Book excerpt: Arguably Australia's most influential political journalist, Alan 'The Red Fox' Reid covered Australian politics from the 1930s to the 1980s. During his career he was both a chronicler of, and a player in, Australian politics. In this book Ross Fitzgerald and Stephen Holt take us into a Machiavellian behind-the-scenes world of recurrent plots, crises and leadership challenges, and show how it was possible for a skilled journalist to help shape both public perceptions and actual outcomes of political power plays.