Right after I listened to Cassidy Hutchinson's book, Enough, I listened to this one from Liz Cheney. Both books share the common theme of covering the political actions that led to the violence at the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.

However, Hutchinson's book is a true memoir. She begins with moments from her New Jersey childhood, then launches into her work history in politics that led her to the White House, and later moves to her June 2022 testimony before the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. Hutchinson also covers how her life changed after the televised interview. Hers is a personal story as well as a political one.

By comparison, Liz Cheney's account centers more on politics. She starts just before the presidential election of November 2020. She focuses on what was happening in Republican federal politics from that time to the end of that presidential administration on Jan. 20, 2021. Back then, Cheney was the leader of the Republican conference, the group of Representatives in the House who belonged to the Republican party. She kept getting disturbing reports from various sources about what was being planned for Jan. 6. Her concerns mounted. And she gives us her point of view of what happened that day, when she was in the Capitol building, doing her job, positioned behind the doors that others were trying to break down.

Cheney moves on to the months afterward, as people were processing what had taken place. She walks us through the work of the Select Committee, which she served on. We learn even more from behind the scenes as she covers every one of the public hearings. I had watched all of them, as they were being broadcast. It is tough to hear it all again. She ends with multiple warnings about the dangers of allowing Donald Trump to return to any kind of public office.

Cheney does interject and weave parts of her own story into her narration. Her personal life IS political. It always has been. Her father is Dick Cheney, who held multiple high-level political positions during his own career in Washington and served as vice president under George W. Bush. As his daughter, Liz Cheney is uniquely qualified to know and to explain what it is like to work in the White House, and what it is like to be guarded by Secret Service agents. Of course, pieces of her own past naturally surface in her telling. And during both the Jan. 6 insurrection and the Select Committee investigation, she continued to seek out and take advice from her father.

Listening to this book on CDs instead of reading a paper copy turns out to have an extra benefit. Many of the public statements from others that Cheney quotes are included here in their original broadcast form. We can hear how the individuals said them, in their own voices. These recordings include personal testimonies from the Select Committee hearings. Again, it is tough to be reminded of them, when we heard them once before. And this is the point. Also included in the CD set is an additional disc carrying a PDF of the photos from the published book. Here we can see Cheney at various stages of her life, being involved in American politics. Always.

The books by Cassidy Hutchinson and by Liz Cheney are both riveting and revealing. Naturally, you don't have to be a registered Republican to read either one, or both. (I personally would probably disagree with many of the issues that Hutchinson and Cheney feel strongly about.) You can read or listen to the books in either order.

However, if you want to know more about the final days of that presidential administration, or if you want somebody closely involved to explain to you some of the nuances of the American political system, then you should consider reading one or both of these memoirs. They are enlightening.