Introduction: "I brought my pillow and my blankie" -- "The Lord High Executioner" : H.R. Haldeman and Richard Nixon -- "Beware the spokes of the wheel" : Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Gerald Ford -- "The smartest man in the room" : Hamilton Jordan, Jack Watson, and Jimmy Carter -- "One hell of a chief of staff " : James A. Baker III and Ronald Reagan -- "Don't hang up on the First Lady" : Donald Regan, Howard H. Baker Jr., Kenneth Duberstein, and Ronald Reagan -- "The prime minister" : John Sununu, Samuel Skinner, James A. Baker III, and George H.W. Bush -- "An iron fist in a velvet glove" : Thomas F. "Mack" McLarty, Leon Panetta, Erskine Bowles, John Podesta, and Bill Clinton -- "The decider" : Andrew Card, Joshua Bolten, and George W. Bush -- "Between bad and worse" : Rahm Emanuel, William Daley, Jacob Lew, Denis McDonough, and Barack Obama -- Epilogue

What do Dick Cheney and Rahm Emanuel have in common? Aside from polarizing personalities, both served as chief of staff to the president of the United Statesas did Donald Rumsfeld, Leon Panetta, and a relative handful of others. The chiefs of staff, often referred to as "the gatekeepers," wield tremendous power in Washington and beyond; they decide who is allowed to see the president, negotiate with Congress to push POTUS's agenda, andmost cruciallyare the first in line to the leader of the free world's ear. Award-winning producer and journalist Chris Whipple demonstrates how those appointed to this lofty position have often served as de facto prime ministers, and the surprising extent to which their tenures have set the tone for our political climate. Through extensive, intimate interviews with all 20 living chiefs of staff and two former presidents, The Gatekeepers pulls back the curtain to expose how the nation's levers of power are operated by these right-hand advisors, and what each appointment reveals about its respective president. --Publisher