salient difference between them, which may not be apparent from reading, is that the Gore campaign was much more accessible and cooperative than the Bush campaign. Perhaps not wrongly, the Bushes perceive The New Yorker as belonging to a Northeastern liberal-elitist culture where they're never going to be able to get a fair shake, and the Gores perceive it as a friendly jurisdiction. When you combine with this the lightness of Bush's resume and the heaviness of Gore's, it becomes clear that the problem in writing about Bush, if you're me, is getting enough material, and the problem is writing about Gore is finding something coherent and fresh in a great mountain of material.

What I tried to do here was make each candidate come alive as a fully realized character. The way to do that is to find a key--a problem that the person's adult life must be devoted to solving. In both cases, it's irresistible, and also justifiable, to see the candidate as a political scion and his career as a ringing of the changes on that role. Hence the title I've given this book. A generation from now, the obvious point about this election will be that both candidates came from political dynasties. Aside from that enormous similarity between Bush and Gore, though, they're about as different personally as one can imagine two people at their level of American politics being.

As I've made clear, this book wouldn't exist if David Remnick hadn't assigned these profiles to me, so my first thanks go to him. Jeffrey Frank of The New Yorker edited both with consummate skill. Adam Schatz fact-checked the Bush piece and Anne Stringfield fact-checked the Gore piece, in both cases not only saving me from errors but also finding new material that I was able to use. Amanda Urban, my agent for twenty years, is responsible for getting the pieces published as a book, and Michael Kinsley, my friend for twenty-five years, is the actual publisher. Many thanks to them too. It's customary at this point finally to thank one's family for its unfailing support during the long grim period of book production. But since this is an ebook, that period lasted from a Thursday to the following Tuesday--so I'll just thank them for being a great family.

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