"The Blair Years" is one of the most thrilling and revealing accounts of modern politics you will ever read. Based on Alastair Campbell's diaries, it chronicles the rise of New Labour and the turbulent years of Tony Blair's leadership, providing the first significant account of an unforgettable decade in our national life. Here are the defining events of our times, from the new dawn of the Labour Party to the war on terror, from the death of Diana to the peace negotiations in Northern Ireland, from Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, to the Hutton Inquiry in 2003, the year Campbell resigned from his post at No. 10. Above all, Tony Blair emerges up close, making decisions that affect the lives of millions under relentless and often hostile pressure. Often described as the second most powerful figure in Britain, Alastair Campbell is no stranger to controversy. Feared and admired in equal measure, hated by some, he was critical to the founding of New Labour and the sensational electoral victory of 1997. As press secretary, strategist, and Blair's trusted friend, Campbell spent more hours alongside the Prime Minister than anyone else. His diaries - at times brutally honest, often humorous, always compelling - bring the reader directly into the heart of government. "The Blair Years" is a story of politics in its rawest form, of progress and setback, of reputations made and destroyed, under relentless scrutiny from a 24-hour media. Without pulling any punches, it covers the crises and scandals, the confrontations and resignations, the ups and downs of Britain's political stage. Yet amid the big events are the insights and observations that make this a remarkably human depiction of some of the most powerful people in the world. Never before has there been such a gripping book about life at the top, nor a more human book about politics, as told by a man who saw it all.