Being a worm's-eye-view of the New Hampshire primary of 1988 as experienced by volunteer workers, and, occasionally, the lowest-level part-time paid staffers. The individuals profiled rarely instill s great deal of confidence in the sanity of the process. They usually do a very good job of doing their homework on which candidate they might want to support, but they also tend to be small-time egotrippers and adrenaline junkies who just have to find a candidate, any candidate, to work for (one of them is on her fourth of the year) in the same sense that grandma or grandpa just had to have a date to do something, anything, on Friday night, Even worse are the collection of kooks and one-issue fanatics who dog the candidates' appearances to preach about their pet issues, inevitably abstruse at best (anybody remember the Price-Anderson Act? Me neither.) trivial at worst, and rattle on until somebody finds the courage to wrest the mic away from them so the candidates can talk and answer real questions.
The author is a good writer and most of the stories are mildly interesting. He spends a little more time on the Democrats than the Republicans--fair enough, they were more interesting that year. The result is an interesting but somewhat disheartening inside look at how our political system makes sausage. ( )