The term war room, in political parlance, was coined by the team of U.S. strategists (specifically James Carville) who worked for Bill Clinton s first presidential campaign in the early 1990s. In a nutshell, a war room is a political command centre where a candidate s strategists and media officers work to counter attacks by opponents while gathering research to mount an offensive in an ongoing, immediate fashion.

Warren Kinsella s The War Room profiles and analyzes some of the best political warriors and spinners around. He employs personal anecdotes, political wisdom...