Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service by Carol Leonnig
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Zero Fail covers the history of the Secret Service’s presidential protection detail from the Kennedy years up to the inauguration of President Biden. There is some information about the early years of the Secret Service, and some discussion of the field offices and the other duties of the Secret Service, but the main focus is on how the president is protected. It is a fascinating story, to say the least.

The book is organized around incidents where the Secret Service had to deal with threats of one sort or another, for example, the response of the detail protecting President Bush on 9/11 or the night that someone shot at the White House in 2011. In each situation we learn not just the details of the incident, but how the Secret Service learned a lesson, or in some cases, didn’t learn. The sad thing is that we see that the Secret Service has been chronically underfunded, which affects both the people and the technology that is used. And often, just plain luck has kept a minor incident from becoming a major tragedy.

I definitely recommend this book. The author has done a good job in telling the story, and I mentioned, it is a fascinating story.