The first time I ever met Cramer, he’s got his arm around me like I’m his best buddy. Other writers you’d deal with could be standoffish, a little bit above you because you’re a 23-year-old kid researcher who doesn’t know anything. MZ: Oh, no, Richard was a presence in the office. That was the piece that convinced David Rosenthal at Random House that Cramer could do the big political book. In terms of profiles, it doesn’t get better. I was a research assistant-I was only at Esquire for a year-and fact-checked the Williams story. Mark Zwonitzer: At the end of ’85, when he was doing the Ted Williams piece. Mark Zwonitzer, briefly an Esquire fact-checker before becoming Cramer’s researcher for the book, recently talked with us about the late author’s singular ambition, work ethic, and charisma, and the adventure they had together in discovering what goes on inside the minds of men who believe they’ll be president.Įsquire Classic: When did you meet Richard Ben Cramer? Originally excerpted in Esquire-as “George Bush’s White Men,” “How He Got Here,” and “The Price of Being President”-it is remarkable for its hard-won, personal insights. Clocking in at over 1,000 pages, it’s a colossal work that is now considered among the finest pieces of political journalism ever written. “ What It Takes,” Richard Ben Cramer’s exhaustive account of the 1988 presidential election, took so long to report and write-six years in all-that it wasn’t published until the 1992 election.
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