Angler: The Shadow Presidency of Dick Cheney
By Barton Gellman
Allen Lane £25, 483 pages
FT Bookshop price: £20

Unquestionably, Dick Cheney has been the most influential vice-president in US history. Especially after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, he took a remarkably expansive view of the ill-defined powers of his office. He energetically enlarged his own role relative to that of the president, and the power of the White House relative to that of other branches of government. It was nothing less than a constitutional revolution. Angler (the title comes from Cheney’s Secret Service codename) is the best account so far of the vice-president’s drive for “power without limit”. It is an absorbing if depressing book.