In reporting on “Peril,” the latest book from legendary journalist Bob Woodward with co-author Robert Costa, most reports focused on a call by Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to his counterpart in China.

Milley called Gen. Li Zuocheng to assure him that the American government was stable following the Jan. 6 insurrection of the Capitol and he would keep a tight rein on President Donald Trump to ensure he didn’t start a war during his last days in office.

It didn’t take a lot of work for reporters to find this headline-making chapter in the book. 

Woodward and Costa open “Peril” with this account. It’s even before Page 1. It opens the prologue.

No one ever accused Bob Woodward, the famed Watergate reporter, of burying the lede.

That said, minus the China call, Milley’s concerns have been documented in other reports – deep in the massive, 600-page “I Alone Can Fix It” by journalists Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker. 

At 400-plus pages, “Peril” is a leaner book but in some ways more insightful because of the brevity of the Woodward-Costa writing style. It overlaps Woodward’s last Trump book, “Rage,” which chronicled the former President’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In “Peril,” they follow Joe Biden’s slow-burn decision to run for President following Trump’s response to the violence in Charlottesville, Va., how Biden eventually announced his candidacy, how he gained Black support through the support of Congressman James Clyburn, how he was pummeled in early primaries by more progressive Democrat candidates, how he overcame primary opposition with a South Carolina victory, then scaled back public campaigning in the face of the ongoing pandemic.

They also follow Trump, touching upon his mishandling of the pandemic, his early claims that he could only lose if the election was rigged, etc. Losing the election, the Woodward-Costa team look at how Trump refused to accept defeat even while numerous allies, associates and family members urged him to acquiesce.

Of course, there is the insurrection and the second impeachment, but there is also a look at the early months of Biden’s presidency. The book is not as immediate as the headlines of today or even the past month but Woodward-Costa look at the Biden team’s handling of aid packages, infrastructure and the move to pull American troops out of Afghanistan.

Like past Woodward books, “Peril” offers a fly-on-the-wall perspective taking readers into various rooms of high drama based on in-depth, background reporting. 

Woodward-Costa do not give detailed accounts of incidents such as the insurrection or the second impeachment – events that have been covered in other books and media in great detail. Instead, they provide insight into other moments of politics, crisis and peril.