Assist in the study of the book, either individually or corporately.

Promote an atmosphere of discussion for groups.

Foster a deeper understanding of the book.

These questions can be used to create hours of conversation: The characters and their world come alive,Īnd the characters and its world still live on.Ĭonversation Starters is peppered with questions designed toĪnd invite us into the world that lives on. Zero Fail missions were based not on skills or technology but on lackluster “dumb luck,” as she describes in the book.Ī certified New York Times bestseller, Zero Fail garnered an almost-perfect score of 4.6 out of 5 stars based on 4,168 global ratings on Amazon while sitting atop the website’s various book charts.ĮVERY GOOD BOOK CONTAINS A WORLD FAR DEEPER The hundreds of hours spent interviewing these individuals, who upheld their anonymity for fear of repercussions, coupled with thorough research and extensive reviews of thousands of documents, including the presidential archives and Secret Service reports, allowed Leonnig to paint an unpopular picture of the agency failing to live up to its name and maintaining its place at the zenith of presidential security. In Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service, three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Carol Leonnig weaves together the firsthand accounts of more than 180 people–ranging from former and current agents, officers, and directors, government officials in previous administrations, and other witnesses-related to the evolution of the Secret Service through the years. (Apparently, no one had thought to give the agents in the vice-presidential detail access to the shelter.Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service by Carol Leonnig: Conversation Starters

Page by page and detail by implacable detail, she walks us through a catalogue of Secret Service blunders: its failure to prevent a near-fatal assassination attempt on George Wallace during his 1972 presidential campaign that left the Alabama governor paralyzed from the waist down its acquiescence in President Richard Nixon’s illegal wiretapping schemes its inability to stop would-be assassin John Hinckley from walking within 15 feet of President Ronald Reagan and opening fire its failure to keep interlopers and flying bullets out of the White House on multiple occasions during the Bush and Obama presidencies and its near-disastrous lack of preparation on 9/11, leaving Vice President Dick Cheney stranded outside the emergency shelter beneath the White House as a hijacked plane entered Washington airspace.

Leonnig, a Washington Post journalist with three Pulitzers under her belt, is thorough and unsparing in her account.

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