“A Higher Loyalty – Truth, Lies and Leadership”, by James Comey Book Review




Before I started reading this book all I knew about James Comey was that he had been Director of the FBI and was fired by Donald Trump, so when I picked it up from my local library, I was very excited to start reading the book and find out more about the man that I had seen commentators on TV talk about a lot throughout the later part of 2016 and early 2017. It turned out to be a very interesting book to read and one that I would possibly buy in future. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to know about some of the more recent events in U.S. politics.

When I started reading this, I thought James Comey’s book would be more about some of the events of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election and the early part of the Trump presidency (which the later part of it was), but it turned out that a large proportion of the book was semi-autobiographical detailing his early life and his early career. I found this bit of the book to be the most interesting part for me because I always find it interesting to learn more about the various people, I have seen being talked about on tv or have read about and it gave me some idea of why Comey did what he did during the events of 2016 and 2017.

When reading the next part of the book which dealt with his time as Deputy Attorney General (2003-2005) under President George W. Bush (2001-2009) I thought to myself that parts of this could form the basis for an episode of House of Cards. This is part of the reason that I liked this part of the book, the other part being that unlike House of Cards this was real life and had really happened which made it even more interesting. A very slight criticism of mine would be that it skipped from Comey leaving the Deputy Attorney General position to him being considered and then appointed Director of the FBI by then President Barack Obama in 2013, though he was not in government I would have liked to have read a bit more about the eight years he spent working between these two positions.

This is my only real criticism of his book because it was very interesting to read about his time as Director of the FBI under Obama and Trump and the various events that made it into international news during the 2016 U.S. election cycle and the start of Trumps presidency. I originally thought the book was going to focus on this more than it did so this could have been another criticism but the previous parts of the book were so good that this did not end up being the case and I still ended up thoroughly enjoying the book overall.

If I had to rate this book, I would give it a 9 out of 10 because overall, I found the book to be thoroughly enjoyable, very interesting and one that I would definitely read again at some point in the future and perhaps buy if the price was right. I would recommend this to people who like politics (especially if you are interested in American politics), people who like to read semi-biographical works or biography’s or anyone who wants to know a bit more about some of the events of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election and the early parts of the Trump presidency.   

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