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To Open The Sky

The Front Pages of Christopher P. Winter
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Ronald Reagan at the podium

Selected Books about the Republican Long Game

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY HAS BEEN PLAYING A LONG GAME
FOR DOMINANCE IN AMERICA

The starting date for this Republican Long Game is hard to pin down, but a convenient mark is Ronald Reagan's inauguration in 1981. He it was who chose the slogan "Government isn't the solution to our problems; government is the problem." It is alleged that he also arranged for the Iranian hostages to be held until after the November 1980 election. He won that election, and minutes after he completed his inaugural address, Iran announced the release of the hostages.

Another signpost was Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America." Gingich is noted for his memo advising Republican campaigners to go all in with demonizing their opponents. He and others set the tone for all subsequent campaigns, which on the Republican side have devolved into demonization of Democrats, dirty tricks, and persistent prevarication. Among these tricks is running up deficits, then blaming Democrats for them when Democrats control the federal government. More generally, the best way to convince people government can't work for them is to bollix up the working of government. Republicans have become very good at that.

The Long Game involves a coalition of groups who both benefit from its progress and work to further that progress. They include the independently wealthy, leaders of large corporations, evangelicals and megachurch leaders, dogmatic opponents of abortion, those bigoted against minorities or the LGBTQ community, and the permanently aggrieved.

I won't go into great detail here. Suffice it to say that Republicans have gotten more and more extreme over the years. With few exceptions, they now care nothing about governing, but only want to satisfy their wealthy donors and thus hang on to power. David Frum's observation holds true: "If conservatives become convinced they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism; they will reject democracy." We see it happening today.

Why Nations Fail:
The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson
Crown Currency (March 20, 2012)
No Review
"Daron Acemoglu is the Killian Professor of Economics at MIT. In 2005 he received the John Bates Clark Medal awarded to economists under forty judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge. He is also the co-author of The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty. James A. Robinson, a political scientist and an economist, is the David Florence Professor of Government at Harvard University. A world-renowned expert on Latin America and Africa, he has worked in Botswana, Mauritius, Sierra Leone, and South Africa. He is also the co-author of The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty."

"Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence?

"Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities.

"The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories.

"Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including:

  • China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West?
  • Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority?
  • What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions?

"Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (8,969 ratings)
ISBN 978-0307719218 ?
The Narrow Corridor:
States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty
Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson
Penguin Press (September 24, 2019)
No Review
"Daron Acemoglu is an Institute Professor at MIT. In 2005 he received the John Bates Clark Medal, given to economists under age forty judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge; in 2012 he was awarded the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics for work of lasting significance; and in 2016 he received the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance, and Management for his lifetime contributions. James A. Robinson, a political scientist and economist, is one of nine University Professors at the University of Chicago. Focused on Latin America and Africa, he is currently conducting research in Bolivia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Haiti, and Colombia, where he has taught for many years during the summer at the University of the Andes in Bogotá."

"From the authors of the international bestseller Why Nations Fail, a crucial new big-picture framework that answers the question of how liberty flourishes in some states but falls to authoritarianism or anarchy in others—and explains how it can continue to thrive despite new threats. Daron Acemoglu is an Institute Professor at MIT. In 2005 he received the John Bates Clark Medal, given to economists under age forty judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge; in 2012 he was awarded the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics for work of lasting significance; and in 2016 he received the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance, and Management for his lifetime contributions.

"In Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argued that countries rise and fall based not on culture, geography, or chance, but on the power of their institutions. In their new book, they build a new theory about liberty and how to achieve it, drawing a wealth of evidence from both current affairs and disparate threads of world history. Liberty is hardly the 'natural' order of things. In most places and at most times, the strong have dominated the weak and human freedom has been quashed by force or by customs and norms. Either states have been too weak to protect individuals from these threats, or states have been too strong for people to protect themselves from despotism. Liberty emerges only when a delicate and precarious balance is struck between state and society.

"There is a Western myth that political liberty is a durable construct, arrived at by a process of 'enlightenment.' This static view is a fantasy, the authors argue. In reality, the corridor to liberty is narrow and stays open only via a fundamental and incessant struggle between state and society: The authors look to the American Civil Rights Movement, Europe’s early and recent history, the Zapotec civilization circa 500 BCE, and Lagos’s efforts to uproot corruption and institute government accountability to illustrate what it takes to get and stay in the corridor. But they also examine Chinese imperial history, colonialism in the Pacific, India’s caste system, Saudi Arabia’s suffocating cage of norms, and the 'Paper Leviathan' of many Latin American and African nations to show how countries can drift away from it, and explain the feedback loops that make liberty harder to achieve.

"Today we are in the midst of a time of wrenching destabilization. We need liberty more than ever, and yet the corridor to liberty is becoming narrower and more treacherous. The danger on the horizon is not 'just' the loss of our political freedom, however grim that is in itself; it is also the disintegration of the prosperity and safety that critically depend on liberty. The opposite of the corridor of liberty is the road to ruin."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (830 ratings)
ISBN 978-0735224384 ?
Power and Progress:
Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity
Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson
PublicAffairs (May 16, 2023)
No Review
"Daron Acemoglu is Institute Professor of Economics at MIT, the university's highest faculty honor. For the last twenty-five years, he has been researching the historical origins of prosperity, poverty, and the effects of new technologies on economic growth, employment, and inequality. Acemoglu is the recipient of several awards and honors, including the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded to economists under forty judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge (2005); the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in economics, finance, and management for his lifetime contributions (2016), and the Kiel Institute's Global Economy Prize in economics (2019). He is author (with James Robinson) of The Narrow Corridor and the New York Times bestseller Why Nations Fail. Simon Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship in the Sloan School at MIT, where he is also head of the Global Economics and Management group. Previously chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, he has worked on global economic crises and recoveries for thirty years. Johnson has published more than 300 high-impact pieces in leading publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and Financial Times. He is author (with Jon Gruber) of Jump-Starting America, and (with James Kwak) of White House Burning and the national bestseller 13 Bankers. He works with entrepreneurs, elected officials, and civil society organizations around the world."

"The bestselling co-author of Why Nations Fail and the bestselling co-author of 13 Bankers deliver a bold reinterpretation of economics and history that will fundamentally change how you see the world.

"A thousand years of history and contemporary evidence make one thing clear: progress depends on the choices we make about technology. New ways of organizing production and communication can either serve the narrow interests of an elite or become the foundation for widespread prosperity.

"The wealth generated by technological improvements in agriculture during the European Middle Ages was captured by the nobility and used to build grand cathedrals, while peasants remained on the edge of starvation. The first hundred years of industrialization in England delivered stagnant incomes for working people. And throughout the world today, digital technologies and artificial intelligence undermine jobs and democracy through excessive automation, massive data collection, and intrusive surveillance.

"It doesn’t have to be this way. Power and Progress demonstrates the path of technology was once—and may again—be brought under control. Cutting-edge technological advances can become empowering and democratizing tools, but not if all major decisions remain in the hands of a few hubristic tech leaders.

"With their bold reinterpretation of economics and history, Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson fundamentally change how we see the world, providing the vision needed to redirect innovation so it again benefits most people."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (242 ratings)
ISBN 978-1541702530 ?
Reign of Terror:
How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump
Spencer Ackerman
Viking (August 10, 2021)
No Review
"For nearly the entire War on Terror, Spencer Ackerman has been a national-security correspondent for outlets like The New Republic, WIRED, The Guardian and currently The Daily Beast. He has reported from the frontlines of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay. He shared in the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service Journalism for Edward Snowden's NSA leaks to The Guardian, a series of stories that also yielded him other awards, including the Scripps Howard Foundation's 2014 Roy W. Howard Award for Public Service Reporting and the 2013 IRE medal for investigative reporting. Ackerman's WIRED series on Islamophobic counterterrorism training at the FBI won the 2012 online National Magazine Award for reporting. He frequently appears on MSNBC, CNN, and other news networks." – Amazon biography

"For an entire generation, at home and abroad, the United States has waged an endless conflict known as the War on Terror. In addition to multiple ground wars, it has pioneered drone strikes and industrial-scale digital surveillance, as well as detaining people indefinitely and torturing them. These conflicts have yielded neither peace nor victory, but they have transformed America. What began as the persecution of Muslims and immigrants has become a normalized, paranoid feature of American politics and security, expanding the possibilities for applying similar or worse measures against other targets at home. A politically divided country turned the War on Terror into a cultural and then tribal struggle, first on the ideological fringes and ultimately expanding to conquer the Republican Party, often with the timid acquiescence of the Democratic Party. Today's nativist resurgence walked through a door opened by the 9/11 era.

"Reign of Terror will show how these policies created a foundation for American authoritarianism and, though it is not a book about Donald Trump, it will provide a critical explanation of his rise to power and the sources of his political strength. It will show that Barack Obama squandered an opportunity to dismantle the War on Terror after killing Osama bin Laden. That mistake turns out to have been portentous. By the end of his tenure, the war metastasized into a broader and bitter culture struggle in search of a demagogue like Trump to lead it.

"A union of journalism and intellectual history, Reign of Terror will be a pathbreaking and definitive book with the power to transform how America understands its national security policies and their catastrophic impact on its civic life."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (347 ratings)
ISBN 978-1984879776 ?
Beyond the Big Lie:
The Epidemic of Political Lying, Why Republicans Do It More, and How It Could Burn Down Our Democracy
Bill Adair
Atria Books (October 15, 2024)
No Review
"Bill Adair is an award-winning journalist and educator. He is the creator of PolitiFact and cofounder of the International Fact-Checking Network. In 2013, he became the Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke University. His awards include the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting (with the PolitiFact staff), the Manship Prize for New Media in Democratic Discourse, and the Everett Dirksen Award for Distinguished Coverage of Congress."

"Bill Adair, Pulitzer Prize winner, journalism professor, and founder of PolitiFact, presents an eye-opening and engaging history of political liars and a vision for how to make them stop.

"Bill Adair knows a lie when he hears one. Since 2008, the site he founded, PolitiFact, has been the go-to spot for media members and political observers alike to seek the truth in an increasingly deceitful world. Since the site’s launching, politics’ tenuous relationship with the truth has only gotten weaker—and weirder.

"In this groundbreaking book, Adair reveals how politicians lie and why. Relying on dozens of candid interviews with politicians, political operatives, and experts in misinformation, Adair reveals the patterns of lying, why Republicans do it more, and the consequences for our democracy. He goes behind the scenes to describe several episodes that reveal the motivations and tactics of the nation’s political liars, show the impact they have on people’s lives, and demonstrate how the problem began before Donald Trump and will continue after he’s gone. Adair examines how Republicans have tried to change the landscape to allow their lying by intimidating the news media, people in academia and government, and tech companies.

"An award-winning journalist and pioneer in political fact-checking, Adair is uniquely able to tell this story. With humor and insight, this remarkable book unpacks the sad state of our politics, but also, provides solutions to put an end to American political deceit once and for all."

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 978-1668050705 ?
American Carnage:
On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump
Tim Alberta
Harper (July, 2019)
No Review
Tim Alberta is chief political correspondent for Politico Magazine, and has reported for National Review, National Journal, The Hotline, and the Wall Street Journal. His work has been featured in dozens of major publications, including Sports Illustrated and The Atlantic, and he frequently appears as a commentator on political television programs. He lives with his wife and three sons in Falls Church, Virginia." – Amazon biography

"Politico Magazine’s chief political correspondent provides a rollicking insider’s look at the making of the modern Republican Party—how a decade of cultural upheaval, populist outrage, and ideological warfare made the GOP vulnerable to a hostile takeover from the unlikeliest of insurgents: Donald J. Trump.

"The 2016 election was a watershed for the United States. But, as Tim Alberta explains in American Carnage, to understand Trump’s victory is to view him not as the creator of this era of polarization and bruising partisanship, but rather as its most manifest consequence.

"American Carnage is the story of a president’s rise based on a country’s evolution and a party’s collapse. As George W. Bush left office with record-low approval ratings and Barack Obama led a Democratic takeover of Washington, Republicans faced a moment of reckoning: They had no vision, no generation of new leaders, and no energy in the party’s base. Yet Obama’s forceful pursuit of his progressive agenda, coupled with the nation’s rapidly changing societal and demographic identity, lit a fire under the right, returning Republicans to power and inviting a bloody struggle for the party’s identity in the post-Bush era. The factions that emerged—one led by absolutists like Jim Jordan and Ted Cruz, the other led by pragmatists like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell—engaged in a series of devastating internecine clashes and attempted coups for control. With the GOP’s internal fissures rendering it legislatively impotent, and that impotence fueling a growing resentment toward the political class and its institutions, the stage was set for an outsider to crash the party. When Trump descended a gilded escalator to announce his run in the summer of 2015, the candidate had met the moment.

"Only by viewing Trump as the culmination of a decade-long civil war inside the GOP—and of the parallel sense of cultural, socioeconomic, and technological disruption during that period—can we appreciate how he won the White House and consider the fundamental questions at the center of America’s current turmoil. How did a party once obsessed with national insolvency come to champion trillion-dollar deficits? How did the party of compassionate conservatism become the party of Muslim bans and family separation? How did the party of family values elect a thrice-married philanderer? And, most important, how long can such a party survive?

"Loaded with explosive original reporting and based off hundreds of exclusive interviews—including with key players such as President Trump, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Jim DeMint, and Reince Priebus, among many others—American Carnage takes us behind the scenes of this tumultuous period as we’ve never seen it before and establishes Tim Alberta as the premier chronicler of this political era."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (1,083 ratings)
ISBN 978-0062896445 ?
The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory:
American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism
Tim Alberta
Harper (December 5, 2023)
No Review
"Tim Alberta is a staff writer for The Atlantic, the former chief political correspondent for Politico, and has written for dozens of other publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, and Vanity Fair. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump. He co-moderated the final Democratic presidential debate of 2019 and frequently appears as a commentator on television programs in the U.S. and around the world. He lives in Michigan with his wife and three sons."

"The award-winning journalist and staff writer for The Atlantic follows up his New York Times bestseller American Carnage with this timely, rigorously reported, and deeply personal examination of the divisions that threaten to destroy the American evangelical movement.

"Evangelical Christians are perhaps the most polarizing—and least understood—people living in America today. In his seminal new book The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, journalist Tim Alberta, himself a practicing Christian and the son of an evangelical pastor, paints an expansive and profoundly troubling portrait of the American evangelical movement. Through the eyes of televangelists and small-town preachers, celebrity revivalists and everyday churchgoers, Alberta tells the story of a faith cheapened by ephemeral fear, a promise corrupted by partisan subterfuge, and a reputation stained by perpetual scandal.

"For millions of conservative Christians, America is their kingdom—a land set apart, a nation uniquely blessed, a people in special covenant with God. This love of country, however, has given way to right-wing nationalist fervor, a reckless blood-and-soil idolatry that trivializes the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Alberta retraces the arc of the modern evangelical movement, placing political and cultural inflection points in the context of church teachings and traditions, explaining how Donald Trump's presidency and the COVID-19 pandemic only accelerated historical trends that long pointed toward disaster. Reporting from half-empty sanctuaries and standing-room-only convention halls across the country, the author documents a growing fracture inside American Christianity and journeys with readers through this strange new environment in which loving your enemies is 'woke' and owning the libs is the answer to WWJD.

"Accessing the highest echelons of the American evangelical movement, Alberta investigates the ways in which conservative Christians have pursued, exercised, and often abused power in the name of securing this earthly kingdom. He highlights the battles evangelicals are fighting—and the weapons of their warfare—to demonstrate the disconnect from scripture: Contra the dictates of the New Testament, today's believers are struggling mightily against flesh and blood, eyes fixed on the here and now, desperate for a power that is frivolous and fleeting. Lingering at the intersection of real cultural displacement and perceived religious persecution, Alberta portrays a rapidly secularizing America that has come to distrust the evangelical church, and weaves together present-day narratives of individual pastors and their churches as they confront the twin challenges of lost status and diminished standing.

"Sifting through the wreckage—pastors broken, congregations battered, believers losing their religion because of sex scandals and political schemes—Alberta asks: If the American evangelical movement has ceased to glorify God, what is its purpose?"

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (549 ratings)
ISBN 978-0063226883 ?
The New Jim Crow:
Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Michelle Alexander
The New Press; Anniversary edition (January 7, 2020)
No Review
Michelle Alexander is a highly acclaimed civil rights lawyer, advocate, and legal scholar. She is a former Ford Foundation Senior Fellow and Soros Justice Fellow, has clerked for Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, and has run the ACLU of Northern California's Racial Justice Project which spearheaded the national campaign against racial profiling. The New Jim Crow is that rare first book that has received rave reviews and won many awards and prizes; it and Alexander have been featured in countless national radio and television media outlets. Alexander is a visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary and an opinion columnist for the New York Times. She lives near Columbus, Ohio and now holds a joint appointment at the Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University." – Amazon biography

"Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

"Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists and organizations motivated by Michelle Alexander's unforgettable argument that 'we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.' As the Birmingham News proclaimed, it is 'undoubtedly the most important book published in this century about the U.S.'

"Now, ten years after it was first published, The New Press is proud to issue a tenth-anniversary edition with a new preface by Michelle Alexander that discusses the impact the book has had and the state of the criminal justice reform movement today."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (15,820 ratings)
ISBN 978-1620975459 ?
Bad Stories:
What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country
Steve Almond
Red Hen Press; Illustrated edition (April 1, 2018)
No Review
"Steve Almond is the author of eight books of fiction and non-fiction, including the New York Times Bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. His short stories have been anthologized widely, in the Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Erotica, and Best American Mysteries series. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. He teaches at the Nieman Fellowship for Journalism at Harvard, and hosts the New York Times podcast “Dear Sugars” with fellow writer Cheryl Strayed." – Amazon biography

"Like a lot of Americans, Steve Almond spent the weeks after the 2016 election lying awake, in a state of dread and bewilderment. The problem wasn’t just the election, but the fact that nobody could explain, in any sort of coherent way, why America had elected a cruel, corrupt, and incompetent man to the Presidency. Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country is Almond’s effort to make sense of our historical moment, to connect certain dots that go unconnected amid the deluge of hot takes and think pieces. Almond looks to literary voices—from Melville to Orwell, from Bradbury to Baldwin—to help explain the roots of our moral erosion as a people.

"The book argues that Trumpism is a bad outcome arising directly from the bad stories we tell ourselves. To understand how we got here, we have to confront our cultural delusions: our obsession with entertainment, sports, and political parody, the degeneration of our free press into a for-profit industry, our enduring pathologies of race, class, immigration, and tribalism. Bad Stories is a lamentation aimed at providing clarity. It’s the book you can pass along to an anguished fellow traveler with the promise, This will help you understand what the hell happened to our country."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (102 ratings)
ISBN 978-1597092265 ?
Over the Cliff:
How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane
John Amato & David Neiwert
Polipoint Press (January 1, 2010)
My Review
"John Amato is the founder of Crooks and Liars, named by TIME Magazine as one of the top 25 blogs for 2009. A pioneer of video blogging, he was part of CNN's election-night coverage in 2006 and has been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Newsweek, and Forbes. John has also appeared as a political pundit on MSNBC, CNN, Current TV, and E Entertainment. David Neiwert is a freelance journalist and author. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Salon, Seattle Magazine, and the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report. His online reportage for MSNBC on domestic terrorism won a National Press Club Award in 2000. He is the author of The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right (PoliPointPress) and editor of the award-winning weblog Orcinus (http://dneiwert.blogspot.com)."

"A witty look at Tea Parties and the reactionaries that is both funny and frightening. It explores how it overtook the conservative movement after Obama became president. The book helps readers make sense of the chaos in the media and offers ideas for bringing a stop to it and help make America sane again Compiling example after example, the editors of Crooks and Liars, a popular blog, examine the torrent of right-wing kookery: the eager willingness of conservatives to fervently believe things that are provably false and its ramifications both for our national discourse and our national well-being. The authors show how this outlandish, overheated rhetoric generated by mainstream-media figures like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Lou Dobbs is accompanied by a wave of lethal right-wing threats and violence. They carefully expose the bias of Fox News contributors Neil Cavuto, Greta, Van Susteren, et al, and political opportunists like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich.

"The book explores the main drivers of this descent into madness: the extremist Radical Right and the longtime Republican willingness dating back to Nixon, but refined in more recent years by Lee Atwater and his acolytes to engage in a divisive politics of resentment, both racial and cultural.

"It takes a critical look at how Tea Party provocateurs like Dick Armey and his Freedom Works organization that take huge contributions from big money interests like former presidential candidate Steve Forbes that are willing to turn a blind eye to bigots, birthers and neo-John Birchers. The book demonstrates how the Tea Party is the true face of the Republican Party.

"The authors propose simple ways ordinary Americans can help stop the descent into blind opposition for it own sake. They suggest that news audiences demand accountability by from their sources by critically commenting on their Web site and to their editors or producers. They write confronting the media malfeasance that makes rightwing populism possible is only an important first step in meeting the challenges posed by the rise of this political pathology in American life. Ultimately, it means confronting the movement and its leaders, particularly in their embrace of conspiracy theories, falsehoods, scapegoating, and vicious eliminationist rhetoric."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (46 ratings)
ISBN 978-0982417171 ?
One Person, No Vote:
How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy
Carol Anderson
Dick Durbin (Foreword)
Bloomsbury Publishing (September 11, 2018)
My Review
"Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African American Studies at Emory University. She is the author of White Rage, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, Bourgeois Radicals, and Eyes off the Prize. She was named a Guggenheim Fellow for Constitutional Studies. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia."

"From the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of White Rage, the startling―and timely―history of voter suppression in America, with a foreword by Senator Dick Durbin.

"In her New York Times bestseller White Rage, Carol Anderson laid bare an insidious history of policies that have systematically impeded black progress in America, from 1865 to our combustible present. With One Person, No Vote, she chronicles a related history: the rollbacks to African American participation in the vote since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Known as the Shelby ruling, this decision effectively allowed districts with a demonstrated history of racial discrimination to change voting requirements without approval from the Department of Justice.

"Focusing on the aftermath of Shelby, Anderson follows the astonishing story of government-dictated racial discrimination unfolding before our very eyes as more and more states adopt voter suppression laws. In gripping, enlightening detail she explains how voter suppression works, from photo ID requirements to gerrymandering to poll closures. And with vivid characters, she explores the resistance: the organizing, activism, and court battles to restore the basic right to vote to all Americans."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (705 ratings)
ISBN 978-1635571370 ?
Fantasyland:
How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History
Kurt Andersen
Random House; First Edition, Later Printing (September 5, 2017)
No Review
"Kurt Andersen is the bestselling author of the novels Heyday, Turn of the Century, and True Believers. He contributes to Vanity Fair and The New York Times, and is host and co-creator of Studio 360, the Peabody Award–winning public radio show and podcast. He also writes for television, film, and the stage. Andersen co-founded Spy magazine, served as editor in chief of New York, and was a cultural columnist and critic for Time and The New Yorker. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College, where he was an editor of The Harvard Lampoon. He lives in Brooklyn."

"In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, Kurt Andersen shows that what’s happening in our country today—this post-factual, “fake news” moment we’re all living through—is not something new, but rather the ultimate expression of our national character. America was founded by wishful dreamers, magical thinkers, and true believers, by hucksters and their suckers. Fantasy is deeply embedded in our DNA.

"Over the course of five centuries—from the Salem witch trials to Scientology to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, from P. T. Barnum to Hollywood and the anything-goes, wild-and-crazy sixties, from conspiracy theories to our fetish for guns and obsession with extraterrestrials—our love of the fantastic has made America exceptional in a way that we've never fully acknowledged. From the start, our ultra-individualism was attached to epic dreams and epic fantasies—every citizen was free to believe absolutely anything, or to pretend to be absolutely anybody. With the gleeful erudition and tell-it-like-it-is ferocity of a Christopher Hitchens, Andersen explores whether the great American experiment in liberty has gone off the rails.

"Fantasyland could not appear at a more perfect moment. If you want to understand Donald Trump and the culture of twenty-first-century America, if you want to know how the lines between reality and illusion have become dangerously blurred, you must read this book."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (3,045 ratings)
ISBN 978-1400067213 ?
Evil Geniuses:
The Unmaking of America: A Recent History
Kurt Andersen
Random House (August 11, 2020)
No Review
"Kurt Andersen is the bestselling author of Evil Geniuses, Fantasyland, and the novels Heyday, Turn of the Century, and True Believers, among other books. He contributes to The New York Times, and was host and co-creator of Studio 360, the Peabody Award–winning public radio show and podcast. He also writes for television, film, and the stage. Andersen co-founded Spy magazine, served as editor in chief of New York, and was a cultural columnist and design critic for Time, New York, and The New Yorker. He graduated from Harvard College and lives in Brooklyn."

"During the twentieth century, America managed to make its economic and social systems both more and more fair and more and more prosperous. A huge, secure, and contented middle class emerged. All boats rose together. But then the New Deal gave way to the Raw Deal. Beginning in the early 1970s, by means of a long war conceived of and executed by a confederacy of big business CEOs, the superrich, and right-wing zealots, the rules and norms that made the American middle class possible were undermined and dismantled. The clock was turned back on a century of economic progress, making greed good, workers powerless, and the market all-powerful while weaponizing nostalgia, lifting up an oligarchy that served only its own interests, and leaving the huge majority of Americans with dwindling economic prospects and hope.

"Why and how did America take such a wrong turn? In this deeply researched and brilliantly woven cultural, economic, and political chronicle, Kurt Andersen offers a fresh, provocative, and eye-opening history of America’s undoing, naming names, showing receipts, and unsparingly assigning blame—to the radical right in economics and the law, the high priests of high finance, a complacent and complicit Establishment, and liberal “useful idiots,” among whom he includes himself.

"Only a writer with Andersen’s crackling energy, deep insight, and ability to connect disparate dots and see complex systems with clarity could make such a book both intellectually formidable and vastly entertaining. And only a writer of Andersen’s vision could reckon with our current high-stakes inflection point, and show the way out of this man-made disaster."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (2,860 ratings)
ISBN 978-1984801340 ?
Twilight of Democracy:
The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism
Anne Applebaum
Doubleday (July 21, 2020)
No Review
Anne Applebaum’s 2018 Atlantic article “A Warning from Europe” inspired this book and was a finalist for a National Magazine Award. After seventeen years as a columnist at The Washington Post, Applebaum became a staff writer at The Atlantic in 2020. She is the author of three critically acclaimed and award-winning histories of the Soviet Union: Red Famine, Iron Curtain, and Gulag, winner of the Pulitzer Prize."

"A Pulitzer Prize–winning historian explains, with electrifying clarity, why elites in democracies around the world are turning toward nationalism and authoritarianism.

"From the United States and Britain to continental Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege, while authoritarianism is on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, Anne Applebaum, an award-winning historian of Soviet atrocities who was one of the first American journalists to raise an alarm about antidemocratic trends in the West, explains the lure of nationalism and autocracy. In this captivating essay, she contends that political systems with radically simple beliefs are inherently appealing, especially when they benefit the loyal to the exclusion of everyone else.

"Despotic leaders do not rule alone; they rely on political allies, bureaucrats, and media figures to pave their way and support their rule. The authoritarian and nationalist parties that have arisen within modern democracies offer new paths to wealth or power for their adherents. Applebaum describes many of the new advocates of illiberalism in countries around the world, showing how they use conspiracy theory, political polarization, social media, and even nostalgia to change their societies.

"Elegantly written and urgently argued, Twilight of Democracy is a brilliant dissection of a world-shaking shift and a stirring glimpse of the road back to democratic values."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (2,690 ratings)
ISBN 978-0385545808 ?
Twilight of Democracy:
The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends
Anne Applebaum
Penguin (June 24, 2021)
No Review

Anne Applebaum is a historian and journalist. She is a staff writer for The Atlantic as well as a Senior Fellow at the Agora Institute, Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of several history books, including Gulag, which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction; Iron Curtain, on the Sovietization of Eastern Europe after the war, which won the 2013 Cundill Prize for Historical Literature; and Red Famine, which begins with the Ukrainian revolution of 1917, ends with the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33 and provides the background to today's Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

"Her newest book, Twilight of Democracy, examines the attraction of autocratic forms of government, especially to intellectuals, all across the Western world.

"Anne has been writing about Eastern Europe and Russia since 1989, when she covered the collapse of communism in Poland for The Economist magazine. She has also covered US, UK and European politics for a wide range of American and British publications. She is a former Washington Post columnist, a former member of the Washington Post editorial board, and a former deputy editor of the Spectator magazine. She is married to Radoslaw Sikorski, a Polish politician and writer, and lives in Poland and Britain."

"In the years just before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, people from across the political spectrum in Europe and America celebrated a great achievement, felt a common purpose and, very often, forged personal friendships. Yet over the following decades the euphoria evaporated, the common purpose and centre ground gradually disappeared, extremism rose once more and eventually - as this book compellingly relates - the relationships soured too.

"Anne Applebaum traces this history in an unfamiliar way, looking at the trajectories of individuals caught up in the public events of the last three decades. When politics becomes polarized, which side do you back? If you are a journalist, an intellectual, a civic leader, how do you deal with the re-emergence of authoritarian or nationalist ideas in your country? When your leaders appropriate history, or pedal conspiracies, or eviscerate the media and the judiciary, do you go along with it?

"Twilight of Democracy is an essay that combines the personal and the political in an original way and brings a fresh understanding to the dynamics of public life in Europe and America, both now and in the recent past."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (417 ratings)
ISBN 978-0141991672 ?
Autocracy, Inc.:
The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
Anne Applebaum
Doubleday (July 23, 2024)
No Review

After seventeen years as a columnist at The Washington Post, Anne Applebaum became a staff writer at The Atlantic in January 2020. She is the author of five critically acclaimed and award-winning books: Twilight of Democracy; Red Famine; Iron Curtain; Between East and West; and Gulag, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. She divides her time between Poland, where her husband is foreign minister, and Washington, D.C."

"From the Pulitzer-prize winning, New York Times bestselling author, an alarming account of how autocracies work together to undermine the democratic world, and how we should organize to defeat them.

"We think we know what an autocratic state looks like: There is an all-powerful leader at the top. He controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents.

"But in the 21st century, that bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are underpinned not by one dictator, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, surveillance technologies, and professional propagandists, all of which operate across multiple regimes, from China to Russia to Iran. Corrupt companies in one country do business with corrupt companies in another. The police in one country can arm and train the police in another, and propagandists share resources and themes, pounding home the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of America.

"International condemnation and economic sanctions cannot move the autocrats. Even popular opposition movements, from Venezuela to Hong Kong to Moscow, don't stand a chance. The members of Autocracy, Inc, aren't linked by a unifying ideology, like communism, but rather a common desire for power, wealth, and impunity. In this urgent treatise, which evokes George Kennan's essay calling for 'containment' of the Soviet Union, Anne Applebaum calls for the democracies to fundamentally reorient their policies to fight a new kind of threat."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (541 ratings)
ISBN 978-0385549936 ?
The Origins of Totalitarianism
Hannah Arendt
Samantha Power (Intro.)
Schocken; First Edition Thus (April 20, 2004)
No Review

Hannah Arendt was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1906, fled to Paris in 1933, and came to the United States after the outbreak of World War II. She was the editorial director of Schocken Books from 1946 to 1948. She taught at Berkeley, Princeton, the University of Chicago, and the New School for Social Research. Among her other books are The Human Condition, On Revolution, Essays in Understanding, The Jewish Writings, The Promise of Politics, Responsibility and Judgment, and The Life of the Mind. Arendt died in 1975."

"The Origins of Totalitarianism is an indispensable book for understanding the frightful barbarity of the twentieth century. Suspicious of the inevitability so often imposed by hindsight, Hannah Arendt was not interested in detailing the causes that produced totalitarianism. Nothing in the nineteenth century—indeed, nothing in human history—could have prepared us for the idea of political domination achieved by organizing the infinite plurality and differentiation of human beings as if all humanity were just one individual. Arendt believed that such a development marked a grotesque departure from all that had come before.

"In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt sought to provide an historical account of the forces that crystallized into totalitarianism: The ebb and flow of nineteenth-century anti-Semitism (she deemed the Dreyfus Affair a dress rehearsal for the Final Solution) and he rise of European imperialism, accompanied by the invention of racism as the only possible rationalization for it. For Arendt, totalitarianism was a form of governance that eliminated the very possibility of political action. Totalitarian leaders attract both mobs and elites, take advantage of the unthinkability of their atrocities, target “objective enemies” (classes of people who are liquidated simply because of their group membership), use terror to create loyalty, rely on concentration camps, and are obsessive in their pursuit of global primacy. But even more presciently, Arendt understood that totalitarian solutions could well survive the demise of totalitarian regimes.

"The Origins of Totalitarianism remains as essential a book for understanding our times as it was when it first appeared more than fifty years ago."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (1,453 ratings)
ISBN 978-0805242256 ?
The Grouchy Historian:
An Old-Time Lefty Defends Our Constitution Against Right-Wing Hypocrites and Nutjobs
Ed Asner & Ed. Weinberger
Simon & Schuster (October 10, 2017)
My Review
"Ed Asner is a television legend, well known for his role as Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and subsequent spin-off Lou Grant. He is the winner of seven acting Emmy Awards, and has been nominated a total of twenty times. Asner also made a name for himself as a trade unionist and a political activist. He served two terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild, from 1981-1985, during which he was an outspoken critic of former SAG President Ronald Reagan, then the US president, for his Central American policy. He lives in Los Angeles. Ed. Weinberger began his career in the early 1960s with Dick Gregory and has written for such diverse comedians as Bob Hope, Richard Pryor, and Johnny Carson (for five years on The Tonight Show). He wrote for and produced The Mary Tyler Moore Show, co-created Taxi, Dear John, and The Cosby Show. He also executive-produced and created Amen, Sparks, and Good News. He has won three Golden Globe Awards, a Peabody, and nine Emmys. In 2000, he received The Writer’s Guild of America Lifetime Achievement Award. He lives in Los Angeles."

"In the tradition of Michael Moore, Ed Asner—a.k.a. Lou Grant from The Mary Tyler Moore Show—reclaims the Constitution from the right-wingers who think that they and only they know how to interpret it.

"Ed Asner, a self-proclaimed dauntless Democrat from the old days, figured that if the right-wing wackos are wrong about voter fraud, Obama’s death panels, and climate change, they are probably just as wrong about what the Constitution says. There’s no way that two hundred-plus years later, the right-wing ideologues know how to interpret the Constitution. On their way home from Philadelphia the people who wrote it couldn’t agree on what it meant. What was the president’s job? Who knew? All they knew was that the president was going to be George Washington and as long as he was in charge, that was good enough. When Hamilton wanted to start a national bank, Madison told him that it was unconstitutional. Both men had been in the room when the Constitution was written. And now today there are politicians and judges who claim that they know the original meaning of the Constitution. Are you kidding?

"In The Grouchy Historian, Ed Asner leads the charge for liberals to reclaim the Constitution from the right-wingers who use it as their justification for doing whatever terrible thing they want to do, which is usually to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. It’s about time someone gave them hell and explained that progressives can read, too."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (705 ratings)
ISBN 978-1635571370 ?
Wingnuts:
Extremism in the Age of Obama
John Avlon
Beast Books (August 12, 2014)
No Review

John Avlon is the Editor-in-Chief and Managing Director of The Daily Beast and a CNN political analyst. He is the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics and Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America and Washington’s Farewell:The Founding Father’s Warning to Future Generations as well as editor of the anthology Deadline Artists: America’s Greatest Newspaper Columns. Previously, he was a columnist and associate editor for the New York Sun and chief speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. He won the National Society of Newspaper Columnists’ award for best online column in 2012."

"Wingnuts exist on the extreme edges of the political spectrum. They're the professional polarizers and the unhinged activists, the hardcore haters and the paranoid conspiracy theorists. They're people who always try to divide us instead of unite us. And at a time when the fringe is blurring with the base, they've hijacked American politics.

"The Obama era has been a boom-time for Wingnuts, kicked off by a financial collapse and the election America's first black president. For some, losing an election feels like living under tyranny. John Avlon tracks down preachers who pray for the president's death, goes inside the growing 'Hatriot' militia movement, and identifies the fright-wing swamp where the Obama 'Birthers' and the Bush-era '9/11 Truthers' bubble up.

"Wingnuts echo earlier fear-fueled movements in American history. But bolstered by the rise of hyper-partisan media, the Wingnut echo chamber is more influential than ever before and it has led directly to the division and dysfunction in Congress. Avlon asserts that the time has come for the moderate majority of Americans to straighten their civic backbone and hold the extremes accountable while restoring a sense of perspective to our politics."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (143 ratings)
ISBN 978-0991247608 ?
American Conservatism:
Reclaiming an Intellectual Tradition
Andrew J. Bacevich (Editor)
Library of America (March 23, 2020)
No Review
Andrew J. Bacevich is professor emeritus of history and international relations at Boston University. A graduate of both the U.S. Military Academy and Princeton University, he served in the U.S. Army for twenty-three years. His recent books include The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory, The Limits of Power, and America’s War for the Greater Middle East. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, the London Review of Books, and The American Conservative, among other publications."

"What is American conservatism? What are its core beliefs and values? What answers can it offer to the fundamental questions we face in the twenty-first century about the common good and the meaning of freedom, the responsibilities of citizenship, and America’s proper role in the world?

"As libertarians, neoconservatives, Never Trump-ers, and others battle over the label, this landmark collection offers an essential survey of conservative thought in the United States since 1900, highlighting the centrality of four key themes: the importance of tradition and the local, resistance to an ever-expanding state, opposition to the threat of tyranny at home and abroad, and free markets as the key to sustaining individual liberty.

"Andrew J. Bacevich’s incisive selections reveal that American conservatism—in his words “more akin to an ethos or a disposition than a fixed ideology”—has hardly been a monolithic entity over the last 120 years, but rather has developed through fierce internal debate about basic political and social propositions. Well-known figures such as Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley are complemented here by important but less familiar thinkers such as Richard Weaver and Robert Nisbet, as well as writers not of the political right, like Randolph Bourne, Joan Didion, and Reinhold Niebuhr, who have been important influences on conservative thinking.

"More relevant than ever, this rich, too often overlooked vein of writing provides essential insights into who Americans are as a people and offers surprising hope, in a time of extreme polarization, for finding common ground. It deserves to be rediscovered by readers of all political persuasions."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (44 ratings)
ISBN 978-1598536560 ?
The Fourth Man:
The Hunt for a KGB Spy at the Top of the CIA and the Rise of Putin's Russia
Robert Baer
Hachette Books (May 17, 2022)
No Review
Robert Baer is the author of two New York Times bestsellers: Sleeping with the Devil, about the Saudi royal family and its relationship with the United States; and See No Evil, which recounts Baer's years as a top CIA operative. See No Evil was the basis for the acclaimed film Syriana, which earned George Clooney an Oscar for his portrayal of Baer. Baer writes regularly for Time.com and has contributed to Vanity Fair, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. He is considered one of the world's foremost authorities on the Middle East."

"We think we know all the Cold War’s greatest spy stories. The tales of America’s greatest traitors have been told over and over. However, the biggest story of them all remains untold—until now. Rumors have long swirled of another mole in American intelligence, one perhaps more damaging than all the others combined. Perhaps the greatest traitor in American history, perhaps a Russian ruse to tear the CIA apart, or perhaps nothing more than a bogeyman, he is often referred to as the Fourth Man.

"Blowing the lid off the biggest spy story in decades, Robert Baer tells the full, gripping story for the first time. After arrest of KGB spy Aldrich Ames, the CIA launched another investigation to make sure there wasn't another double agent in its ranks. Led by three of the CIA’s best spy hunters, women who devoted their lives to counterintelligence, its existence was known only to a few. They began methodically investigating their own bosses and colleagues, turning up loose threads, suspicious activity, and shocking intelligence from the CIA’s best Russian asset. In the end, they came to a startling conclusion that, whether true or not, would shake American intelligence to its core, setting the stage for a cat-and-mouse game with enormous geopolitical stakes. Spies and moles may seem like bygone cold war history, but with Russia again a misunderstood belligerent power, the skeletons America would rather keep hidden are emerging, and as Robert Baer shows in this thrilling masterwork of investigative reporting, they matter as much now as ever."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.1 (257 ratings)
ISBN 978-0306925610 ?
The Accidental President:
Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World
A. J. Baime
Mariner Books; Reprint edition (October 2, 2018)
No Review
A. J. Baime is the New York Times bestselling author of The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months that Changed the World (2017), The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War (2014), Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans (2009), and Dewey Defeats Truman: The 1948 Election and the Battle for America's Soul (2019). Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and numerous other publications."

"A hypnotically fast-paced, masterful reporting of Harry Truman’s first 120 days as president, when he took on Germany, Japan, Stalin, and a secret weapon of unimaginable power—marking the most dramatic rise to greatness in American history.

"Chosen as FDR’s fourth-term vice president for his well-praised work ethic, good judgment, and lack of enemies, Harry S. Truman was the prototypical ordinary man. That is, until he was shockingly thrust in over his head after FDR’s sudden death.

"The first four months of Truman’s administration saw the founding of the United Nations, the fall of Berlin, victory at Okinawa, firebombings in Tokyo, the first atomic explosion, the Nazi surrender, the liberation of concentration camps, the mass starvation in Europe, the Potsdam Conference, the controversial decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the surrender of imperial Japan, and finally, the end of World War II and the rise of the Cold War. No other president had ever faced so much in such a short period of time.

The Accidental President escorts readers into the situation room with Truman during a tumultuous, history-making 120 days, when the stakes were high and the challenges even higher."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (9,100 ratings)
ISBN 978-1328505682 ?
The Quiet Coup:
Neoliberalism and the Looting of America
Mehrsa Baradaran
W. W. Norton & Company (May 7, 2024)
No Review
Mehrsa Baradaran is a professor of law at the University of California, Irvine and a noted authority on banking law. The author of The Quiet Coup, The Color of Money, and How the Other Half Banks, she has advised U.S. senators and congresspeople on policy and spoken at national and international forums including the World Bank. She lives in San Clemente, California."

"The celebrated legal scholar and author of The Color of Money reveals how neoliberals rigged American law, creating widespread distrust, inequality, and injustice.

"With the nation lurching from one crisis to the next, many Americans believe that something fundamental has gone wrong. Why aren’t college graduates able to achieve financial security? Why is government completely inept in the face of natural disasters? And why do pundits tell us that the economy is strong even though the majority of Americans can barely make ends meet? In The Quiet Coup, Mehrsa Baradaran, one of our leading public intellectuals, argues that the system is in fact rigged toward the powerful, though it wasn’t the work of evil puppet masters behind the curtain. Rather, the rigging was carried out by hundreds of (mostly) law-abiding lawyers, judges, regulators, policy makers, and lobbyists. Adherents of a market-centered doctrine called neoliberalism, these individuals, over the course of decades, worked to transform the nation―and succeeded.

"They did so by changing the law in unseen ways. Tracing this largely unknown history from the late 1960s to the present, Baradaran demonstrates that far from yielding fewer laws and regulations, neoliberalism has in fact always meant more―and more complex―laws. Those laws have uniformly benefited the wealthy. From the work of a young Alan Greenspan in creating 'Black Capitalism,' to Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell’s efforts to unshackle big money donors, to the establishment of the 'Law and Economics' approach to legal interpretation―in which judges render opinions based on the principles of right-wing economics―Baradaran narrates the key moments in the slow-moving coup that was, and is, neoliberalism. Shifting our focus away from presidents and national policy, she tells the story of how this nation’s laws came to favor the few against the many, threatening the integrity of the market and the state.

Some have claimed that the neoliberal era is behind us. Baradaran shows that such thinking is misguided. Neoliberalism is a failed economic idea―it doesn’t, in fact, create more wealth or more freedom. But it has been successful nevertheless, by seizing the courts and enabling our age of crypto fraud, financial instability, and accelerating inequality. An original account of the forces that have brought us to this dangerous moment in American history, The Quiet Coup reshapes our understanding of the recent past and lights a path toward a better future."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.1 (16 ratings)
ISBN 978-1324091165 ?
A World of Insecurity:
by Pranab Bardhan
Harvard University Press (October 18, 2022)
No Review
"Pranab Bardhan is Distinguished Professor, Emeritus, of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. His books include Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: Assessing the Economic Rise of China and India, and Scarcity, Conflicts, and Cooperation: Essays in the Political and Institutional Economics of Development." – Amazon biography

"An ambitious account of the corrosion of liberal democracy in rich and poor countries alike, arguing that antidemocratic sentiment reflects fear of material and cultural loss, not a critique of liberalism’s failure to deliver equality, and suggesting possible ways out.

"The retreat of liberal democracy in the twenty-first century has been impossible to ignore. From Wisconsin to Warsaw, Budapest to Bangalore, the public is turning against pluralism and liberal institutions and instead professing unapologetic nationalism and majoritarianism. Critics of inequality argue that this is a predictable response to failures of capitalism and liberalism, but Pranab Bardhan, a development economist, sees things differently. The problem is not inequality but insecurity―financial and cultural.

"Bardhan notes that antidemocratic movements have taken root globally in a wide range of demographic and socioeconomic groups. In the United States, older, less-educated, rural populations have withdrawn from democracy. But in India, the prevailing Hindu Nationalists enjoy the support of educated, aspirational urban youth. And in Europe, antidemocratic populists firmly back the welfare state (but for nonimmigrants). What is consistent among antidemocrats is fear of losing what they have. That could be money but is most often national pride and culture and the comfort of tradition.

"A World of Insecurity argues for context-sensitive responses. Some, like universal basic income schemes, are better suited to poor countries. Others, like worker empowerment and international coordination, have broader appeal. But improving material security won’t be enough to sustain democracy. Nor, Bardhan writes, should we be tempted by the ultimately hollow lure of China’s authoritarian model. He urges liberals to adopt at least a grudging respect for fellow citizens’ local attachments. By affirming civic forms of community pride, we might hope to temper cultural anxieties before they become pathological."

Rating by Amazon customers: 3.3 (7 ratings)
ISBN 978-0674259843 ?
America: What Went Wrong?
The Crisis Deepens
Donald L. Barlett & James B. Steele
Mission Point Press (June 2, 2020)
No Review
James B. Steele and his co-author Donald L. Barlett are America's most honored team of investigative reporters. They have won two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Magazine awards and upward of more than fifty other national journalism awards. Since they first worked together at The Philadelphia Inquirer, their writing has appeared in Time, Vanity Fair, The New York Times and The Washington Post. They have written nine books, including two national bestsellers. Their newest book is America: What Went Wrong? The Crisis Deepens." – Amazon biography

"The downward spiral of America's middle class is no accident: This book explains in vivid detail how Washington and Wall Street have made decisions that enrich the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

"Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele document the specific acts of Congresses and presidents that have caused soaring economic inequality and enable corporations to pay low wages, owe no taxes and raid the retirement plans of their employees. This book, updated in 2020, is an expanded edition of the bestselling America: What Went Wrong?, which caused a sensation when it exposed the causes of the middle-class crisis. This new edition reveals how new policies are launching a fresh assault on the average American.

"Middle-class Americans know that their way of life is under attack. This book explains how it happened and how we can make it right."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (14 ratings)
ISBN 978-1950659500 ?
Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth:
The Deals, the Downfall, and the Reinvention
Wayne Barrett
Regan Arts, Reprint edition (August, 2016)
No Review
Wayne Barrett is an investigative reporter who's written about New York for more than four decades and did the first major pieces on Donald Trump in the 1970s. A senior editor at the Village Voice until 2010, he's also written for The Daily Beast, New York magazine, The Nation, and NY Daily News. His books include City for Sale, Rudy!: An Investigative Biography, and Grand Illusion, which collectively covered the Koch through the Giuliani administrations. The New York Times called him "the master of chronicling the underbelly of New York City politics." – Amazon biography

"Now, Barrett's classic book is back in print for the first time in years and with an introduction about Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

"Donald Trump claims that his success as a 'self-made' businessman and real estate developer proves that he will make an effective president, but this devastating investigative account by legendary reporter Wayne Barrett proves otherwise. Back in print for the first time in years, Barrett’s seminal book reveals how Trump put together the biggest deal of his life—Trump Tower—through manipulation and deceit; how he worked with questionable characters from the mafia and city politics; and how it all nearly came crashing down. Here is a vivid and inglorious portrait of the man who wants now to be the most powerful man in the world.

"In Trump: The Greatest Show in the World—The Deals, the Downfall, the Reinvention, Barrett unravels the myth and reveals the truth behind the mogul’s wheelings and dealings. After decades covering him, few reporters know Trump as Barrett does. Instead of the canny businessman that Trump claims in his own books, Barrett explores how Trump exploited his father’s banking and political connections to finance and grease his first major deals. Barrett’s investigative biography takes us from the days of Donald’s lonely youth to his brash entry into the real estate market, and to the back room deals behind his New York, Atlantic City and Florida projects.

"Most compellingly Barrett paints an intimate portrait of Trump himself, a man driven by bravado, obsessive self-regard, and an anxious ruthlessness to subdue his rivals and seduce anyone with the power to aid his empire. We see him head to head with an opponent as powerful as Pete Rozelle, ingratiating himself with the brooding governor on the Hudson, and fueling the Drexel engine driven by Michael Milken with hundreds of millions in fees—paid, ironically, by gaming companies to fend off Trump takeovers. We explore his complicated emotional and business relationship with his first wife, Ivana, and the use he planned to make of his mistress—and later, his second wife—Marla Maples as a 'southern strategy' in his then contemplated presidential campaign. With interviews with scores of adversaries and former colleagues, we are given a privileged look at Trump the businessman in action—reckless as often as he is brilliant, reliant on threats as much as on charm, and ultimately a cautionary tale: is this the man we want to lead the world?"

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (68 ratings)
ISBN 978-1682450796 ?
Collision of Power:
Trump, Bezos, and the Washington Post
Martin Baron
Flatiron Books (October 3, 2023)
No Review
"Martin Baron is a longtime journalist and newspaper editor. He ran the newsrooms of The Miami Herald and The Boston Globe before being named executive editor of The Washington Post in 2013. His role in launching an investigation of the Catholic Church’s cover-up of sexual abuse by clergy was portrayed in the Academy Award-winning movie “Spotlight.” Baron retired from daily journalism in early 2021 and now splits his time between Western Massachusetts and New York City. Collision of Power is his first book."

"Marty Baron took charge of The Washington Post newsroom in 2013, after nearly a dozen years leading The Boston Globe. Just seven months into his new job, Baron received explosive news: Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, would buy the Post, marking a sudden end to control by the venerated family that had presided over the paper for 80 years. Just over two years later, Donald Trump won the presidency.

"Now, the capital’s newspaper, owned by one of the world’s richest men, was tasked with reporting on a president who had campaigned against the press as the 'lowest form of humanity.' Pressures on Baron and his colleagues were immense and unrelenting, having to meet the demands of their new owner while contending with a president who waged a war of unprecedented vitriol and vengeance against the media.

"In the face of Trump’s unceasing attacks, Baron steadfastly managed the Post’s newsroom. Their groundbreaking and award-winning coverage included stories about Trump’s purported charitable giving, misconduct by the Secret Service, and Roy Moore’s troubling sexual history. At the same time, Baron managed a restive staff during a period of rapidly changing societal dynamics around gender and race.

"In Collision of Power, Baron recounts this with the tenacity of a reporter and the sure hand of an experienced editor. The result is elegant and revelatory―an urgent exploration of the nature of power in the 21st century."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (144 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250844200 ?
After Trump:
Reconstructing the Presidency
Bob Bauer & Jack Goldsmith
Lawfare Institute (August 31, 2020)
No Review
For Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith biographical sketches, look right.

"In After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency, Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith provide a comprehensive roadmap for reform of the presidency in the post-Trump era—whether that comes in four months or four years. In fourteen chapters they offer more than fifty concrete proposals concerning presidential conflicts of interest, foreign influence on elections, pardon power abuse, assaults on the press, law enforcement independence, Special Counsel procedures, FBI investigations of presidents and presidential campaigns, the role of the White House Counsel, war powers, control of nuclear weapons, executive branch vacancies, domestic emergency powers, how one administration should examine possible crimes by the president of a prior administration, and more. Each set of reform proposals is preceded by rich descriptions of relevant presidential history, and relevant background law and norms, that place the proposed reforms in context. All of the proposals are prefaced by a chapter that explains how Trump—and, in some cases, his predecessors—conducted the presidency in ways that justify these reforms. After Trump will thus be essential reading for the coming debate on how to reconstruct the laws and norms that constitute and govern the world’s most powerful office. It’s hard to imagine two better co-authors for the task. Both served in senior executive branch positions—in the administrations of Barack Obama and George W. Bush, respectively—and have written widely on the presidency. Bob Bauer served from 2010-2011 as White House Counsel to President Barack Obama, who in 2013 named Bauer to be Co-Chair of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. He is a Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at New York University School of Law, as well as the co-director of its Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic. Jack Goldsmith served as Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel from 2003-2004, and Special Counsel to the Department of Defense from 2002-2003. He is the Learned Hand Professor at Harvard Law School, co-founder of Lawfare, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Together, in this book, they set the terms for the national discussion to come about the presidency, its powers, and its limits."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (10 ratings)
ISBN 978-1735480619 ?
Enemies of Africa
Jaiden Baynes
BayMar Publishing (August 17, 2023)
No Review
For Jaiden Baynes an award-winning author from Ontario, Canada, known for his thought-provoking writing that challenges the status quo. Jaiden’s writing reflects his commitment to anti-hierarchy and pro-equality values and his belief that absolute power corrupts absolutely, that might does not make right, and that order without justice is useless. He has a talent for combining his knowledge of history and his vivid imagination to create compelling stories that entertain and enlighten readers of all ages and backgrounds."

"A gripping exposé, shining new light on Africa’s users and abusers, from the past to the present.

"Enemies of Africa delivers an eye-opening narrative highlighting the monumental scope of exploitation and ill-treatment both Africa and its people have suffered for centuries. Exploring the varieties of Anti-Africanism that have evolved through the ages, author Jaiden Baynes highlights an array of institutions, individuals, and systematic establishments that have undermined, persecuted, and enslaved Africans both within and beyond The Mother Continent's shores.

"Africa's indelible imprint on modern civilization emerges as we journey through time, from the dawn of slavery to contemporary remnants of colonialism and resource exploitation. Divulging the historical events and facts that many oppressors would want to bury, and some have tried to burn, Enemies of Africa delivers a timeless account of Black History. Discover the story of Africa and be inspired to overcome the systems designed to oppress."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.9 (10 ratings)
ISBN 978-1998753239 ?
The Reactionary Spirit:
How America's Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World
Zack Beauchamp
PublicAffairs (July 16, 2024)
No Review

Zack Beauchamp is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he covers challenges to democracy in the United States and abroad, right-wing populism, and the world of ideas. He has received funding awards from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting to report on democratic decline in Israel and Hungary in the field, and was the longtime host of Worldly, Vox’s weekly podcast on foreign policy and international affairs. He has appeared on a wide range of television and radio networks, including MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, BBC, CBC, ABC (Australia), and Al Jazeera.

"Before coming to Vox, he edited TP Ideas, a section of ThinkProgress devoted to the ideas shaping our political world. He has an MSc from the London School of Economics in International Relations and grew up in Washington, DC, where he currently lives with his wife, two children, and (rescue) dogs."

"With keen insight, Vox journalist Zack Beauchamp traces how a reactionary antidemocratic ethos born and bred in America has come to infect democracies around the world.

"There is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of American politics that has endured since our nation’s birth. In The Reactionary Spirit, Zack Beauchamp explains what he calls the reactionary spirit: as strides towards true democracy are made, there is always a faction that reacts by seeking to undermine them and thereby resist change.

"Brilliantly combining political history and reportage, Beauchamp reveals how the United States was the birthplace of this strange and harrowing authoritarian style, and why we’re now seeing its evolution in diverse nations including Hungary, Israel, and India.

"The Reactionary Spirit paints a vivid, alarming picture that illuminates not only what’s happening to democracy globally, but also what we must do to protect it—while we still can."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.0 (11 ratings)
ISBN 978-1541704411 ?
Homeland:
The War on Terror in American Life
Richard Beck
Crown (September 3, 2024)
No Review
Richard Beck is a writer at n+1 magazine. He is the author of We Believe the Children and lives in Brooklyn, New York."

"A groundbreaking history of how the decades-long war on terror changed virtually every aspect of American life, from the erosion of citizenship down to the cars we bought and TV we watched—by an acclaimed n+1 writer.

" 'Richard Beck, like many people alive today, has spent his adult life living in the shadow of 9/11, and Homeland is a devastating inquiry into the new world that day created.' —Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America.

"For twenty years after September 11, the war on terror was simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. With all of the military violence occurring overseas even as the threat of sudden mass death permeated life at home, Americans found themselves living in two worlds at the same time. In one of them, soldiers fought overseas so that nothing at home would have to change at all. In the other, life in the United States took on all kinds of unfamiliar shapes, changing people’s sense of themselves, their neighbors, and the strangers they sat next to on airplanes. In Homeland, Richard Beck delivers a gripping exploration of how much the war changed life in the United States and explains why there is no going back.

"Though much has been made of the damage that Donald Trump did to the American political system, Beck argues that it was the war on terror that made Trump’s presidency possible, fueling and exacerbating a series of crises that all came to a head with his rise to power. Homeland brilliantly isolates and explores four key issues: the militarism that swept through American politics and culture; the racism and xenophobia that boiled over in much of the country; an economic crisis that, Beck convincingly argues, connects the endurance of the war on terror to at least the end of the Second World War; and a lack of accountability that produced our 'impunity culture'—the government-wide inability or refusal to face consequences that has transformed how the U.S. government relates to the people it governs.

"To see American life through the lens of Homeland’s sweeping argument is to understand the roots of our current condition. In its startling analysis of how the war on terror hollowed out the very idea of citizenship in the United States, Beck gives the most compelling explanation yet offered for the ongoing disintegration of America’s social, political, and cultural fabric."

Rating by Amazon customers: 3.5 (7 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593240229 ?
Putin's People:
How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West
Catherine Belton
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Illustrated edition (June 23, 2020)
No Review
Catherine Belton is an investigative correspondent for Reuters. She worked from 2007-2013 as the Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times, and in 2016 as the newspaper's legal correspondent. She has previously reported on Russia for Moscow Times and Business Week. In 2009, she was shortlisted for Business Journalist of the year at the British Press Awards. She lives in London." – Amazon biography

"Interference in American elections. The sponsorship of extremist politics in Europe. War in Ukraine. In recent years, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has waged a concerted campaign to expand its influence and undermine Western institutions. But how and why did all this come about, and who has orchestrated it?

"In Putin’s People, the investigative journalist and former Moscow correspondent Catherine Belton reveals the untold story of how Vladimir Putin and the small group of KGB men surrounding him rose to power and looted their country. Delving deep into the workings of Putin’s Kremlin, Belton accesses key inside players to reveal how Putin replaced the freewheeling tycoons of the Yeltsin era with a new generation of loyal oligarchs, who in turn subverted Russia’s economy and legal system and extended the Kremlin's reach into the United States and Europe. The result is a chilling and revelatory exposé of the KGB’s revanche―a story that begins in the murk of the Soviet collapse, when networks of operatives were able to siphon billions of dollars out of state enterprises and move their spoils into the West. Putin and his allies subsequently completed the agenda, reasserting Russian power while taking control of the economy for themselves, suppressing independent voices, and launching covert influence operations abroad.

"Ranging from Moscow and London to Switzerland and Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach―and assembling a colorful cast of characters to match―Putin’s People is the definitive account of how hopes for the new Russia went astray, with stark consequences for its inhabitants and, increasingly, the world."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (1,443 ratings)
ISBN 978-0374238711 ?
Cruelty as Citizenship:
How Migrant Suffering Sustains White Democracy (Forerunners: Ideas First)
Cristina Beltrán
University Of Minnesota Press (August 31, 2020)
No Review
Cristina Beltrán Cristina Beltrán, Ph.D., works at the intersection of Latino politics and political theory. She is associate professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. Her current research project (provisionally titled "Latino Conservatives: Racial Shame, Racial Success, and the Politics of Transformation") is a book-length exploration of how Latino conservative thought is shaped not only by ideology but through a potent combination of emotion, expression, and aesthetics. Other projects include editing a volume tentatively entitled "Political Theory/Latino Politics: Appropriation and Innovation" and a series of essays drawing on Jean-Jacques Rousseau to consider double-consciousness and the modern racial self. Her work has appeared in Political Theory, Political Research Quarterly, and various edited volumes. Cristina and her husband, editor Matthew Budman, live in New York City." – Amazon biography

"More than a decade before the election of Donald Trump, vitriolic and dehumanizing rhetoric against migrants was already part of the national conversation. Situating the contemporary debate on immigration within America’s history of indigenous dispossession, chattel slavery, the Mexican-American War, and Jim Crow, Cristina Beltrán reveals white supremacy to be white democracy—a participatory practice of racial violence, domination, and exclusion that gave white citizens the right to both wield and exceed the law. Still, Beltrán sees cause for hope in growing movements for migrant and racial justice.

"Forerunners is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital works. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (51 ratings)
ISBN 978-1517911928 ?
Corporate Conspiracies:
How Wall Street Took Over Washington
Richard Belzer & David Wayne
Skyhorse (May, 2017)
No Review
Richard Belzer is a stand-up comedian, actor, and author (with David Wayne) of the New York Times bestsellers Hit List and Dead Wrong. He splits his time between France and New York City. David Wayne is the author of five bestselling books, including Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country's Most Controversial Cover-ups and Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination (both written with Richard Belzer). He lives in Honolulu, Hawaii." – Amazon biography

"Here is an explosive account of wrongful acts perpetrated, and the ensuing cover-ups inflicted upon us, by American corporations. The bestselling author team of Richard Belzer and David Wayne exposes the ways that the capitalist regime has got us under their thumbs—from the mainstream media and its control over us, to the trillions stolen by big banks and mortgage companies during the mortgage crisis, to the scams perpetrated by Big Oil and Big Pharma. The one common victim of all that corruption is the American public, and Corporate Conspiracies wants to do something about it.

"Corporate Conspiracies takes dead aim at those who take advantage of us little guys. Probably most disturbing is the book's examination of politics and capitalism teaming up against us—how politicians and lobbyists all have their hands in each other's pockets while stabbing us in the back, and how the well-established energy lobby—including petroleum, natural gas, and coal—has played a dominant role in the shaping of US foreign policy for decades.

"Did you know that companies at times know that their products will kill people, but they do nothing, because it is actually cheaper to compensate the victims than it is to correct the problem? And did you know that the Pentagon is sending $1.5 trillion of our tax dollars to their corporate buddies for a new fighter jet that is already superfluous? This book is guaranteed to make us all think twice about being enslaved and cheated by corporate America."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (41 ratings)
ISBN 978-1510711266 ?
Strongmen:
Mussolini to the Present
Ruth Ben-Ghiat
W. W. Norton & Company (November 10, 2020)
No Review
Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a historian and political commentator on fascism, authoritarian leaders, propaganda, and threats to democracy in America and around the world. Growing up in Pacific Palisades, California, where Thomas Mann and other well-known exiles from Nazism relocated, sparked her interest in these subjects. The recipient of Guggenheim, Fulbright, and other fellowships, she is author or editor of seven books and over 100 op-eds and essays in CNN, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, and other outlets. She's Professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University, and Advisor to Protect Democracy." – Amazon biography

"Ruth Ben-Ghiat is the expert on the "strongman" playbook employed by authoritarian demagogues from Mussolini to Putin―enabling her to predict with uncanny accuracy the recent experience in America. In Strongmen, she lays bare the blueprint these leaders have followed over the past 100 years, and empowers us to recognize, resist, and prevent their disastrous rule in the future.

"For ours is the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who evade accountability while robbing their people of truth, treasure, and the protections of democracy. They promise law and order, then legitimize lawbreaking by financial, sexual, and other predators.

"They use masculinity as a symbol of strength and a political weapon. Taking what you want, and getting away with it, becomes proof of male authority. They use propaganda, corruption, and violence to stay in power.

"Vladimir Putin and Mobutu Sese Seko’s kleptocracies, Augusto Pinochet’s torture sites, Benito Mussolini and Muammar Gaddafi’s systems of sexual exploitation, and Silvio Berlusconi and Donald Trump’s relentless misinformation: all show how authoritarian rule, far from ensuring stability, is marked by destructive chaos.

"No other type of leader is so transparent about prioritizing self-interest over the public good. As one country after another has discovered, the strongman is at his worst when true guidance is most needed by his country.

"Recounting the acts of solidarity and dignity that have undone strongmen over the past 100 years, Ben-Ghiat makes vividly clear that only by seeing the strongman for what he is―and by valuing one another as he is unable to do―can we stop him, now and in the future."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (518 ratings)
ISBN 978-1324001546 ?
The Imposters:
How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics
Steve Benen
Mariner Books (June 16, 2020)
No Review
Steve Benen is a producer on The Rachel Maddow Show and the author of The MaddowBlog. Benen’s articles and op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Monthly, The American Prospect, Salon.com, and other publications. For his work on The Rachel Maddow Show, he has received two Emmy Awards, and has been nominated for three more. He lives in Vermont."

"The award-winning producer of The Rachel Maddow Show exposes the Republican Party as a gang of impostors, meticulously documenting how they have abandoned their duty to govern and are gravely endangering America.

"For decades, American voters innocently assumed the two major political parties were equally mature and responsible governing entities, ideological differences aside. That belief is due for an overhaul: in recent years, the Republican Party has undergone an astonishing metamorphosis, one so baffling and complete that few have fully reckoned with the reality and its consequences.

"Republicans, simply put, have quit governing. As MSNBC's Steve Benen charts in his groundbreaking new book, the contemporary GOP has become a 'post-policy party.' Republicans are effectively impostors, presenting themselves as officials who are ready to take seriously the substance of problem solving, but whose sole focus is the pursuit and maintenance of power. Astonishingly, they are winning–at the cost of pushing the political system to the breaking point.

"Despite having billed itself as the 'party of ideas,' the Republican Party has walked away from the hard but necessary work of policymaking. It is disdainful of expertise and hostile toward evidence and arithmetic. It is tethered to few, if any, meaningful policy preferences. It does not know, and does not care, about how competing proposals should be crafted, scrutinized, or implemented. This policy nihilism dominated the party's posture throughout Barack Obama's presidency, which in turn opened the door to Donald Trump — who would cement the GOP's post-policy status in ways that were difficult to even imagine a few years earlier.

"The implications of this approach to governance are all-encompassing. Voters routinely elect Republicans such as Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz to powerful offices, expecting GOP policymakers to have the technocratic wherewithal to identify problems, weigh alternative solutions, forge coalitions, accept compromises, and apply some level of governmental competence, if not expertise. The party has consistently proven those hopes misguided.

"The result is an untenable political model that's undermining the American policymaking process and failing to serve the public's interests. The vital challenge facing the civil polity is coming to terms with the party's collapse as a governing entity and considering what the party can do to find its policymaking footing anew.

"The Impostors serves as a devastating indictment of the GOP's breakdown, identifying the culprits, the crisis, and its effects, while challenging Republicans with an imperative question: Are they ready to change direction? As Benen writes, 'A great deal is riding on their answer.' "

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (1,022 ratings)
ISBN 978-0063026483 ?
The Land of Flickering Lights:
Restoring America in an Age of Broken Politics
Michael Bennett
Atlantic Monthly Press (June 4, 2019)
No Review
Michael Bennett has represented Colorado in the United States Senate since 2009. Recognized as a pragmatic and independent thinker, he has built a reputation for taking on Washington dysfunction to address our greatest challenges―including education, climate change, immigration, health care, and national security. When not in Washington he lives in Denver with his wife and three daughters."

"'We had become the land of flickering lights, in which the standard of success was not what we were doing for the next generation of Americans, or to enhance our role in the world, but instead whether we had kept government open for another few minutes.'―Michael Bennet

"The Land of Flickering Lights is a unique contribution to American political writing at this or any other time. Senator Michael Bennet lifts a veil on the inner workings of Congress to reveal, in his words, 'through a series of actual stories―about the people, the politics, the motives, the money, the hypocrisy, the stakes, the outcome―the pathological culture of the capital and the consequences for us all.'

"Bennet unfolds the dramatic backstory behind five episodes crucial to the well-being of all Americans. Each of them exemplifies the hyper-partisan politics that have upended our democracy:

  • The highly politicized confirmation battles over judicial nominations at all levels―epitomized by ugly and unprincipled fights over seats on the Supreme Court;
  • The passage of the Trump tax law, which massively increased our national debt and widened economic inequality across the country;
  • The shredding of the Iran nuclear deal, which undermined our national security, caused friends and foes alike to doubt America’s word, and made a mockery of the longstanding bipartisan tradition in foreign policy;
  • The pervasive corruption unleashed by “dark money” in policies and how big donors have been able to stymie urgent action on climate change and many other issues;
  • The sabotage by a congressional minority of the “Gang of Eight’s” bi-partisan deal to reform America’s immigration policies, a deal that would have comprehensively addressed the immigration issues that bedevil us to this day.

"With frankness and refreshing candor, and in elegant prose, Bennet pulls the machinations behind these episodes into full public view, shedding vital new light on our political dysfunction today. Arguing that each of us has a duty to act as a founder, he will inspire Americans of all political persuasions to demand that the 'winners' of our political battles be all the American people, nor one party or the other."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (70 ratings)
ISBN 978-0802147813 ?
Impeachment:
The Constitutional Problems, Enlarged Edition
Raoul Berger
Harvard University Press; 2nd edition (January, 1999)
No Review
Raoul Berger was Charles Warren Senior Fellow in American Legal History at the Harvard Law School. Among his books is Executive Privilege: A Constitutional Myth.

"The little understood yet volcanic power of impeachment lodged in the Congress is dissected through history by the nation's leading legal scholar on the subject."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (4 ratings)
ISBN 978-0674444782 ?
Dangerous Ideas:
A Brief History of Censorship in the West, from the Ancients to Fake News
Eric Berkowitz
Beacon Press (May 4, 2021)
No Review
"Eric Berkowitz is a writer, lawyer, and journalist. Before devoitng his practice to public interest and asylum law, he practiced media, intellectual property and business litigation in Los Angeles. Berkowitz has published widely throughout his career, and his writing has appeared in periodicals such as The New York Times, the Washington Post, The Economist, the Los Angeles Times, and LA Weekly. His previous books include Sex and Punishment and The Boundaries of Desire. He lives in San Francisco."

"A fascinating examination of how restricting speech has continuously shaped our culture, and how censorship is used as a tool to prop up authorities and maintain class and gender disparities.

"Through compelling narrative, historian Eric Berkowitz reveals how drastically censorship has shaped our modern society. More than just a history of censorship, Dangerous Ideas illuminates the power of restricting speech; how it has defined states, ideas, and culture; and (despite how each of us would like to believe otherwise) how it is something we all participate in.

"This engaging cultural history of censorship and thought suppression throughout the ages takes readers from the first Chinese emperor’s wholesale elimination of books, to Henry VIII’s decree of death for anyone who “imagined” his demise, and on to the attack on Charlie Hebdo and the volatile politics surrounding censorship of social media.

"Highlighting the base impulses driving many famous acts of suppression, Berkowitz demonstrates the fragility of power and how every individual can act as both the suppressor and the suppressed."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (55 ratings)
ISBN 978-0807036242 ?
The Education Wars:
A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual
Jennifer C. Berkshire & Jack Schneider
The New Press (July 2, 2024)
No Review
"Jennifer C. Berkshire is a freelance journalist and a host of the education podcast Have You Heard. The co-author (with Jack Schneider) of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door and The Education Wars (both published by The New Press), she lives in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Jack Schneider is the author of six books, including A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door and The Education Wars (both co-authored with Jennifer C. Berkshire and published by The New Press). An award-winning scholar, he is a host of the education podcast Have You Heard and lives in Somerville, Massachusetts."

"A perfectly timed book for the educational resistance—those of us who believe in public schools.

"Culture wars have engulfed our schools. Extremist groups are seeking to ban books, limit what educators can teach, and threaten the very foundations of public education. What’s behind these efforts? Why are our schools suddenly so vulnerable? And how can the millions of Americans who love their public schools fight back? In this concise, hard-hitting guide, journalist Jennifer C. Berkshire and education scholar Jack Schneider answer these questions and chart a way forward.

"The Education Wars explains the sudden obsession with race and gender in schools, as well as the ascendancy of book-banning efforts. It offers a clear analysis of school vouchers and the impact they’ll have on school finances. It deciphers the movement for “parents’ rights,” explaining the rights that students and taxpayers also have. And it reveals how the ostensible pursuit of “religious freedom” opens the door to discrimination against vulnerable children.

"Berkshire and Schneider outline the core issues driving the education wars, offering essential information about issues, actors, and potential outcomes. In so doing, they lay out what is at stake for parents, teachers, and students and provide a road map for ensuring that public education survives this present assault.

"A book that will enrage and enlighten the millions of citizens who believe in their public schools, here is a long-overdue handbook and guide to action."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (15 ratings)
ISBN 978-1620978542 ?
Trumping Democracy:
From Reagan to the Alt-Right
Chip Berlet
Routledge (November 29, 2019)
No Review
"John Foster 'Chip' Berlet is an American investigative journalist, research analyst, photojournalist, scholar, and activist specializing in the study of Right-wing movements in the United States."

"Since 2014, over 80 people have been killed in the United States of America by Right-wing terrorists. In 2016 Donald Trump was elected President of the United States and received substantial support from White nationalists.

"This book explains the increase in violent White nationalism and Trump’s ascendancy in the context of the backlash against the presidency of Barack Obama. It demonstrates how there is a dynamic relationship between the Republican Party, various Right-wing populist movements, and the Right. Far Right social movements, political campaigns and the online presence of the so-called ‘alt-Right’ are all discussed. The book argues that unfair hierarchies of race, gender, and class are not aberrational tremors in America, but the fracturing bedrock of a nation in which being White, male, Christian, or straight no longer ensures a stable floor for power, status, or privilege.

"This is vital reading for students, researchers, and activists interested in American politics and the dangers of Right-wing movements and political parties."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (8 ratings)
ISBN 978-1138212497 ?
Minority Rule:
The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People―and the Fight to Resist It
Ari Berman
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (April 23, 2024)
No Review
"Ari Berman is the national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones and a reporting fellow at Type Media Center. He’s the author of Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America (finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction) and Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post and Rolling Stone, and he is a frequent commentator on MSNBC and NPR. He's won the Sidney Hillman Foundation Prize for Magazine Journalism and an Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media. He lives in New Paltz, New York."

"A riveting account of the decades-long effort by reactionary white conservatives to undermine democracy and entrench their power―and the movement to stop them.

"The mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, represented an extreme form of the central danger facing American democracy today: a blatant disregard for the will of the majority. But this crisis didn’t begin or end with Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Through voter suppression, election subversion, gerrymandering, dark money, the takeover of the courts, and the whitewashing of history, reactionary white conservatives have strategically entrenched power in the face of a massive demographic and political shift. Ari Berman charts these efforts with sweeping historical research and incisive on-the-ground reporting, chronicling how a wide range of antidemocratic tactics interact with profound structural inequalities in institutions like the Electoral College, the Senate, and the Supreme Court to threaten the survival of representative government in America.

" 'The will of the people,' wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1801, 'is the only legitimate foundation of any government.' But that foundation is crumbling. Some counter-majoritarian measures were deliberately built into the Constitution, which was designed in part to benefit a small propertied upper class, but they have metastasized to a degree that the Founding Fathers could never have anticipated, undermining the very notion of 'a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.' Chilling and revelatory, Minority Rule exposes the long history of the conflict between white supremacy and multiracial democracy that has reached a fever pitch today―while also telling the inspiring story of resistance to these regressive efforts."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (102 ratings)
ISBN 978-0374600211 ?
Power and the Idealists:
Or, the Passion of Joschka Fischer and Its Aftermath
Paul Berman
Richard Holbrooke (Foreword)
W. W. Norton & Company (April 17, 2007)
No Review
"Paul Berman writes about politics and literature for The New Republic, the New York Times Book Review, and other magazines. His books have been translated into thirteen languages. He lives in New York City. Richard Holbrooke was an American diplomat, magazine editor, author, professor, Peace Corps official, and investment banker. Along with Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt, he brokered a peace agreement among the warring factions in Bosnia that led to the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords."

"The author of the best-selling Terror and Liberalism on the rise to power of the generation of 1968.

"The student uprisings of 1968 erupted not only in America but also across Europe, expressing a distinct generational attitude about politics, the corrupt nature of democratic capitalism, and the evil of military interventions. Yet, decades later, many in that radical generation had come into conventional positions of power: among them Bill Clinton (who reportedly stayed up all night reading this book) and Joschka Fischer, foreign minister of Germany. During a 1970s street protest, Fischer was photographed beating a cop to the ground; during the 1990s, he was supporting Clinton in a NATO-led military intervention in the Balkans.

"Here Paul Berman, 'one of America's best exponents of recent intellectual history' (The Economist), masterfully traces the intellectual and moral evolution of an impassioned generation―and gives an acute analysis of what it means to go to war in the name of democracy and human rights."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (58 ratings)
ISBN 978-0393330212 ?
American Oligarchs:
The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power
Andrea Bernstein
W. W. Norton & Company (January 14, 2020)
No Review
"Andrea Bernstein is the Peabody Award-winning cohost of the acclaimed WNYC/ProPublica podcast Trump, Inc., which won the prestigious 2019 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award. In addition to broadcast appearances on outlets including PBS NewsHour, CNN, and Fresh Air, her work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post, New York, and on NPR."

"In American Oligarchs, award-winning investigative journalist Andrea Bernstein tells the story of the Trump and Kushner families like never before. Their journey to the White House is a story of survival and loss, crime and betrayal, that stretches from the Klondike Gold Rush, through Nazi-occupied Poland and across the American Century, to our new gilded age. In building and maintaining their dynastic wealth, these families came to embody the rising nationalism and inequality that has pushed the United States to the brink of oligarchy.

"Building on her landmark reporting for the acclaimed podcast Trump, Inc. and The New Yorker, Bernstein's painstaking detective work brings to light new information about the families' arrival as immigrants to America, their paths to success, and the business and personal lives of the president and his closest family members. Bernstein traces how the two families ruthlessly harnessed New York and New Jersey machine politics to gain valuable tax breaks and grew rich on federal programs that bolstered the middle class. She shows how the Trump Organization, denied credit by American banks, turned to shady international capital. She reveals astonishing new details about Charles Kushner's attempts to ensnare his brother-in-law with a prostitute and explores how Jared Kushner and his father used a venerable New York newspaper to bolster their business empire.

"Drawing on more than two hundred interviews and more than one hundred thousand pages of documents, many previously unseen or long forgotten, Bernstein shows how the Trumps and the Kushners repeatedly broke rules and then leveraged secrecy, intimidation, and prosecutorial and judicial power to avoid legal consequences. The result is a compelling narrative that details how the Trump and Kushner dynasties encouraged and profited from a system of corruption, dark money, and influence trading, and that reveals the historical turning points and decisions—on taxation, regulation, white-collar crime, and campaign finance laws—that have brought us to where we are today."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (205 ratings)
ISBN 978-1324001874 ?
If We Burn:
The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution
Vincent Bevins
PublicAffairs (October 3, 2023)
No Review
"Vincent Bevins is an award-winning journalist. He reported for the Financial Times in London, then served as the Brazil correspondent for the Los Angeles Times before covering Southeast Asia for the Washington Post. His first book, The Jakarta Method, was named one of the best books of 2020 by NPR, GQ, the Financial Times, and CounterPunch, and has been translated into fifteen languages. Vincent lives in São Paulo."

"The story of the recent uprisings that sought to change the world - and what comes next.

"From 2010 to 2020, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history. Yet we are not living in more just and democratic societies as a result. If We Burn is a stirring work of history built around a single, vital question: How did so many mass protests lead to the opposite of what they asked for?

"From the so-called Arab Spring to Gezi Park in Turkey, from Ukraine’s Euromaidan to student rebellions in Chile and Hong Kong, acclaimed journalist Vincent Bevins provides a blow-by-blow account of street movements and their consequences, recounted in gripping detail. He draws on four years of research and hundreds of interviews conducted around the world, as well as his own strange experiences in Brazil, where a progressive-led protest explosion led to an extreme-right government that torched the Amazon.

"Careful investigation reveals that conventional wisdom on revolutionary change is gravely misguided. In this groundbreaking study of an extraordinary chain of events, protesters and major actors look back on successes and defeats, offering urgent lessons for the future."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (59 ratings)
ISBN 978-1541788978 ?
The Least Dangerous Branch:
The Supreme Court at the Bar of Politics
Alexander M. Bickel
Yale University Press; 2nd edition (September 10, 1986)
No Review
"Alexander M. Bickel (1924-1974) was an American legal scholar and expert on the United States Constitution — one of the most influential constitutional commentators of the twentieth century. Born in Bucharest, Romania, he emigrated with his family to New York City in 1939. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from City College of New York in 1947 and summa cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1949. Following law school, Bickel was a law clerk for federal Judge Calvert Magruder of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and later a clerk for for Justice Felix Frankfurter of the Supreme Court in 1952 and 1953. He prepared a historic memorandum for Frankfurter, urging that Brown v. Board of Education be reargued. In 1956, he became an instructor at Yale Law School, where he taught until his death. He was named Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and Legal History in 1966, and Sterling Professor of Law in 1974." – Wikipedia

"This classic book on the role of the United States Supreme Court traces the history of the Court, assessing the merits of various decisions along the way. Alexander Bickel begins with Marbury v. Madison, which he says give shaky support to judicial review, and concludes with the school desegregation cases of 1954, which he uses to show the extent and limits of the Court’s power. In this way he accomplishes his stated purpose: 'to have the Supreme Court’s exercise of judicial review better understood and supported and more sagaciously used.' The book now includes a new foreword by Harry H. Wellington. Alexander Mordecai Bickel (1924-1974) was one of the most influential constitutional commentators of the twentieth century. Bickel’s most distinctive contribution to constitutional law was to stress what he called 'the passive virtues' of judicial decision-making – the refusal to decide cases on substantive grounds if narrower grounds exist to decide the case. Bickel viewed 'private ordering' and the voluntary working-out of problems as generally preferable to legalistic solutions. In his books Bickel attacked the Warren Court for what he saw as its misuse of history, shoddy reasoning, and sometimes arbitrary results. Bickel thought that the Warren Court’s two most important lines of decision, Brown v. Board of Education and Baker v. Carr, did not produce the results the Court had intended. In his book The Least Dangerous Branch, Bickel coined the term counter-majoritarian difficulty to describe his view that judicial review stands in tension with democratic theory. Bickel envisioned the Supreme Court as playing a statesman-like role in national controversies, engaging in dialogue with the other branches of government. Thus he did not see the Court as a purely passive body, but as one which should lead public opinion, albeit carefully."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (23 ratings)
ISBN 978-0300032994 ?
The Outlier:
The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter
Kai Bird
Crown (June 14, 2022)
No Review
"Kai Bird is an award-winning historian and journalist. Executive director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography, he is the acclaimed author of biographies of John J. McCloy, of McGeorge and William Bundy, Robert Ames, and President Jimmy Carter. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (co-authored with Martin J. Sherwin), which was adapted into the Academy Award-winning film Oppenheimer. His work has been honored with the BIO Award for his significant contributions to the art and craft of biography. He has also written about the Vietnam War, Hiroshima, nuclear weapons, the Cold War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the CIA. He lives in New York City and Washington, D.C., with his wife, Susan Goldmark."

"An essential re-evaluation of the complex triumphs and tragedies of Jimmy Carter’s presidential legacy—from the expert biographer and Pulitzer Prize–winning co-author of American Prometheus.

"Four decades after Ronald Reagan’s landslide win in 1980, Jimmy Carter’s one-term presidency is often labeled a failure; indeed, many Americans view Carter as the only ex-president to have used the White House as a stepping-stone to greater achievements. But in retrospect the Carter political odyssey is a rich and human story, marked by both formidable accomplishments and painful political adversity. In this deeply researched, brilliantly written account, Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Kai Bird deftly unfolds the Carter saga as a tragic tipping point in American history.

"As president, Carter was not merely an outsider; he was an outlier. He was the only president in a century to grow up in the heart of the Deep South, and his born-again Christianity made him the most openly religious president in memory. This outlier brought to the White House a rare mix of humility, candor, and unnerving self-confidence that neither Washington nor America was ready to embrace. Decades before today’s public reckoning with the vast gulf between America’s ethos and its actions, Carter looked out on a nation torn by race and demoralized by Watergate and Vietnam and prescribed a radical self-examination from which voters recoiled. The cost of his unshakable belief in doing the right thing would be losing his re-election bid—and witnessing the ascendance of Reagan.

"In these remarkable pages, Bird traces the arc of Carter’s administration, from his aggressive domestic agenda to his controversial foreign policy record, taking readers inside the Oval Office and through Carter’s battles with both a political establishment and a Washington press corps that proved as adversarial as any foreign power. Bird shows how issues still hotly debated today—from national health care to growing inequality and racism to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—burned at the heart of Carter’s America, and consumed a president who found a moral duty in solving them.

"Drawing on interviews with Carter and members of his administration and recently declassified documents, Bird delivers a profound, clear-eyed evaluation of a leader whose legacy has been deeply misunderstood. The Outlier is the definitive account of an enigmatic presidency—both as it really happened and as it is remembered in the American consciousness."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (327 ratings)
ISBN 978-0451495242 ?
The Chief:
The Life and Turbulent Times of Chief Justice John Roberts
Joan Biskupic
Basic Books; Illustrated edition (March 26, 2019)
No Review
"Joan Biskupic is a legal analyst at CNN. Previously, she served as an editor-in-charge for legal affairs at Reuters and as the Supreme Court correspondent for The Washington Post. A Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of books on Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, and Sonia Sotomayor, Biskupic lives in Washington, DC."

"An incisive biography of the Supreme Court's enigmatic Chief Justice, taking us inside the momentous legal decisions of his tenure so far.

"John Roberts was named to the Supreme Court in 2005 claiming he would act as a neutral umpire in deciding cases. His critics argue he has been anything but, pointing to his conservative victories on voting rights and campaign finance. Yet he broke from orthodoxy in his decision to preserve Obamacare. How are we to understand the motives of the most powerful judge in the land?

"In The Chief, award-winning journalist Joan Biskupic contends that Roberts is torn between two, often divergent, priorities: to carry out a conservative agenda, and to protect the Court's image and his place in history. Biskupic shows how Roberts's dual commitments have fostered distrust among his colleagues, with major consequences for the law. Trenchant and authoritative, The Chief reveals the making of a justice and the drama on this nation's highest court."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (175 ratings)
ISBN 978-0465093274 ?
Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here:
The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis
Jonathan Blitzer
Penguin Press (January 30, 2024)
No Review
"Jonathan Blitzer is an American journalist, writer, and immigration expert. He is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He was awarded the 2018 Immigration Journalism Prize from the French-American Foundation, and he was a finalist twice for a Livingston Award. In 2018, he received the Media Leadership Award from the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Blitzer's work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Oxford American, and The Nation."

"An epic, heartbreaking, and deeply reported history of the disastrous humanitarian crisis at the southern border told through the lives of the migrants forced to risk everything and the policymakers who determine their fate, by New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer

"Everyone who makes the journey faces an impossible choice. Hundreds of thousands of people who arrive every year at the US-Mexico border travel far from their homes. An overwhelming share of them come from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, although many migrants come from farther away. Some are fleeing persecution, others crime or hunger. Very often it will not be their first attempt to cross. They may have already been deported from the United States, but it remains their only hope for safety and prosperity. Their homes have become uninhabitable. They will take their chances.

"This vast and unremitting crisis did not spring up overnight. Indeed, as Blitzer dramatizes with forensic, unprecedented reporting, it is the result of decades of misguided policy and sweeping corruption. Brilliantly weaving the stories of Central Americans whose lives have been devastated by chronic political conflict and violence with those of American activists, government officials, and the politicians responsible for the country’s tragically tangled immigration policy, Blitzer reveals the full, layered picture for the first time.

"Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is an odyssey of struggle and resilience. With astonishing nuance and detail, Blitzer tells an epic story about the people whose lives ebb and flow across the border, and in doing so, he delves into the heart of American life itself. This vital and remarkable story has shaped the nation’s turbulent politics and culture in countless ways—and will almost certainly determine its future."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (14 ratings)
ISBN 978-1984880802 ?
Impeachment:
A Handbook, New Edition
Charles L. Black Jr. (Author), Philip Bobbitt (Editor)
Yale University Press (September 18, 2018)
No Review
Charles L. Black Jr. (1915-2001) was Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Philip Bobbitt is the Herbert Wechsler Professor of Federal Jurisprudence at Columbia Law School." – Amazon biography

"Originally published at the height of the Watergate crisis, Charles Black's classic Impeachment: A Handbook has long been the premier guide to the subject of presidential impeachment. Now thoroughly updated with new chapters by Philip Bobbitt, it remains essential reading for every concerned citizen."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (4 ratings)
ISBN 978-0300238266 ?
Pastels and Pedophiles:
Inside the Mind of QAnon
Mia Bloom & Sophia Moskalenko
Redwood Press (June 15, 2021)
No Review
Mia Bloom is the International Security Fellow at New America, professor at Georgia State University, and member of the Evidence-Based Cybersecurity Research Group. She has authored books on violent extremism including Small Arms: Children and Terrorism (2019), Bombshell: Women and Terrorism (2011), and Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror (2005). Sophia Moskalenko is a psychologist studying mass identity, inter-group conflict, and conspiracy theories. She has written several books, including the award-winning Friction: How Conflict Radicalizes Them and Us (2011) and The Marvel of Martyrdom: The Power of Self-Sacrifice in the Selfish World (2019)." – Amazon biography

"Two experts of extremist radicalization take us down the QAnon rabbit hole, exposing how the conspiracy theory ensnared countless Americans, and show us a way back to sanity.

"In January 2021, thousands descended on the U.S. Capitol to aid President Donald Trump in combating a shadowy cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles. Two women were among those who died that day. They, like millions of Americans, believed that a mysterious insider known as 'Q' is exposing a vast deep-state conspiracy. The QAnon conspiracy theory has ensnared many women, who identify as members of 'pastel QAnon,' answering the call to 'save the children.'

"With Pastels and Pedophiles, Mia Bloom and Sophia Moskalenko explain why the rise of QAnon should not surprise us: believers have been manipulated to follow the baseless conspiracy. The authors track QAnon's unexpected leap from the darkest corners of the Internet to the filtered glow of yogi-mama Instagram, a frenzy fed by the COVID-19 pandemic that supercharged conspiracy theories and spurred a fresh wave of Q-inspired violence.

"Pastels and Pedophiles connects the dots for readers, showing how a conspiracy theory with its roots in centuries-old anti-Semitic hate has adapted to encompass local grievances and has metastasized around the globe―appealing to a wide range of alienated people who feel that something is not quite right in the world around them. While QAnon claims to hate Hollywood, the book demonstrates how much of Q's mythology is ripped from movie and television plot lines.

"Finally, Pastels and Pedophiles lays out what can be done about QAnon's corrosive effect on society, to bring Q followers out of the rabbit hole and back into the light."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (109 ratings)
ISBN 978-1503630291 ?
Republican Gomorrah:
Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party
Max Blumenthal
Nation Books (September, 2009)
No Review
"Max Blumenthal is an American author and blogger. He was a writer for The Nation, AlterNet, The Daily Beast, Al Akhbar, and Media Matters for America, and has contributed to Al Jazeera English, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. He has been a writing fellow of the Nation Institute. He is a regular contributor to Russian state-owned Sputnik and RT. Blumenthal is the editor of The Grayzone website, which is known for its apologetic coverage of authoritarian regimes such as the Chinese, Russian, Syrian, and Venezuelan governments." – Wikipedia

"Over the last year, award-winning journalist and videographer Max Blumenthal has been behind some of the most sensational (and funniest) exposes of Republican machinations. Whether it was his revelation that Sarah Palin was "anointed" by a Kenyan priest famous for casting out witches, or his confronting Republican congressional leaders and John McCain's family at the GOP convention about the party's opposition to sex education (and hence, the rise in teen pregnancies like that of Palin's daughter), or his expose of the eccentric multimillionaire theocrat behind California's Prop 8 anti-gay marriage initaive, Blumenthal has become one of the most important and most constantly cited journalists on how fringe movements are becoming the Republican Party mainstream.

"Republican Gomorrah is a bestiary of dysfunction, scandal and sordidness from the dark heart of the forces that now have a leash on the party. It shows how those forces are the ones that establishment Republicans-like John McCain-have to bow to if they have any hope of running for President. It shows that Sarah Palin was the logical choice of a party in the control of theocrats. But more that just an expose, Republican Gomorrah shows that many of the movement's leading figures have more in common than just the power they command within conservative ranks. Their personal lives have been stained by crisis and scandal: depression, mental illness, extra-marital affairs, struggles with homosexual urges, heavy medication, addiction to pornography, serial domestic abuse, and even murder. Inspired by the work of psychologists Erich Fromm, who asserted that the fear of freedom propels anxiety-ridden people into authoritarian settings, Blumenthal explains in a compelling narrative how a culture of personal crisis has defined the radical right, transforming the nature of the Republican Party for the next generation and setting the stage for the future of American politics."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (187 ratings)
ISBN 978-1568583983 ?
The Management of Savagery:
How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump
Max Blumenthal
Verso (April 2, 2019)
No Review
"Max Blumenthal is an American author and blogger. He was a writer for The Nation, AlterNet, The Daily Beast, Al Akhbar, and Media Matters for America, and has contributed to Al Jazeera English, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. He has been a writing fellow of the Nation Institute. He is a regular contributor to Russian state-owned Sputnik and RT. Blumenthal is the editor of The Grayzone website, which is known for its apologetic coverage of authoritarian regimes such as the Chinese, Russian, Syrian, and Venezuelan governments." – Wikipedia

"How America’s failed wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria have resulted in increased threats at home—from jihadist terrorism to the rise of Western ultra-nationalism.

"In The Management of Savagery, Max Blumenthal excavates the real story behind America’s dealings with the world and shows how the extremist forces that now threaten peace across the globe are the inevitable flowering of America’s imperial designs.

"Washington’s secret funding of the mujahedin provoked the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. With guns and money, the United States has ever since sustained the extremists, including Osama Bin Laden, who have become its enemies. The Pentagon has trained and armed jihadist elements in Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya; it has launched military interventions to change regimes in the Middle East. In doing so, it created fertile ground for the Islamic State and brought foreign conflicts home to American soil.

"These failed wars abroad have made the United States more vulnerable to both terrorism as well as native ultra-nationalism. The Trump presidency is the inevitable consequence of neoconservative imperialism in the post–Cold War age. Trump’s dealings in the Middle East are likely only to exacerbate the situation."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (384 ratings)
ISBN 978-1788732291 ?
The Shield of Achilles:
War, Peace, and the Course of History
Philip Bobbitt
Knopf (May 14, 2002)
No Review
"Philip Bobbitt teaches constitutional law at the University of Texas, where he holds the A. W. Walker Centennial Chair. He was formerly the Anderson Senior Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, where he was a member of the Modern History faculty. He was later the Marsh Christian Fellow in War Studies at King’s College, London. He has served as associate counsel to the president for intelligence and international security, legal counsel to the Senate Select Committee on the Iran-Contra Affair, the counselor on international law at the Department of State, as well as director of intelligence, senior director for critical infrastructure, and senior director for strategic planning at the National Security Council. He has written several previous books on nuclear strategy, social choice, and constitutional law. He lives in Austin, Washington, and London."

" 'We are at a moment in world affairs when the essential ideas that govern statecraft must change. For five centuries it has taken the resources of a state to destroy another state . . . This is no longer true, owing to advances in international telecommunications, rapid computation, and weapons of mass destruction. The change in statecraft that will accompany these developments will be as profound as any that the State has thus far undergone.' —from the Prologue

"The Shield of Achilles is a classic inquiry into the nature of the State, its origin in war, and its drive for peace and legitimacy. Philip Bobbitt, a professor of constitutional law and a historian of nuclear strategy, has served in the White House, the Senate, the State Department, and the National Security Council in both Democratic and Republican administrations, and here he brings his formidable experience and analytical gifts to bear on our changing world. Many have observed that the nation-state is dying, yet others have noted that the power of the State has never been greater. Bobbitt reconciles this paradox and introduces the idea of the market-state, which is already replacing its predecessor. Along the way he treats such themes as the Long War (which began in 1914 and ended in 1990). He explains the relation of violence to legitimacy, and the role of key individuals in fates that are partially—but only partially—determined.

"This book anticipates the coalitional war against terrorism and lays out alternative futures for the world. Bobbitt shows how nations might avoid the great power confrontations that have a potential for limitless destruction, and he traces the origin and evolution of the State to such wars and the peace conferences that forged their outcomes into law, from Augsburg to Westphalia to Utrecht to Vienna to Versailles.

"The author paints a powerful portrait of the ever-changing interrelatedness of our world, and he uses his expertise in law and strategy to discern the paths that statehood will follow in the coming years and decades. Timely and perceptive, The Shield of Achilles will change the way we think about the world."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (110 ratings)
ISBN 978-0375412929 ?
The Savage Wars of Peace:
Small Wars and the Rise of American Power
Max Boot
Basic Books; Revised edition (March 11, 2014)
No Review
"Max Boot is a bestselling author, historian, and policy analyst who has been called one of the 'world’s leading authorities on armed conflict' by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He is a columnist for the Washington Post, a global affairs analyst for CNN, and the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam and Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present. His other books include the widely acclaimed: The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power and War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today.

"America's 'small wars,' 'imperial war,' or, as the Pentagon now terms them, 'low-intensity conflicts,' have played an essential but little-appreciated role in its growth as a world power. Beginning with Jefferson's expedition against the Barbary pirates, Max Boot tells the exciting stories of our sometimes minor but often bloody landings in Samoa, the Philippines, China, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Mexico, Russia, and elsewhere. Along the way he sketches colorful portraits of little-known military heroes such as Stephen Decatur, 'Fighting Fred' Funston, and Smedly Butler.

"This revised and updated edition of Boot's compellingly readable history of the forgotten wars that helped promote America's rise in the last two centuries includes a wealth of new material, including a chapter on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a new afterword on the lessons of the post-9/11 world."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (276 ratings)
ISBN 978-0465064939 ?
The Corrosion of Conservatism:
Why I Left the Right
Max Boot
Liveright (October 9, 2018)
No Review
"Max Boot is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a global affairs analyst for CNN. His most recent book is the New York Times bestseller The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam." – Amazon biography

"As nativism, xenophobia, vile racism, and assaults on the rule of law threaten the very fabric of our nation, The Corrosion of Conservatism presents an urgent defense of American democracy.

"Pronouncing Mexican immigrants to be 'rapists,' Donald Trump announced his 2015 presidential bid, causing Max Boot to think he was watching a dystopian science-fiction movie. The respected conservative historian couldn’t fathom that the party of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan could endorse such an unqualified reality-TV star. Yet the Twilight Zone episode that Boot believed he was watching created an ideological dislocation so shattering that Boot’s transformation from Republican foreign policy adviser to celebrated anti-Trump columnist becomes the dramatic story of The Corrosion of Conservatism.

"No longer a Republican, but also not a Democrat, Boot here records his ideological journey from a 'movement' conservative to a man without a party, beginning with his political coming-of-age as a young émigré from the Soviet Union, enthralled with the National Review and the conservative intellectual tradition of Russell Kirk and F. A. Hayek. Against this personal odyssey, Boot simultaneously traces the evolution of modern American conservatism, jump-started by Barry Goldwater’s canonical The Conscience of a Conservative, to the rise of Trumpism and its gradual corrosion of what was once the Republican Party.

"While 90 percent of his fellow Republicans became political 'toadies' in the aftermath of the 2016 election, Boot stood his ground, enduring the vitriol of his erstwhile conservative colleagues, trolled on Twitter by a white supremacist who depicted his 'execution' in a gas chamber by a smiling, Nazi-clad Trump. And yet, Boot nevertheless remains a villain to some partisan circles for his enduring commitment to conservative fiscal and national security principles. It is from this isolated position, then, that Boot launches this bold declaration of dissent and its urgent plea for true, bipartisan cooperation."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (145 ratings)
ISBN 978-1631495670 ?
We Wanted Workers:
Unraveling the Immigration Narrative
George J. Borjas
W. W. Norton & Company; Illustrated edition (October 11, 2016)
No Review
"George J. Borjas is the Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is the recipient of the 2011 IZA Prize in Labor Economics."

"From "America’s leading immigration economist" (The Wall Street Journal), a refreshingly level-headed exploration of the effects of immigration.

"We are a nation of immigrants, and we have always been concerned about immigration. As early as 1645, the Massachusetts Bay Colony began to prohibit the entry of 'paupers.' Today, however, the notion that immigration is universally beneficial has become pervasive. To many modern economists, immigrants are a trove of much-needed workers who can fill predetermined slots along the proverbial assembly line.

"But this view of immigration’s impact is overly simplified, explains George J. Borjas, a Cuban-American, Harvard labor economist. Immigrants are more than just workers―they’re people who have lives outside of the factory gates and who may or may not fit the ideal of the country to which they’ve come to live and work. Like the rest of us, they’re protected by social insurance programs, and the choices they make are affected by their social environments.

"In We Wanted Workers, Borjas pulls back the curtain of political bluster to show that, in the grand scheme, immigration has not affected the average American all that much. But it has created winners and losers. The losers tend to be nonmigrant workers who compete for the same jobs as immigrants. And somebody’s lower wage is somebody else’s higher profit, so those who employ immigrants benefit handsomely. In the end, immigration is mainly just another government redistribution program.

" 'I am an immigrant,' writes Borjas, 'and yet I do not buy into the notion that immigration is universally beneficial…But I still feel that it is a good thing to give some of the poor and huddled masses, people who face so many hardships, a chance to experience the incredible opportunities that our exceptional country has to offer.' Whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent, We Wanted Workers is essential reading for anyone interested in the issue of immigration in America today."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (141 ratings)
ISBN 978-0393249019 ?
Profiles in Ignorance:
How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber
Andy Borowitz
Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster (September 13, 2022)
No Review
"Andy Borowitz is an award-winning comedian and New York Times bestselling author. He grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and graduated from Harvard College, where he became President of the Harvard Lampoon. In 1998, he began contributing humor to The New Yorker’s “Shouts & Murmurs” and “Talk of the Town” departments, and in 2001, he created “The Borowitz Report,” a satirical news column, which has millions of readers around the world. In 2012, The New Yorker began publishing “The Borowitz Report.” As a storyteller, he hosted “Stories at the Moth” from 1999 to 2009. As a comedian, he has played to sold-out venues around the world, including during his national tour, “Make America Not Embarrassing Again,” from 2018 to 2020. He is the first-ever winner of the National Press Club’s humor award. He lives with his family in New Hampshire." – Amazon biography

"The winner of the first-ever National Press Club award for humor, Andy Borowitz has been called a “Swiftian satirist” (The Wall Street Journal) and “one of the country’s finest satirists” (The New York Times). Millions of fans and New Yorker readers enjoy his satirical news column “The Borowitz Report.” Now, in Profiles in Ignorance, he offers a witty, spot-on diagnosis of our country’s political troubles by showing how ignorant leaders are degrading, embarrassing, and endangering our nation.

"Borowitz argues that over the past fifty years, American politicians have grown increasingly allergic to knowledge, and mass media have encouraged the election of ignoramuses by elevating candidates who are better at performing than thinking. Starting with Ronald Reagan’s first campaign for governor of California in 1966 and culminating with the election of Donald J. Trump to the White House, Borowitz shows how, during the age of twenty-four-hour news and social media, the US has elected politicians to positions of great power whose lack of the most basic information is terrifying. In addition to Reagan, Quayle, Bush, Palin, and Trump, Borowitz covers a host of congresspersons, senators, and governors who have helped lower the bar over the past five decades.

"Profiles in Ignorance aims to make us both laugh and cry: laugh at the idiotic antics of these public figures, and cry at the cataclysms these icons of ignorance have caused. But most importantly, the book delivers a call to action and a cause for optimism: History doesn’t move in a straight line, and we can change course if we act now."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (1,537 ratings)
ISBN 978-1668003886 ?
Taming Democracy:
"The People," the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution
Terry Bouton
Oxford University Press (July 12, 2007)
No Review
"Terry Bouton is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County."

"Americans are fond of reflecting upon the Founding Fathers, the noble group of men who came together to force out the tyranny of the British and bring democracy to the land. Unfortunately, as Terry Bouton shows in this highly provocative first book, the Revolutionary elite often seemed as determined to squash democracy after the war as they were to support it before.

"Centering on Pennsylvania, the symbolic and logistical center of the Revolution, Bouton shows how this radical shift in ideology spelled tragedy for hundreds of common people. Leading up to the Revolution, Pennsylvanians were united in their opinion that 'the people' (i.e. white men) should be given access to the political system, and that some degree of wealth equality (i.e. among white men) was required to ensure that political freedom prevailed. As the war ended, Pennsylvania's elites began brushing aside these ideas, using their political power to pass laws to enrich their own estates and hinder political organization by their opponents. By the 1780s, they had reenacted many of the same laws that they had gone to war to abolish, returning Pennsylvania to a state of economic depression and political hegemony. This unhappy situation led directly to the Whiskey and Fries rebellions, popular uprisings both put down by federal armies.

"Bouton's work reveals a unique perspective, showing intimately how the war and the events that followed affected poor farmers and working people. Bouton introduces us to unsung heroes from this time—farmers, weavers, and tailors who put their lives on hold to fight to save democracy from the forces of "united avarice." We also get a starkly new look at some familiar characters from the Revolution, including Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington, who Bouton strives to make readers see as real, flawed people, blinded by their own sense of entitlement.

"Taming Democracy represents a turning point in how we view the outcomes of the Revolutionary War and the motivations of the powerful men who led it. Its eye-opening revelations and insights make it an essential read for all readers with a passion for uncovering the true history of America."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (49 ratings)
ISBN 978-0195306651 ?
High Crimes and Misdemeanors:
A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump
Frank O. Bowman III
Cambridge University Press (July 30, 2019)
No Review
"A graduate of Harvard Law School, Frank O. Bowman III joined the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida, where he was Deputy Chief of the Southern Criminal Division and specialized in complex white-collar crimes. In 1995 and 1996, he served as Special Counsel to the U.S. Sentencing Commission in Washington, D.C. From 1998 to 2001, he served as academic advisor to the Criminal Law Committee of the United States Judicial Conference. In 2005 he became the M. Dale Palmer Professor of Law at the Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis, and now is a member of the faculty at the University of Missouri School of Law" – Mizzou bio

"For the third time in forty-five years, America is talking about impeaching a president, but the impeachment provisions of the American constitution are widely misunderstood. In High Crimes and Misdemeanors, constitutional scholar Frank O. Bowman, III offers unprecedented clarity to the question of impeachment, tracing its roots to medieval England through its adoption in the Constitution and 250 years of American experience. By examining the human and political history of those who have faced impeachment, Bowman demonstrates that the Framers intended impeachment to be a flexible tool, adaptable to the needs of any age. Written in a lively, engaging style, the book combines a deep historical and constitutional analysis of the impeachment clauses, a coherent theory of when impeachment should be used to protect constitutional order against presidential misconduct, and a comprehensive presentation of the case for and against impeachment of President Trump. It is an indispensable work for the present moment."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (35 ratings)
ISBN 978-1108481052 ?
America First:
Roosevelt vs. Lindbergh in the Shadow of War
H. W. Brands
Doubleday (September 24, 2024)
No Review
"H. W. Brands holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written more than a dozen biographies and histories, including The General vs. the President, a New York Times bestseller, and Founding Partisans, his most recent book. Two of his biographies, The First American and Traitor to His Class, were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize."

"Bestselling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W. Brands narrates the fierce debate over America's role in the world in the runup to World War II through its two most important figures: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who advocated intervention, and his isolationist nemesis, aviator and popular hero Charles Lindbergh.

"Hitler's invasion of Poland in September 1939 launched a momentous period of decision-making for the United States. With fascism rampant abroad, should America take responsibility for its defeat?

"For popular hero Charles Lindbergh, saying no to another world war only twenty years after the first was the obvious answer. Lindbergh had become famous and adored around the world after his historic first flight over the Atlantic in 1927. In the years since, he had emerged as a vocal critic of American involvement overseas, rallying Americans against foreign war as the leading spokesman the America First Committee.

"While Hitler advanced across Europe and threatened the British Isles, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt struggled to turn the tide of public opinion. With great effort, political shrewdness and outright deception—aided by secret British disinformation efforts in America—FDR readied the country for war. He pushed the US onto the world stage where it has stayed ever since.

"In this gripping narrative, H.W. Brands sheds light on a crucial tipping point in American history and depicts the making of a legendary president."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (13 ratings)
ISBN 978-0385550413 ?
Against Democracy
Jason Brennan
Princeton University Press (September, 2016)
No Review
"Jason Brennan is the Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Associate Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. He is the author of The Ethics of Voting (Princeton), Why Not Capitalism?, and Libertarianism. He is the coauthor of Markets without Limits, Compulsory Voting, and A Brief History of Liberty. He writes regularly for Bleeding Heart Libertarians, a blog.

"A bracingly provocative challenge to one of our most cherished ideas and institutions

"Most people believe democracy is a uniquely just form of government. They believe people have the right to an equal share of political power. And they believe that political participation is good for us―it empowers us, helps us get what we want, and tends to make us smarter, more virtuous, and more caring for one another. These are some of our most cherished ideas about democracy. But, Jason Brennan says, they are all wrong.

"In this trenchant book, Brennan argues that democracy should be judged by its results―and the results are not good enough. Just as defendants have a right to a fair trial, citizens have a right to competent government. But democracy is the rule of the ignorant and the irrational, and it all too often falls short. Furthermore, no one has a fundamental right to any share of political power, and exercising political power does most of us little good. On the contrary, a wide range of social science research shows that political participation and democratic deliberation actually tend to make people worse―more irrational, biased, and mean. Given this grim picture, Brennan argues that a new system of government―epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable―may be better than democracy, and that it's time to experiment and find out.

"A challenging critique of democracy and the first sustained defense of the rule of the knowledgeable, Against Democracy is essential reading for scholars and students of politics across the disciplines."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (255 ratings)
ISBN 978-0691162607 ?
The Oath and the Office:
A Guide to the Constitution for Future Presidents
Corey Brettschneider
W. W. Norton & Company (September 18, 2018)
No Review
"Corey Brettschneider is professor of political science at Brown University, where he teaches constitutional law and politics, as well as visiting professor of law at Fordham Law School. His writing has appeared in TIME, Politico, and the New York Times." – Amazon bio

"Can the president launch a nuclear attack without congressional approval? Is it ever a crime to criticize the president? Can states legally resist a president's executive order? In today's fraught political climate, it often seems as if we must become constitutional law scholars just to understand the news from Washington, let alone make a responsible decision at the polls.

"The Oath and the Office is the book we need, right now and into the future, whether we are voting for or running to become president of the United States. Constitutional law scholar and political science professor Corey Brettschneider guides us through the Constitution and explains the powers—and limits—that it places on the presidency. From the document itself and from American history's most famous court cases, we learn why certain powers were granted to the presidency, how the Bill of Rights limits those powers, and what "we the people" can do to influence the nation's highest public office—including, if need be, removing the person in it. In these brief yet deeply researched chapters, we meet founding fathers such as James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, as well as key figures from historic cases such as Brown v. Board of Education and Korematsu v. United States."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (32 ratings)
ISBN 978-0393652123 ?
The Death of Truth:
How Social Media and the Internet Gave Snake Oil Salesmen and Demagogues the Weapons They Needed to Destroy Trust and Polarize the World--And What We Can Do
Steven Brill
Knopf (June 4, 2024)
No Review
"Steven Brill is the best-selling author of The Teamsters, America’s Bitter Pill, and Tailspin. He has written for The New York Times, Time, The New Yorker, and other national publications. Brill is the cofounder and co-CEO of NewsGuard, which rates the reliability of news and information websites. He is also the founder of The American Lawyer, Brill’s Content magazine, Court TV, the CLEAR registered traveler program, and the Yale Journalism Initiative. He lives near New York City."

"How did we become a world where facts—shared truths—have lost their power to hold us together as a community, as a country, globally? How have we allowed the proliferation of alternative facts, hoaxes, even conspiracy theories, to destroy our trust in institutions, leaders, and legitimate experts? Best-selling journalist Steven Brill documents the forces and people, from Silicon Valley to Madison Avenue to Moscow to Washington, that have created and exploited this world of chaos and division—and offers practical solutions for what we can do about it.

"As the cofounder of NewsGuard, a company that tracks online misinformation, Steven Brill has observed the rise of fake news from a front-row seat. In The Death of Truth, with startling, often terrifying clarity, he explains how we got here—and how we can get back to a world where truth matters.

"None of this—conspiracy theories embraced, expertise ridiculed, empirical evidence ignored—has happened by accident. Brill takes us inside the decisions made by executives in Silicon Valley to code the algorithms embedded in their social media platforms to maximize profits by pushing divisive content. He unravels the ingenious creation of automated advertising buying systems that reward that click-baiting content and penalize reliable news publishers, and describes how the use of these ad-financed, misinformation platforms by politicians, hucksters, and conspiracy theorists deceives ordinary citizens. He documents how the most powerful adversaries of America have used American-made social media and advertising tools against us with massive disinformation campaigns—and how, with the development of generative artificial intelligence, everything could get exponentially worse unless we act. The stakes are high for all of us, including Brill himself, whose company's role in exposing Russian disinformation operations resulted in a Russian agent targeting him and his family.

"Crucially, Brill lays out a series of provocative but realistic prescriptions for what we can do now to reverse course—proposals certain to stir debate and even action that could curb the power of big tech to profit from division and chaos, tamp down polarization, and restore the trust necessary to bring us together."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (42 ratings)
ISBN 978-0525658313 ?
Wealth and Justice:
The Morality of Democratic Capitalism
Dr. Arthur C. Brooks & Peter Wehner
AEI Press (October 16, 2010)
No Review
"Arthur C. Brooks is the president of the American Enterprise Institute. His previous books include Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters for America-and How We Can Get More of It and Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth about Compassionate Conservatism. Peter Wehner is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the former Director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives and served as deputy director of speechwriting under President George W. Bush." – Amazon bio

"Popular opinion would have us believe that America's free market system is driven by greed and materialism, resulting in gross inequalities of wealth, destruction of the environment, and other social ills. Even proponents of capitalism often refer to the free market as simply a 'lesser evil' whose faults are preferable to those of social democracy or communism. But what if the conventional understanding of capitalism as corrupt and unprincipled is wrong? What if the free market economy actually reinforces Christian values? In Wealth and Justice: The Morality of Democratic Capitalism, Arthur C. Brooks and Peter Wehner explore how America's system of democratic capitalism both depends upon and cultivates an intricate social web of families, churches, and communities. Far from oppressing and depriving individuals, the free market system uniquely enables Americans to exercise vocation and experience the dignity of self-sufficiency, all while contributing to the common good. The fruits of this system include the alleviation of poverty, better health, and greater access to education than at any other time in human history-but also a more significant prosperity: the flourishing of the human soul."

Rating by Amazon customers: 3.9 (18 ratings)
ISBN 978-0844743776 ?
Freezing Order:
A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath
Bill Browder
Simon & Schuster (April 12, 2022)
No Review
"Bill Browder is the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management and was the largest foreign investor in Russia until 2005. Since 2009, when his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was murdered in prison after uncovering a $230 million fraud committed by Russian government officials, Browder has been leading a campaign to expose Russia’s endemic corruption and human rights abuses. Before founding Hermitage, Browder was vice president at Salomon Brothers. He holds a BA in economics from the University of Chicago and an MBA from Stanford Business School." – Amazon bio

"Following his explosive New York Times bestseller Red Notice, Bill Browder returns with another gripping thriller chronicling how he became Vladimir Putin’s number one enemy by exposing Putin’s campaign to steal and launder hundreds of billions of dollars and kill anyone who stands in his way.

"When Bill Browder’s young Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was beaten to death in a Moscow jail, Browder made it his life’s mission to go after his killers and make sure they faced justice. The first step of that mission was to uncover who was behind the $230 million tax refund scheme that Magnitsky was killed over. As Browder and his team tracked the money as it flowed out of Russia through the Baltics and Cyprus and on to Western Europe and the Americas, they were shocked to discover that Vladimir Putin himself was a beneficiary of the crime.

"As law enforcement agencies began freezing the money, Putin retaliated. He and his cronies set up honey traps, hired process servers to chase Browder through cities, murdered more of his Russian allies, and enlisted some of the top lawyers and politicians in America to bring him down. Putin will stop at nothing to protect his money. As Freezing Order reveals, it was Browder’s campaign to expose Putin’s corruption that prompted Russia’s intervention in the 2016 US presidential election.

"At once a financial caper, an international adventure, and a passionate plea for justice, Freezing Order is a stirring morality tale about how one man can take on one of the most ruthless villains in the world—and win."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (7,098 ratings)
ISBN 978-1982153281 ?
The Black Butterfly:
The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America
Lawrence T. Brown
Johns Hopkins University Press (January 26, 2021)
No Review
"Lawrence T. Brown is an equity scientist, urban Afrofuturist, and the director of the Black Butterfly Academy, a racial equity education and consulting firm. In June 2018, he was honored by Open Society Institute–Baltimore with the Bold Thinker award for sparking critical discourse regarding Baltimore's racial segregation. He is currently a research scientist in the new Center for Urban Health Equity at Morgan State University, where he is leading the Black Butterfly Rising Initiative."

"The best-selling look at how American cities can promote racial equity, end redlining, and reverse the damaging health- and wealth-related effects of segregation. Winner of the IPPY Book Award Current Events II by the Independent Publisher.

"The world gasped in April 2015 as Baltimore erupted and Black Lives Matter activists, incensed by Freddie Gray's brutal death in police custody, shut down highways and marched on city streets. In The Black Butterfly―a reference to the fact that Baltimore's majority-Black population spreads out like a butterfly's wings on both sides of the coveted strip of real estate running down the center of the city―Lawrence T. Brown reveals that ongoing historical trauma caused by a combination of policies, practices, systems, and budgets is at the root of uprisings and crises in hypersegregated cities around the country.

"Putting Baltimore under a microscope, Brown looks closely at the causes of segregation, many of which exist in current legislation and regulatory policy despite the common belief that overtly racist policies are a thing of the past. Drawing on social science research, policy analysis, and archival materials, Brown reveals the long history of racial segregation's impact on health, from toxic pollution to police brutality. Beginning with an analysis of the current political moment, Brown delves into how Baltimore's history influenced actions in sister cities such as St. Louis and Cleveland, as well as Baltimore's adoption of increasingly oppressive techniques from cities such as Chicago.

"But there is reason to hope. Throughout the book, Brown offers a clear five-step plan for activists, nonprofits, and public officials to achieve racial equity. Not content to simply describe and decry urban problems, Brown offers up a wide range of innovative solutions to help heal and restore redlined Black neighborhoods, including municipal reparations. Persuasively arguing that, since urban apartheid was intentionally erected, it can be intentionally dismantled, The Black Butterfly demonstrates that America cannot reflect that Black lives matter until we see how Black neighborhoods matter."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (115 ratings)
ISBN 978-1421439877 ?
The Hate Next Door:
Undercover within the New Face of White Supremacy
Matson Browning & Tawni Browning
Sourcebooks (July 4, 2023)
No Review
"Matson Browning is an undercover law enforcement officer in Arizona who spent considerable time assigned to the FBI - working both the Joint Terrorist Task Force and the Violent Crimes / Fugitive Task Force. Spending most of his career in Intelligence and gangs, Matt has well over 20 years working and investigating right and left-wing extremism with such groups as Volksfront, KKK, World Church of the Creators, Aryan Nations, National Alliance, Aryan Brotherhood, various border activist groups and militias as well Antifa, Sharps, Anarchists and sovereign citizens both in overt and covert capacities. He is a court certified expert in all areas of gang activity including Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, Hispanic Gangs, Black Gangs, White Gangs and Prison Gangs. In 2005, with the assistance of his wife Tawni, who went undercover herself and was instrumental in his work, they created the Skinhead Intelligence Network (S.I.N.) newly named the Supremacist Intelligence Network, an international law enforcement intelligence sharing organization. Through his proven model of fighting hate and associations with elite members of law enforcement, Matt and Tawni continue to track, monitor and dismantle supremacy including extremists, religious cults, sovereign citizens and hate groups throughout the world."

"The changing face of hate is on your doorstep.

"Matt Browning, an undercover detective in Arizona, thought he knew what hate looked like; that is, until he got a front row seat to White supremacy. What followed was a career of hardship and danger, and what he uncovered can no longer go left untold.

"For more than twenty-five years, Browning has been infiltrating, documenting, and disrupting white supremacy movements from the inside, gaining an intimate vantage point to the KKK, skinheads, border militias, Proud Boys, and other White Power groups, as they organized and grew, their ranks alarmingly including police force and military veterans. Together with his intrepid wife, Tawni, he adopted fake IDs and ideologies, seeking the arrest of its participants―none more so than J.T. Ready, a neo-Nazi who took 'hunting trips' for border migrants while gaining mainstream acceptance as a political candidate―and terrorizing Browning's family. What others dismissed as fringe groups, Browning quickly recognized as large and interconnecting organizations permeating into every facet of American society, effectively spreading their dangerous and repugnant rhetoric at unprecedented speeds. Today, after the violent storming of the Capitol on January 6th, the threat posed by these toxic organizations can no longer be ignored by the public at large.

"In this imperative and gripping narrative, Browning gives readers the inside story of modern-day White supremacy in America in all of its ugly variation. Following his dramatic, high-stakes attempts to take down powerful White supremacists, the torment he faced whilst working undercover, and his eventual creation of the international Skinhead Intelligence Network, The Hate Next Door is a riveting, enlightening, and essential look at the what, where, when, and why of white supremacist groups, how to identify them, and why we must all do everything in our power to fight against them."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (70 ratings)
ISBN 978-1728276625 ?
The Age of Grievance
Frank Bruni
Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster (April 30, 2024)
No Review
"Frank Bruni has been a prominent journalist for more than three decades, including more than twenty-five years at The New York Times, in roles as diverse as op-ed columnist, White House correspondent, Rome bureau chief, and chief restaurant critic. He is the author of four New York Times bestsellers. In July 2021, he became a full professor at Duke University, teaching in the school of public policy. He currently writes his popular weekly newsletter for the Times and produces additional essays as one of the newspaper’s Contributing Opinion Writers."

"From bestselling author and longtime New York Times columnist Frank Bruni comes a lucid, powerful examination of the ways in which grievance has come to define our current culture and politics, on both the right and left.

"The twists and turns of American politics are unpredictable, but the tone is a troubling given. It’s one of grievance. More and more Americans are convinced that they’re losing because somebody else is winning. More and more tally their slights, measure their misfortune, and assign particular people responsibility for it. The blame game has become the country’s most popular sport and victimhood its most fashionable garb.

"Grievance needn’t be bad. It has done enormous good. The United States is a nation born of grievance, and across the nearly two hundred and fifty years of our existence as a country, grievance has been the engine of morally urgent change. But what happens when all sorts of grievances—the greater ones, the lesser ones, the authentic, the invented—are jumbled together? When people take their grievances to lengths that they didn’t before? A violent mob storms the US Capitol, rejecting the results of a presidential election. Conspiracy theories flourish. Fox News knowingly peddles lies in the service of profit. College students chase away speakers, and college administrators dismiss instructors for dissenting from progressive orthodoxy. Benign words are branded hurtful; benign gestures are deemed hostile. And there’s a potentially devastating erosion of the civility, common ground, and compromise necessary for our democracy to survive.

"How did we get here? What does it say about us, and where does it leave us? The Age of Grievance examines these critical questions and charts a path forward."

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 978-1668016435 ?
When America Stopped Being Great:
A History of the Present
Nick Bryant
Bloomsbury Continuum (March 9, 2021)
My Review
"Nick Bryant is one of the BBC's most trusted and senior foreign correspondents. He has been posted in Washington, South Asia, Australia and, most recently, New York. Nick studied history at Cambridge and has a doctorate in American politics from Oxford. He now lives in New York from where he reports on America for the BBC." – Amazon bios

"In When America Stopped Being Great, veteran reporter and BBC New York correspondent Nick Bryant reveals how America's decline paved the way for Donald Trump's rise, sowing division and leaving the country vulnerable to its greatest challenge of the modern era.

"Deftly sifting through almost four decades of American history, from post-Cold War optimism, through the scandal-wracked nineties and into the new millennium, Bryant unpacks the mistakes of past administrations, from Ronald Reagan's 'celebrity presidency' to Barack Obama's failure to adequately address income and racial inequality. He explains how the historical clues, unseen by many (including the media) paved the way for an outsider to take power and a country to slide towards disaster. As Bryant writes, 'rather than being an aberration, Trump's presidency marked the culmination of so much of what had been going wrong in the United States for decades – economically, racially, politically, culturally, technologically and constitutionally.'

"A personal elegy for an America lost, unafraid to criticise actors on both sides of the political divide, When America Stopped Being Great takes the long view, combining engaging storytelling with recent history to show how the country moved from the optimism of Reagan's 'Morning in America' to the darkness of Trump's 'American Carnage'. It concludes with some of the most dramatic events in recent memory, in an America torn apart by a bitterly polarised election, racial division, the national catastrophe of the coronavirus and the threat to US democracy evidenced by the storming of Capitol Hill."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (181 ratings)
ISBN 978-1472985484 ?
Reading the Constitution:
Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism
Stephen Breyer
Simon & Schuster (March 26, 2024)
No Review
"Stephen Breyer ia former associate justice of the Supreme Court who served there for twenty-eight years until retiring in 2022. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

"A provocative, brilliant analysis by recently retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer that deconstructs the textualist philosophy of the current Supreme Court’s supermajority and makes the case for a better way to interpret the Constitution.

"The relatively new judicial philosophy of textualism dominates the Supreme Court. Textualists claim that the right way to interpret the Constitution and statutes is to read the text carefully and examine the language as it was understood at the time the documents were written.

"This, however, is not Justice Breyer’s philosophy nor has it been the traditional way to interpret the Constitution since the time of Chief Justice John Marshall. Justice Breyer recalls Marshall’s exhortation that the Constitution must be a workable set of principles to be interpreted by subsequent generations.

"Most important in interpreting law, says Breyer, is to understand the purposes of statutes as well as the consequences of deciding a case one way or another. He illustrates these principles by examining some of the most important cases in the nation’s history, among them the Dobbs and Bruen decisions from 2022 that he argues were wrongly decided and have led to harmful results."

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 978-1668021538 ?
Fighting for Democracy:
Our Dangerous Civic Illiteracy, A Conservative's Conscience, and Rethinking American Citizenship
Thomas E Brymer
Booklocker.com (October 15, 2022)
No Review
"Thomas E Brymer served 43 years in city government, watching from a 'front row seat' Americans' civic literacy steadily decline to levels which fail to support democracy. Here Brymer sounds a clarion call showing how to better equip Americans with the civic knowledge needed to sustain U.S. democracy in the politically turbulent 21st century."

"Our democracy is now under attack from within and without as it has never been since the Civil War. Yet, the evidence is clear that Americans are, as a whole, civically illiterate, and woefully unprepared for the assault our democracy is undergoing. For Americans to be prepared to function effectively as constructive citizens in their democracy in the 21st century and beyond, they must be equipped with knowledge and a skill set that is not effectively taught today.

"Fighting for Democracy is a call to deconstruct our civics education in this country and reconstruct it to meet the complex needs and pressures our democracy faces today. Certainly, the civics of tomorrow must include continuing what we teach today about the structure, organization, and how (at least in theory) our government is supposed to function. But there is far, far more that must be taught to deal with the siege our democracy is now under.

"Fighting for Democracy provides a roadmap for improving our civic education so we can withstand this anti-democratic movement now underway here. We must teach Americans about servant leadership and how to recognize counterfeit leaders who wish to lead us with leadership styles that are toxic and antithetical to democracy including autocracy, fascism, kleptocracy, and populism. We must return to a national consensus as to the importance in a democracy of a free news media that is an arbiter of truth and not simply a funnel for one-sided biased opinions and editorials masquerading as factual news.

"Americans must relearn how to think critically, recognize major change in the public square, as well as readily identify when we are not being told the truth, are being gaslighted, and worse, becoming willing to accept conspiracy theories and radicalization of our political parties as being normative. We must gain a clearer understanding of the multi-dimensional concept of freedom, democratic norms and values, our history, as well as to once again value public service. We must reconnect with a love for the idea of democracy itself which includes a keen appreciation for the "glue" that holds it together- the common good.

"At the same time, we must rediscover why our Founders believed democracy, while sometimes "messy", was ultimately the one form of government that could truly serve We the People and provide Americans with the best means possible for pursuing as a nation our hopes, dreams, our freedom, and the pursuit of happiness. All these concepts, ideas, truths, and more, are a must for Americans to know in order to be able to fight, and for us to keep, our democracy in today's increasingly anti-democratic world. That is the purpose of Fighting for Democracy.

"Make no mistake about our democracy, We the People must learn now, and quickly, how to improve our civic literacy, including how to become better informed and more constructively engaged citizens. If we do not, we will not be able to effectively fight to keep our democracy and risk losing everything we have fought for since our nation's birth. And American democracy is indeed worth fighting for-not just for us today, but most importantly for our children, grandchildren, and all future generations of Americans. Fighting for Democracy was written to equip us to do exactly that."

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 978-1958877586 ?
Nonverts:
The Making of Ex-Christian America
Stephen Bullivant
Oxford University Press (December 1, 2022)
No Review
"Stephen Bullivant holds professorial positions at St Mary's University, London, and the University of Notre Dame, Sydney. He has doctorates in theology (Oxford, 2009) and sociology (Warwick, 2019). His studies of contemporary nonreligiosity have received wide international coverage, including from the BBC, New York Times, Economist, Financial Times, and Der Spiegel.

"The United States is in the midst of a religious revolution. Or, perhaps it is better to say a non-religious revolution. Around a quarter of US adults now say they have no religion. The great majority of these religious "nones" also say that they used to belong to a religion but no longer do. These are the nonverts: think 'converts,' but from having religion to having none. There are currently has about 59 million of them in the United States.

"Nonverts explores who they are, and why they joined the rising tide of the ex-religious. One of world's leading experts on contemporary atheism and nonreligiosity, sociologist and theologian Stephen Bullivant draws on dozens of interviews, original analysis of high-quality survey data, and a wealth of cutting-edge studies, to present an entertaining and insightful exploration of America's ex-religious landscape. Bullivant criss-crosses the country, talking to everyone from ex-Mormons in Utah to ex-Catholics in Pennsylvania, from ex-Evangelicals in Georgia to ex-Muslims in California, showing not only what they have in common but also how the traditions they left behind continue to shape them.

"While American religion is not going to die out any time soon, ex-Christian America is a growing presence in national life. America's religious revolution is not just a religious revolution—it is catalyzing a profound social, cultural, moral, and political impact. Nonverts will serve as an indispensable guide to this shifting landscape, as well as the future of American life."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (46 ratings)
ISBN 978-0197587447 ?
The Aftermath:
The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America
Philip Bump
Viking (January 24, 2023)
No Review
"Philip Bump is a national columnist for The Washington Post; before that he led political coverage for The Atlantic Wire. One of the paper’s most read writers, he focuses on the data behind polls and political rhetoric. He has been on most major media outlets, from MSNBC’s 'Morning Joe' to Fox News’s 'Special Report,' and on NPR and PBS." – Amazon biography

"A popular Washington Post columnist takes a deep dive into what the end of the baby boom means for American politics and economics.

"Philip Bump, a reporter as adept with a graph as with a paragraph, is popular for his ability to distill vast amounts of data into accessible stories. The Aftermath is a sweeping assessment of how the baby boom created modern America, and where power, wealth, and politics will shift as the boom ends. How much longer than we'd expected will Boomers control wealth? Will millennials get shortchanged for jobs and capital as Gen Z rises? What kind of pressure will Boomers exert on the health care system? How do generations and parties overlap? When will regional identity trump age or ethnic or racial identity? Who will the future GOP voter be, and how does that affect Democratic strategies? What does the Census get right, and terribly wrong? The questions are myriad, and Bump is here to fight speculation with fact.

"Writing with a light hand and deft humor, Bump helps us navigate the flood of data in which our sense of the country now drowns. He fits numbers into a narrative about who we are (including what "we" really means), how we vote, where we live, what we buy—and what predictions we can make with any confidence. We know what will happen eventually to the baby boomers. What we don't know is how the boomer legacies might reshape the country one final time. The answers in this book will help us manage the historic disruption of the American state we are now experiencing."

Rating by Amazon customers: 3.9 (106 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593489697 ?
After the Ivory Tower Falls:
How College Broke the American Dream and Blew Up Our Politics―and How to Fix It
Will Bunch
William Morrow (August 2, 2022)
No Review
"Will Bunch is national opinion columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer and author of several books, including Tear Down This Myth: The Right-Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy, The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, Paranoia Politics and High-Def Hucksters in the Age of Obama, and the e-book The Bern Identity: A Search for Bernie Sanders and the New American Dream. He has won numerous journalism awards and shared the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for spot news reporting with the New York Newsday staff." – Amazon biography

"Today there are two Americas, separate and unequal, one educated and one not. And these two tribes—the resentful 'non-college' crowd and their diploma-bearing yet increasingly disillusioned adversaries—seem on the brink of a civil war. The strongest determinant of whether a voter was likely to support Donald Trump in 2016 was whether or not they attended college, and the degree of loathing they reported feeling toward the so-called 'knowledge economy' of clustered, educated elites. Somewhere in the winding last half-century of the United States, the quest for a college diploma devolved from being proof of America’s commitment to learning, science, and social mobility into a kind of Hunger Games contest to the death. That quest has infuriated both the millions who got shut out and millions who got into deep debt to stay afloat.

"In After the Ivory Tower Falls, award-winning journalist Will Bunch embarks on a deeply reported journey to the heart of the American Dream. That journey begins in Gambier, Ohio, home to affluent, liberal Kenyon College, a tiny speck of Democratic blue amidst the vast red swath of white, post-industrial, rural midwestern America. To understand 'the college question,' there is no better entry point than Gambier, where a world-class institution caters to elite students amidst a sea of economic despair.

"From there, Bunch traces the history of college in the U.S., from the landmark GI Bill through the culture wars of the '60s and '70s, which found their start on college campuses. We see how resentment of college-educated elites morphed into a rejection of knowledge itself—and how the explosion in student loan debt fueled major social movements like Occupy Wall Street. Bunch then takes a question we need to ask all over again—what, and who, is college even for?—and pushes it into the 21st century by proposing a new model that works for all Americans.

"The sum total is a stunning work of journalism, one that lays bare the root of our political, cultural, and economic division—and charts a path forward for America."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (68 ratings)
ISBN 978-0063076990 ?
20 Myths about Religion and Politics in America
Ryan P. Burge
Fortress Press (March 1, 2022)
No Review
"Will Bunch is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University. Author of numerous journal articles, he is the cofounder of and a frequent contributor to Religion in Public, a forum for scholars of religion and politics to make their work accessible to a general audience. Burge is a pastor in the American Baptist Church."

"The way most people think about religion and politics is only loosely linked to empirical reality, argues Ryan P. Burge in 20 Myths about Religion and Politics in America. Instead, our thinking is based on anecdotes, a quick scan of news headlines, or worse, flat-out lies told by voices trying to push a religious or political agenda on a distracted public.

"Burge sees this fundamentally flawed understanding of the world around us and our misperceptions about where we fit into the larger fabric of society as caustic for the future of American politics and religion. Without an accurate picture of our society, when we subscribe to only caricatures of what our country looks like, we never really address the problems facing us.

"Striving to be an impartial referee, Burge describes with accessible and engaging prose—and illustrates with dozens of clear, helpful graphs—what the data says. Step by step, he debunks twenty myths, using rigorous data analysis and straightforward explanations. He gives readers the resources to adopt an empirical view of the world that can help all of us, religious and nonreligious alike, get past at least some of the unsupported beliefs that divide us."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (20 ratings)
ISBN 978-0063076990 ?
Forget the Alamo:
The Rise and Fall of an American Myth
Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson & Jason Stanford
Penguin Press (June 8, 2021)
No Review
"Bryan Burrough is the author of six books, including The Big Rich, Days of Rage, and Public Enemies, and a coauthor of the number one New York Times bestseller Barbarians at the Gate.

Chris Tomlinson is a columnist for the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News and the author of the New York Times bestselling Tomlinson Hill about his family's slaveholding history in Texas. From 1995 to 2007, he reported from more than thirty countries and nine wars for the Associated Press.

Jason Stanford is a writer and former communications director for the mayor of Austin. As a political consultant, Stanford has helped elect or reelect at least thirty members of Congress." – Amazon biographies

"Three noted Texan writers combine forces to tell the real story of the Alamo, dispelling the myths, exploring why they had their day for so long, and explaining why the ugly fight about its meaning is now coming to a head.

"Every nation needs its creation myth, and since Texas was a nation before it was a state, it's no surprise that its myths bite deep. There's no piece of history more important to Texans than the Battle of the Alamo, when Davy Crockett and a band of rebels went down in a blaze of glory fighting for independence from Mexico, losing the battle but setting Texas up to win the war. However, that version of events, as Forget the Alamo definitively shows, owes more to fantasy than reality. Just as the site of the Alamo was left in ruins for decades, its story was forgotten and twisted over time, with the contributions of Tejanos—Texans of Mexican origin, who fought alongside the Anglo rebels—scrubbed from the record, and the origin of the conflict over Mexico's push to abolish slavery papered over. Forget the Alamo provocatively explains the true story of the battle against the backdrop of Texas's struggle for independence, then shows how the sausage of myth got made in the Jim Crow South of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As uncomfortable as it may be to hear for some, celebrating the Alamo has long had an echo of celebrating whiteness.

"In the past forty-some years, waves of revisionists have come at this topic, and at times have made real progress toward a more nuanced and inclusive story that doesn't alienate anyone. But we are not living in one of those times; the fight over the Alamo's meaning has become more pitched than ever in the past few years, even violent, as Texas's future begins to look more and more different from its past. It's the perfect time for a wise and generous-spirited book that shines the bright light of the truth into a place that's gotten awfully dark."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.1 (223 ratings)
ISBN 978-1984880093 ?
Justice Deferred:
Race and the Supreme Court
Orville Vernon Burton & Armand Derfner
Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press (May 1, 2024)
No Review
"Orville Vernon Burton is a prizewinning author of many books, including The Age of Lincoln. He is Judge Matthew J. Perry Chair of History at Clemson University and Emeritus University Scholar at the University of Illinois. Inducted into the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collegium of Scholars, he is also a recipient of the Southern Historical Association’s John Hope Franklin Lifetime Achievement Award. Armand Derfner has been a civil rights lawyer for nearly sixty years as well as a scholar and teacher of constitutional law. He has helped shape the Voting Rights Act in numerous Supreme Court arguments and worked on desegregating state university systems and state legislatures across the South."

"From the Cherokee Trail of Tears to Brown v. Board of Education to the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, Orville Vernon Burton and Armand Derfner shine a powerful light on the Supreme Court’s race record―uplifting, distressing, and even disgraceful. Justice Deferred is the first book that comprehensively charts the Supreme Court’s race jurisprudence, detailing the development of legal and constitutional doctrine, the justices’ reasoning, and the impact of individual rulings.

"In addressing such issues as the changing interpretations of the Reconstruction amendments, Japanese internment in World War II, the exclusion of Mexican Americans from juries, and affirmative action, the authors bring doctrine to life by introducing the people and events at the heart of the story of race in the United States. Much of the fragility of civil rights in America is due to the Supreme Court, but as this sweeping history reminds us, the justices still have the power to make good on the country’s promise of equal rights for all."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.9 (40 ratings)
ISBN 978-0674295445 ?
A Clear and Present Danger:
Narcissism in the Era of Donald Trump
Steven Buser & Len Cruz (Editors)
Chiron Publications (July, 2016)
No Review
"Steven Buser trained in medicine at Duke University and served 12 years as a physician in the US Air Force. He is a graduate of the two-year Clinical Training Program at the CG Jung Institute of Chicago and is a co-founder of the Asheville Jung Center. In addition to a busy psychiatric private practice, he serves as Publisher for Chiron Publications. Leonard Cruz, MD, in addition to maintaining a busy practice of psychiatry, is the Editor-in-Chief of Chiron Publications, co-founder of the Asheville Jung Center, and Chairman of the Mission Institutional Review Board." – Amazon bios

"Pundits insist that politics has seldom been as polarized as it became during the 2016 election in the United States. This was a coincidence of opposites, a coincidentia oppositorum. While Donald Trump galvanized vast numbers of angry, disaffected voters, Senator Bernie Sanders mobilized enormous crowds of young voters who seemed passionately committed to revolutionizing American politics. Regardless of the winner of the contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, it is vital to recognize what is happening on this global stage of politics. A Clear and Present Danger: Narcissism in the Era of Donald Trump explores the phenomenon of Trump as well as the vast landscape of narcissism in general."

NOTE: There is a newer edition.

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (33 ratings)
ISBN 978-1630513955 ?
White Evangelical Racism:
The Politics of Morality in America
Anthea Butler
The University of North Carolina Press (March 22, 2021)
No Review
"Anthea Butler is professor of religion at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Women in the Church of God in Christ: Making a Sanctified World. A leading historian and public commentator on religion and politics, Butler has appeared on networks including CNN, BBC, and MSNBC and has published opinion pieces in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and many other media outlets. A leading authority on Pentecostalism, she is a popular blogger and has been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, The Today Show, and the History Channel. She lives in Philadelphia." – based on two Amazon biographies

"The American political scene today is poisonously divided, and the vast majority of white evangelicals play a strikingly unified, powerful role in the disunion. These evangelicals raise a starkly consequential question for electoral politics: Why do they claim morality while supporting politicians who act immorally by most Christian measures? In this clear-eyed, hard-hitting chronicle of American religion and politics, Anthea Butler answers that racism is at the core of conservative evangelical activism and power.

"Butler reveals how evangelical racism, propelled by the benefits of whiteness, has since the nation's founding played a provocative role in severely fracturing the electorate. During the buildup to the Civil War, white evangelicals used scripture to defend slavery and nurture the Confederacy. During Reconstruction, they used it to deny the vote to newly emancipated blacks. In the twentieth century, they sided with segregationists in avidly opposing movements for racial equality and civil rights. Most recently, evangelicals supported the Tea Party, a Muslim ban, and border policies allowing family separation. White evangelicals today, cloaked in a vision of Christian patriarchy and nationhood, form a staunch voting bloc in support of white leadership. Evangelicalism's racial history festers, splits America, and needs a reckoning now."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (695 ratings)
ISBN 978-1469661179 ?
Dissent:
The Radicalization of the Republican Party and Its Capture of the Court
Jackie Calmes
Twelve (June 15, 2021)
No Review
"Jackie Calmes has been a journalist in Washington for nearly four decades. She is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, based in Washington and writing on national politics and issues. She was a White House correspondent for the New York Times during the Obama administration as well as a national politics reporter and chief economic correspondent. During eighteen years at the Wall Street Journal, she covered Congress and the White House and ultimately became the chief political correspondent. She first worked in Washington as a reporter for Congressional Quarterly. A native of Ohio, she began her career in Texas, where she covered state government and politics from Austin for the Dallas Morning News and, before that, for the Harte-Hanks newspaper chain." – Amazon bios

"In Dissent, award-winning investigative journalist Jackie Calmes brings readers closer to the truth of who Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is, where he came from, and how he and the Republican party at large managed to secure one of the highest seats of power in the land.

"Kavanaugh's rise to the justice who solidified conservative control of the supreme court is a story of personal achievement, but also a larger, political tale: of the Republican Party's movement over four decades toward the far right, and its parallel campaign to dominate the government's judicial branch as well as the other two.

"And Kavanaugh uniquely personifies this history. Fourteen years before reaching the Supreme Court, during a three-year fight for a seat on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin would say to Kavanaugh, 'It seems that you are the Zelig or Forrest Gump of Republican politics. You show up at every scene of the crime.'

"Featuring revelatory new reporting and exclusive interviews, Dissent is a harrowing look into the highest echelons of political power in the United States, and a captivating survey of the people who will do anything to have it."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (16 ratings)
ISBN 978-1538700792 ?
We Are Proud Boys:
How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered in a New Era of American Extremism
Andy B. Campbell
Hachette Books (September 20, 2022)
No Review
"Andy B. Campbell is an investigative reporter and editor covering extremism, misinformation, and their intersection with national politics. He is currently based in New York, where he works on the breaking news desk at HuffPost. He is considered an expert on American extremism, having covered the modern rise of the far-right at the ground level, including the neo-Nazi rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. His work is regularly cited in scientific studies and scholarly papers, and featured on network cable news and radio. Previously, he worked for The Brooklyn Paper and New York Post." – Amazon bios

"After the 2016 election, Americans witnessed a frightening trend: the sudden rise of a host of new extremist groups across the country. Emboldened by a new president, they flooded political rallies and built fervent online presences, expanding rapidly until they were a regular sight at everyday demonstrations. Amid the chaos, one group emerged as a leader among the others, with matching outfits, bizarre rituals, and a reputation for violence: the Proud Boys.

"From leading extremism reporter Andy Campbell, We Are Proud Boys is the definitive narrative exploration of this notorious street gang and all the far-right movements they’re connected to. Through groundbreaking new reporting, Campbell delivers the untold story of a gang of blundering, punch-happy goons who grew to become the centerpiece of American extremism and positioned themselves as the unofficial enforcement arm of the GOP. Beginning with their founding by Gavin McInnes, the media personality best known for co-founding VICE, Campbell takes us deep into the Proud Boys, laying bare their origins and their rise to prominence. As he exposes the group's noxious culture and strange rituals, he reveals how the ultimate project of the Proud Boys–to desensitize Americans to political violence–has succeeded entirely, culminating with Republicans calling the January 6 insurrection 'legitimate political discourse.' The bizarre, frightening story of the Proud Boys reveals the playbook they have created for domestic extremism, giving us the necessary insight to push back against radicalism in America before it swallows our democracy whole."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (269 ratings)
ISBN 978-0306827464 ?
Gender and Elections:
Shaping the Future of American Politics
Susan J. Carroll, Richard L. Fox & Kelly Dittmar (Editors)
Cambridge University Press; 5th edition (December 9, 2021)
No Review
"Susan J. Carroll is Professor Emerita at Rutgers University and a former senior scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers. She is a co-author of A Seat at the Table: Congresswomen's Perspectives on Why Their Presence Matters (2018, with Kelly Dittmar and Kira Sanbonmatsu) and More Women Can Run: Gender and Pathways to State Legislatures (2013, with Kira Sanbonmatsu). Earlier books include: Women as Candidates in American Politics (Second Edition, 1994); Women and American Politics: New Questions, New Directions (2003); and The Impact of Women in Public Office (2001). Carroll also has published numerous journal articles and book chapters focusing on women candidates, voters, elected officials, and political appointees in the United States.
Richard L. Fox is Professor of Political Science at Loyola Marymount University. His research examines how gender affects voting behavior, state executive elections, congressional elections, and political ambition. Most recently he is a co-author of Women, Men & U.S. Politics: Ten Big Questions (2017). Other books include Running from Office: Why Young Americans Are Turned Off to Politics (2015), and It Still Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don't Run for Office (Cambridge University Press, 2010). His articles have appeared in the Journal of Politics, American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, Political Psychology, PS, Women & Politics, Political Research Quarterly, and Public Administration Review.
Kelly Dittmar is Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers–Camden. She is also a scholar and the Director of Research at the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on gender and American political institutions. She is the co-author of A Seat at the Table: Congresswomen's Perspectives on Why Their Representation Matters (2018, with Kira Sanbonmatsu and Susan J. Carroll) and author of Navigating Gendered Terrain: Stereotypes and Strategy in Political Campaigns (2015). At CAWP, Dittmar manages national research projects, helps to develop and implement CAWP's research agenda, and contributes to CAWP reports, publications, and analyses." – Amazon bios

"The fifth edition of Gender and Elections offers a lively, multi-faceted account of the role of gender in the electoral process through the 2020 elections. This timely yet enduring volume strikes a balance between highlighting the most important developments for women as voters and candidates in the 2020 elections and providing an in-depth analysis of the ways that gender has helped shape the contours and outcomes of electoral politics in the United States. Individual chapters demonstrate the importance of gender in understanding presidential, congressional, and state elections; voter participation, turnout, and choices; participation of African American women and Latinas; support of political parties and women's organizations; and candidate communication. New chapters explore the role of social movements in elections and introduce concepts of gendered and raced institutions, intersectionality, and identity politics applied to presidential elections from past to present. The resulting volume is the most comprehensive and reliable resource on the role of gender in electoral politics."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (86 ratings)
ISBN 978-1316511473 ?
The Contrarian:
Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power
Max Chafkin
Penguin Press (September 21, 2021)
No Review
"Max Chafkin is a features editor and a tech reporter at Bloomberg Businessweek. His work has also appeared in Fast Company, Vanity Fair, Inc., and The New York Times Magazine. He lives in Queens, New York with his wife, the journalist Christine Lagorio-Chafkin, and their children."

"A biography of venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel, the enigmatic, controversial, and hugely influential power broker who sits at the dynamic intersection of tech, business, and politics.

“Max Chafkin’s The Contrarian is much more than a consistently shocking biography of Peter Thiel, the most important investor in tech and a key supporter of the Donald Trump presidency. It’s also a disturbing history of Silicon Valley that will make you reconsider the ideological foundations of America’s relentless engine of creative destruction.”—Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store and Amazon Unbound.

"Since the days of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s, no industry has made a greater impact on the world than Silicon Valley. And few individuals have done more to shape Silicon Valley than Peter Thiel. The billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur has been a behind-the-scenes operator influencing countless aspects of our contemporary way of life, from the technologies we use every day to the delicate power balance between Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Washington. But despite his power and the ubiquity of his projects, no public figure is quite so mysterious.

"In the first major biography of Thiel, Max Chafkin traces the trajectory of the innovator's singular life and worldview, from his upbringing as the child of immigrant parents and years at Stanford as a burgeoning conservative thought leader to his founding of PayPal and Palantir, early investment in Facebook and SpaceX, and relationships with fellow tech titans Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Eric Schmidt. The Contrarian illuminates the extent to which Thiel has sought to export his values to the corridors of power beyond Silicon Valley, including funding the lawsuit that destroyed the blog Gawker and strenuously backing far-right political candidates, notably Donald Trump for president in 2016.

"Eye-opening and deeply reported, The Contrarian is a revelatory biography of a one-of-a-kind leader and an incisive portrait of a tech industry whose explosive growth and power is both thrilling and fraught with controversy."

Rating by Amazon customers: 3.8 (539 ratings)
ISBN 978-1984878533 ?
Everybody Knows:
Corruption in America
Sarah Chayes
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd (August 6, 2020)
No Review
"Sarah Chayes graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover (1980) and from Harvard University (1984) with a degree in history, magna cum laude. She was awarded the Radcliffe College History Prize. Later, she served in the Peace Corps in Morocco, then returned to Harvard to earn a master's degree in history, specializing in the medieval Islamic period. Besides English, she speaks Pashto, French, and Arabic. She is a former senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former reporter for National Public Radio, she also served as special advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. – Wikpedia

"America is corrupted, and everybody knows it. Vested interests have bent government powers to serve themselves, not the citizens, with dizzying results—egregious Supreme Court rulings, revolving doors and cozy deals between the state and the private sector, and forty years of financial meltdowns. In this blistering book, Sarah Chayes shows that today's corruption—even the venality of the Trump administration—is part of global history, going back to the invention of money itself. We're not dealing with 'bad apples' lining individual pockets, but the widespread standard practice of sophisticated networks spanning political and national boundaries. But we can change this, individually, collectively and politically. Searching and unflinching, Everybody Knows exposes a rigged system that strangles democracy, calling on readers everywhere to challenge it."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (8 ratings)
ISBN 978-1787383807 ?
Worse than Nothing:
The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism
Erwin Chemerinsky
Yale University Press (September 6, 2022)
No Review
"Erwin Chemerinsky is Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law and Dean of the Berkeley Law School, University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of fifteen books, including Free Speech on Campus and Closing the Courthouse Door: How Your Constitutional Rights Became Unenforceable." – Amazon bios

"Originalism, the view that the meaning of a constitutional provision is fixed when it is adopted, was once the fringe theory of a few extremely conservative legal scholars but is now a well-accepted mode of constitutional interpretation. Three of the Supreme Court’s nine justices explicitly embrace the originalist approach, as do increasing numbers of judges in the lower courts.

"Noted legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky gives a comprehensive analysis of the problems that make originalism unworkable as a method of constitutional interpretation. He argues that the framers themselves never intended constitutional interpretation to be inflexible and shows how it is often impossible to know what the “original intent” of any particular provision was. Perhaps worst of all, though its supporters tout it as a politically neutral and objective method, originalist interpretation tends to disappear when its results fail to conform to modern conservative ideology."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (111 ratings)
ISBN 978-0300259902 ?
The Withdrawal:
Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power
Noam Chomsky & Vijay Prashad
Angela Y. Davis (Foreword)
The New Press (August 30, 2022)
No Review
"Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor (emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Laureate Professor of Linguistics and Agnese Nelms Haury Chair in the Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona. A world-renowned linguist and political activist, he is the author of numerous books, including On Language, Understanding Power (edited by Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel), American Power and the New Mandarins, For Reasons of State, Problems of Knowledge and Freedom, Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship, Towards a New Cold War, The Essential Chomsky (edited by Anthony Arnove), On Anarchism, The Chomsky-Foucault Debate (with Michel Foucault), and The Withdrawal and On Cuba (both with Vijay Prashad), all published by The New Press. He lives in São Paulo, Brazil. Vijay Prashad is director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, editor of LeftWord Books, and the chief correspondent for Globetrotter. He is the author of The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, Uncle Swami: South Asians in America Today, and co-author (with Noam Chomsky) of The Withdrawal and On Cuba (all published by The New Press), as well as Washington Bullets. The Darker Nations was chosen as a Best Nonfiction Book of the Year by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and won the Muzaffar Ahmad Book Prize. He lives in Santiago, Chile, and Northampton, Massachusetts.

"Two of our most celebrated intellectuals grapple with the uncertain aftermath of the American collapse in Afghanistan.

“ 'Through the structure of a deeply engaging conversation between two of our most important contemporary public intellectuals, we are urged to defy the inattention of the media to the disastrous damage inflicted in Afghanistan on life, land, and resources in the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal and the connections to the equally avoidable and unnecessary wars on Iraq and Libya.' —from the foreword by Angela Y. Davis"

"Not since the last American troops left Vietnam have we faced such a sudden vacuum in our foreign policy—not only of authority, but also of explanations of what happened, and what the future holds.

"Few analysts are better poised to address this moment than Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad, intellectuals and critics whose work spans generations and continents. Called “the most widely read voice on foreign policy on the planet” by the New York Times Book Review, Noam Chomsky is the guiding light of dissidents around the world. In The Withdrawal, Chomsky joins with noted scholar Vijay Prashad—who 'helps to uncover the shining worlds hidden under official history and dominant media' (Eduardo Galeano)—to get at the roots of this unprecedented time of peril and change."

"Chomsky and Prashad interrogate key inflection points in America’s downward spiral: from the disastrous Iraq War to the failed Libyan intervention to the descent into chaos in Afghanistan.

"As the final moments of American power in Afghanistan fade from view, this crucial book argues that we must not take our eyes off the wreckage—and that we need, above all, an unsentimental view of the new world we must build together."

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 978-1620977606 ?
Behold, America:
The Entangled History of "America First" and "the American Dream"
Sarah Churchwell
Basic Books; Illustrated edition (October 9, 2018)
No Review

"Sarah Churchwell is professor of American literature and public understanding of the humanities at the University of London. The author and editor of several previous books, including the acclaimed Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of the Great Gatsby, she is a native of Chicago, now living in London."

"In Behold, America, Sarah Churchwell offers a surprising account of twentieth-century Americans' fierce battle for the nation's soul. It follows the stories of two phrases — the "American dream" and "America First" — that once embodied opposing visions for America.

"Starting as a Republican motto before becoming a hugely influential isolationist slogan during World War I, America First was always closely linked with authoritarianism and white supremacy. The American dream, meanwhile, initially represented a broad vision of democratic and economic equality. Churchwell traces these notions through the 1920s boom, the Depression, and the rise of fascism at home and abroad, laying bare the persistent appeal of demagoguery in America and showing us how it was resisted. At a time when many ask what America's future holds, Behold, America is a revelatory, unvarnished portrait of where we have been."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (139 ratings)
ISBN 978-1541673403 ?
A Colossal Wreck:
A Road Trip Through Political Scandal, Corruption and American Culture
Alexander Cockburn
Verso (September 10, 2013)
No Review

"Alexander Cockburn (1941–2012) was the coeditor of CounterPunch and the author of a number of titles, including Corruptions of Empire, The Golden Age Is in Us, Washington Babylon (with Ken Silverstein), and Imperial Crusades. One of three brothers, all journalists, he was the son of the journalist and author Claud Cockburn. Born in Ireland and educated in Scotland and England, he moved to America in 1972, soon establishing himself as a radical reporter and commentator, writing for the Village Voice, the New York Review of Books, Esquire, and Harper's. He also wrote regular columns for the Nation, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New Statesman, and his influential newsletter CounterPunch. In 1991 he settled in Petrolia, a rural hamlet in Humboldt County, Northern California, where he remained until his death."

"Alexander Cockburn was without question one of the most influential journalists of his generation, whose writing stems from the best tradition of Mark Twain, H.L. Menchken and Tom Paine. A Colossal Wreck, his final work, finished shortly before his death in July 2012, exemplifies the prodigious literary brio that made Cockburn’s name.

"Whether ruthlessly exposing Beltway hypocrisy, pricking the pomposity of those in power, or tirelessly defending the rights of the oppressed, Cockburn never pulled his punches and always landed a blow where it mattered. In this panoramic work, covering nearly two decades of American culture and politics, he explores subjects as varied as the sex life of Bill Clinton and the best way to cook wild turkey. He stands up for the rights of prisoners on death row and exposes the chicanery of the media and the duplicity of the political elite. As he pursues a serpentine path through the nation, he charts the fortunes of friends, famous relatives, and sworn enemies alike to hilarious effect.

"This is a thrilling trip through the reefs and shoals of politics and everyday life. Combining a passion for the places, the food and the people he encountered on dozens of cross-country journeys, Cockburn reports back over seventeen years of tumultuous change among what he affectionately called the 'thousand landscapes' of the United States."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (52 ratings)
ISBN 978-1781681190 ?
Supreme Inequality:
The Supreme Court's Fifty-Year Battle for a More Unjust America
Adam Cohen
Penguin Press (February 25, 2020)
No Review
"Adam Cohen, who served as a member of the New York Times editorial board and as a senior writer for Time magazine, is the author of Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck and Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he was president of volume 100 of the Harvard Law Review."

"A revelatory examination of the conservative direction of the Supreme Court over the last fifty years.

"In Supreme Inequality, bestselling author Adam Cohen surveys the most significant Supreme Court rulings since the Nixon era and exposes how, contrary to what Americans like to believe, the Supreme Court does little to protect the rights of the poor and disadvantaged; in fact, it has not been on their side for fifty years. Cohen proves beyond doubt that the modern Court has been one of the leading forces behind the nation’s soaring level of economic inequality, and that an institution revered as a source of fairness has been systematically making America less fair.

"A triumph of American legal, political, and social history, Supreme Inequality holds to account the highest court in the land and shows how much damage it has done to America’s ideals of equality, democracy, and justice for all."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (347 ratings)
ISBN 978-0735221505 ?
Disloyal: A Memoir:
The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump
Michael Cohen
Skyhorse (September 8, 2020)
No Review
"Michael Cohen is an American attorney and businessman. He acted as Special Counsel to President Donald J. Trump from 2017-2018 and as Executive VP for the Trump Organization before then. Cohen lives in New York City with his wife and two children." – Amazon bios

"This is the most devastating business and political horror story of the century. As Trump's lawyer and 'fixer,' Cohen not only witnessed firsthand, but was also an active participant in the inner workings of Trump's business empire, political campaign, and presidential administration.

"This is a story that you have not read in newspapers, or on social media, or watched on television. These are accounts that only someone who worked for Trump around the clock for over a decade—not a few months or even a couple of years—could know. Cohen describes Trump's racist rants against President Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela, and Black and Hispanic people in general, as well as the cruelty, humiliation, and abuse he leveled at family and staff. Whether he's exposing the fact that Trump engaged in tax fraud by inflating his wealth or election fraud by rigging polls, or outing Trump's Neanderthal views towards women or his hush-money payments to clandestine lovers, Cohen pulls no punches. He shows Trump's relentless willingness to lie, exaggerate, mislead, or manipulate. Trump emerges as a man without a soul—a man who courts evangelicals and then trashes them, panders to the common man, but then rips off small business owners, a con-man who will do or say absolutely anything to win, regardless of the cost to his family, his associates, or his country.

"At the heart of Disloyal, we see how Cohen came under the spell of his charismatic Boss and, as a result, lost all sense of his moral compass. The real real Donald Trump who permeates these pages—the racist, sexist, homophobic, lying, cheating President—will be discussed, written about, and analyzed for years to come."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (32,451 ratings)
ISBN 978-1510764699 ?
War with Russia?:
From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate
Stephen F. Cohen
Hot Books; 2nd edition (February 1, 2019)
No Review

"Stephen F. Cohen is Professor Emeritus of Politics at Princeton University, where for many years he was also director of the Russian Studies Program, and Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies and History at New York University. He grew up in Owensboro, Kentucky, received his undergraduate and master’s degrees at Indiana University, and his Ph.D. at Columbia University.

"Cohen’s other books include Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography; Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History Since 1917; Sovieticus: American Perceptions and Soviet Realities; (with Katrina vanden Heuvel) Voices of Glasnost: Interviews With Gorbachev’s Reformers; Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia; Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War; and The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag After Stalin. For his scholarly work, Cohen has received several honors, including two Guggenheim fellowships and a National Book Award nomination.

"Over the years, he has also been a frequent contributor to newspapers, magazines, television, and radio. His “Sovieticus” column for The Nation won a 1985 Newspaper Guild Page One Award and for another Nation article a 1989 Olive Branch Award. For many years, Cohen was a consultant and on-air commentator on Russian affairs for CBS News. With the producer Rosemary Reed, he was also project adviser and correspondent for three PBS documentary films about Russia: Conversations With Gorbachev; Russia Betrayed?; and Widow of the Revolution. Cohen has visited and lived in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia regularly for more than forty years." – Amazon bios

"America is in a new Cold War with Russia even more dangerous than the one the world barely survived in the twentieth century. The Soviet Union is gone, but the two nuclear superpowers are again locked in political and military confrontations, now from Ukraine to Syria. All of this is exacerbated by Washington’s warlike demonizing of the Kremlin leadership and by Russiagate’s unprecedented allegations. US mainstream media accounts are highly selective and seriously misleading. American “disinformation,” not only Russian, is a growing peril.

"In War With Russia?, Stephen F. Cohen—the widely acclaimed historian of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia—gives readers a very different, dissenting narrative of this more dangerous new Cold War from its origins in the 1990s, the actual role of Vladimir Putin, and the 2014 Ukrainian crisis to Donald Trump’s election and today’s unprecedented Russiagate allegations.

"Cohen’s views have made him, it is said, 'America’s most controversial Russia expert.' Some say this to denounce him, others to laud him as a bold, highly informed critic of US policies and the dangers they have helped to create.

"Now updated and expanded to cover the events of 2019, War With Russia? gives readers a chance to decide for themselves who is right: are we living, as Cohen argues, in a time of unprecedented perils at home and abroad?"

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (141 ratings)
ISBN 978-1510745810 ?
The Ten Year War:
Obamacare and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal Coverage
Jonathan Cohn
St. Martin's Press (February 23, 2021)
No Review

"Jonathan Cohn is a senior national correspondent at HuffPost, where he covers politics and policy. A former senior editor at the New Republic, he has written for the New York Times, The Atlantic, and Self, among others. He has won several awards and was called “one of the nation's leading experts on health policy” by the Washington Post. A graduate of Harvard, Jonathan grew up in Florida and lived for years in the Boston area before moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he lives with his family." – Amazon bio

"The Affordable Care Act, better known as 'Obamacare,' was the most sweeping and consequential piece of legislation of the last half century. It has touched nearly every American in one way or another, for better or worse, and become the defining political fight of our time.

"In The Ten Year War, veteran journalist Jonathan Cohn offers the compelling, authoritative history of how the law came to be, why it looks like it does, and what it's meant for average Americans. Drawn from hundreds of hours of interviews, plus private diaries, emails and memos, The Ten Year War takes readers to Capitol Hill and to town hall meetings, inside the West Wing and, eventually, into Trump Tower, as the nation's most powerful leaders try to reconcile pragmatism and idealism, self-interest and the public good, and ultimately two very different visions for what the country should look like.

"At the heart of the book is the decades-old argument over what’s wrong with American health care and how to fix it. But the battle over healthcare was always about more than policy. The Ten Year War offers a deeper examination of how our governing institutions, the media and the two parties have evolved, and the dysfunction those changes have left in their wake."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (57 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250270931 ?
Rules for Resistance:
Advice from Around the Globe for the Age of Trump
David Cole & Melanie Wachtell Stinnett
The New Press (May 23, 2017)
No Review

"David Cole is the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and The Nation, and the author of books including Enemy Aliens and Engines of Liberty (both from The New Press). He lives in Washington, D.C. Melanie Wachtell Stinnett is former director of policy and communications at the Tobin Project and co-author with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Captured (The New Press)." – Amazon bio

"Some of us have been here before. Many people living today in America and around the world have direct experience with countries where an autocrat has seized control. Others have seen charismatic, populist leaders come to power within democracies and dramatically change the rules of the road for the public, activists, and journalists alike. In Rules for Resistance, writers from Russia, Turkey, India, Hungary, Chile, China, Canada, Italy, and elsewhere tell Americans what to expect under our own new regime, and give us guidance for living―and for resisting―in the Trump era.

"A special section on the challenges for journalists reporting on and under a leader like Donald Trump addresses issues of free speech, the importance of press protections, and the critical role of investigative journalists in an increasingly closed society. An introduction by ACLU legal director David Cole looks at the crucial role institutions have in preserving democracy and resisting autocracy.

"A chilling but necessary collection, Rules for Resistance distills the collective knowledge and wisdom of those who 'have seen this video before'."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (8 ratings)
ISBN 978-1620973547 ?
The Five Percent:
Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts
Peter Coleman
PublicAffairs; Illustrated edition (May 3, 2011)
No Review

"Dr. Peter T. Coleman is associate professor of psychology and education at Columbia University, director of the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, and on faculty of The Earth Institute at Columbia. In 2003, he received the Early Career Award from the American Psychological Association, Division 48: Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence. He lives in New York." – Amazon biography

"One in every twenty difficult conflicts ends up grinding to a halt. That's fully 5 percent of not just the diplomatic and political clashes we read about in the newspaper, but disputations and arguments from our everyday lives as well. Once we get pulled into these self-perpetuating conflicts it is nearly impossible to escape. The 5 percent rule us.

"So what can we do when we find ourselves ensnared? According to Dr. Peter T. Coleman, the solution is in seeing our conflict anew. Applying lessons from complexity theory to examples from both American domestic politics and international diplomacy — from abortion debates to the enmity between Israelis and Palestinians — Coleman provides innovative new strategies for dealing with intractable disputes. A timely, paradigm-shifting look at conflict, The Five Percent is an invaluable guide to preventing even the most fractious negotiations from foundering."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (37 ratings)
ISBN 978-1586489212 ?
As Texas Goes...:
How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda
Gail Collins
Liveright (June 4, 2012)
No Review

"Gail Collins, the best-selling author of When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, is a national columnist for the New York Times. She lives in New York City."

"In one of the most explosive and timely political books in years, Gail Collins declares that 'what happens in Texas doesn't stay in Texas anymore.'

"Not until she visited Texas, that proud state of big oil and bigger ambitions, did Gail Collins, the best-selling author and columnist for the New York Times, realize that she had missed the one place that mattered most in America’s political landscape. Raised in Ohio, Collins had previously seen the American fundamental divide as a war between the Republican heartland and its two liberal coasts. But the real story, she came to see, was in Texas, where Bush, Cheney, Rove, & Perry had created a conservative political agenda that is now sweeping the country and defining our national identity. Through its vigorous support of banking deregulation, lax environmental standards, and draconian tax cuts, through its fierce championing of states rights, gun ownership, and, of course, sexual abstinence, Texas, with Governor Rick Perry’s presidential ambitions, has become the bellwether of a far-reaching national movement that continues to have profound social and economic consequences for us all. Like it or not, as Texas goes, so goes the nation."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (162 ratings)
ISBN 978-0871404077 ?
A Higher Loyalty:
Truth, Lies, and Leadership
James Comey
Flatiron Books (April, 2018)
My Review

"On September 4, 2013, James Comey was sworn in as the seventh Director of the FBI.

"A Yonkers, New York native, Jim Comey attended the College of William and Mary and the University of Chicago Law School. After law school, Comey returned to New York and joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York as an Assistant U.S. Attorney. There, he took on numerous crimes, most notably Organized Crime in the case of the United States v. John Gambino, et al. Afterwards, Comey became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, where he prosecuted the high-profile case that followed the 1996 terrorist attack on the U.S. military’s Khobar Towers in Khobar, Saudi Arabia.

"Comey returned to New York after 9/11 to become the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. At the end of 2003, he was tapped to be the Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice (DOJ) under then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and moved to the Washington, D.C. area.

"Comey left DOJ in 2005 to serve as General Counsel and Senior Vice President at Defense contractor Lockheed Martin. Five years later, he joined Bridgewater Associates, a Connecticut-based investment fund, as its General Counsel. In early 2013, Comey became a Lecturer in Law, a Senior Research Scholar, and Hertog Fellow in National Security Law at Columbia Law School." – Amazon bios

"In his book, former FBI director James Comey shares his never-before-told experiences from some of the highest-stakes situations of his career in the past two decades of American government, exploring what good, ethical leadership looks like, and how it drives sound decisions. His journey provides an unprecedented entry into the corridors of power, and a remarkable lesson in what makes an effective leader.

"Mr. Comey served as director of the FBI from 2013 to 2017, appointed to the post by President Barack Obama. He previously served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and the U.S. deputy attorney general in the administration of President George W. Bush. From prosecuting the Mafia and Martha Stewart to helping change the Bush administration's policies on torture and electronic surveillance, overseeing the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation as well as ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, Comey has been involved in some of the most consequential cases and policies of recent history."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (17,458 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250192455 ?
Saving Justice:
Truth, Transparency, and Trust
James Comey
Flatiron Books (January 12, 2021)
No Review

"On September 4, 2013, James Comey was sworn in as the seventh Director of the FBI.

"A Yonkers, New York native, Jim Comey attended the College of William and Mary and the University of Chicago Law School. After law school, Comey returned to New York and joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York as an Assistant U.S. Attorney. There, he took on numerous crimes, most notably Organized Crime in the case of the United States v. John Gambino, et al. Afterwards, Comey became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, where he prosecuted the high-profile case that followed the 1996 terrorist attack on the U.S. military’s Khobar Towers in Khobar, Saudi Arabia.

"Comey returned to New York after 9/11 to become the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. At the end of 2003, he was tapped to be the Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice (DOJ) under then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and moved to the Washington, D.C. area.

"Comey left DOJ in 2005 to serve as General Counsel and Senior Vice President at Defense contractor Lockheed Martin. Five years later, he joined Bridgewater Associates, a Connecticut-based investment fund, as its General Counsel. In early 2013, Comey became a Lecturer in Law, a Senior Research Scholar, and Hertog Fellow in National Security Law at Columbia Law School.

"After he was fired as FBI Director, Comey held the King Lecture Chair in Public Policy at Howard University for 2017-18 and served as a Distinguished Lecturer in Public Policy at William and Mary for 2018-2019. In September 2020, his first book, A Higher Loyalty, was made into a Showtime limited series, "The Comey Rule."" – Amazon bios

"James Comey might best be known as the FBI director that Donald Trump fired in 2017, but he’s had a long, varied career in the law and justice system. He knows better than most just what a force for good the US justice system can be, and how far afield it has strayed during the Trump Presidency.

"In his much-anticipated follow-up to A Higher Loyalty, Comey uses anecdotes and lessons from his career to show how the federal justice system works. From prosecuting mobsters as an Assistant US Attorney in the Southern District of New York in the 1980s to grappling with the legalities of anti-terrorism work as the Deputy Attorney General in the early 2000s to, of course, his tumultuous stint as FBI director beginning in 2013, Comey shows just how essential it is to pursue the primacy of truth for federal law enforcement.

"Saving Justice is gracefully written and honestly told, a clarion call for a return to fairness and equity in the law."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (1,108 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250799128 ?
The Longest Con:
How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism
Joe Conason
George T. Conway III (Contributor)
St. Martin's Press (July 9, 2024)
No Review

"Joe Conason is an American journalist and commentator. He is editor-in-chief of The National Memo, a daily political newsletter, and a senior fellow at Type Media Center. His articles have appeared in many publications around the world, including The New Republic, The Nation, The Guardian, Salon, and The American Prospect. He was executive editor of The New York Observer and a staff writer at The Village Voice. Two of his previous books, The Hunting of the President and Big Lies, were New York Times bestsellers."

"A sardonic chronicle of how conservatism turned into a racketeering enterprise – and why Donald Trump became the living emblem of the American right’s moral decay.

"The Longest Con tells the fascinating story of the partisan con artists who have corrupted conservative politics in our time, creating a toxic phenomenon that culminated in the election of Donald Trump, a bumptious fraud whose checkered career and tawdry retinue, including his presidential cabinet, have featured almost every variety of scam. But long before he appeared, Trump’s path to power was blazed by the motley horde of swindlers and quacks who preceded him.

"From the 'professional anti-communists' (whose tactics even J. Edgar Hoover despised) to the 'populist' grifters of the Tea Party movement and the religious charlatans of the 'prosperity gospel' (who provided a pious front for Trump), the right-wing ripoff has remained remarkably consistent, even as personalities change and new technologies emerge: Stir up anger and resentment, demonize political opponents, promise vengeance, and collect donations from the gullible. It's a highly lucrative game that any unscrupulous charlatan can play, as many have – and they are named in these pages.

"In an unsparing and often comic narrative, Joe Conason explores the right's long, steep descent into a movement whose principal aim is not to protect freedom or defend the Constitution, but merely to line the pockets of pretenders and blowhards whose malevolent tactics now endanger the nation."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (9 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250799128 ?
The Right:
The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism
Matthew Continetti
Basic Books (April 19, 2022)
No Review

"Matthew Continetti is a senior fellow and the Patrick and Charlene Neal Chair in American Prosperity at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where his work is focused on American political thought and history, with a particular focus on the development of the Republican Party and the American conservative movement in the 20th century. He has a BA in history from Columbia University.

"A prominent journalist, analyst, author, and intellectual historian of the right, Mr. Continetti was the founding editor and the editor-in-chief of The Washington Free Beacon. Previously, he was opinion editor at The Weekly Standard. Mr. Continetti is also a contributing editor at National Review and a columnist for Commentary Magazine. He has been published in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, among other outlets.

"Mr. Continetti is the author of The Right: The One Hundred Year War for American Conservatism (Basic Books, 2022), The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star (Sentinel, 2009), and The K Street Gang: The Rise and Fall of the Republican Machine (Doubleday, 2006)."

"A magisterial intellectual history of the last century of American conservatism.

"When most people think of the history of modern conservatism, they think of Ronald Reagan. Yet this narrow view leaves many to question: How did Donald Trump win the presidency? And what is the future of the Republican Party?

"In The Right, Matthew Continetti gives a sweeping account of movement conservatism’s evolution, from the Progressive Era through the present. He tells the story of how conservatism began as networks of intellectuals, developing and institutionalizing a vision that grew over time, until they began to buckle under new pressures, resembling national populist movements. Drawing out the tensions between the desire for mainstream acceptance and the pull of extremism, Continetti argues that the more one studies conservatism’s past, the more one becomes convinced of its future.

"Deeply researched and brilliantly told, The Right is essential reading for anyone looking to understand American conservatism."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (402 ratings)
ISBN 978-1541600508 ?
Exit from Hegemony:
The Unraveling of the American Global Order
Alexander Cooley & Daniel Nexon
Oxford University Press (April 1, 2020)
No Review
"Alexander Cooley is Director of Columbia University's Harriman Institute for the study of Russia, Eurasia and Eastern Europe and the Claire Tow Professor of Political Science at Barnard College of Columbia University. His books include Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia (Oxford), Ranking the World: Grading States as a Tool of Global Governance, and Dictators without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia. In addition to his academic work, Professor Cooley serves on a range of international advisory bodies and working groups engaged with the region and has testified for Congressional committees on Eurasian issues.
Daniel Nexon is an Associate Professor in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He has held fellowships from Stanford University's Center for International Security, Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. From 2009-2010, he was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow in the US Department of Defense. In 2016, he helped coordinate the unofficial foreign-policy group for the Bernie Sanders campaign, and he remains active in efforts to forge progressive foreign policy principles. He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change. He founded, and used to blog at, The Duck of Minerva. He currently blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money." – Amazon bios

"We live in a period of great uncertainty about the fate of America's global leadership. Many believe that Donald Trump's presidency marks the end of liberal international order—the very system of global institutions, rules, and values that shaped the American international system since the end of World War II. Trump's repeated rejection of liberal order, criticisms of long-term allies of the US, and affinity for authoritarian leaders certainly undermines the American international system, but the truth is that liberal international order has been quietly eroding for at least 15 years.

"In Exit from Hegemony, Alexander Cooley and Daniel Nexon develop a new, integrated approach to understanding the rise and decline of hegemonic orders. Their approach identifies three distinct ways in which the liberal international order is undergoing fundamental transformation. First, Russia and China have targeted the order, positioning themselves as revisionist powers by establishing alternative regional institutions and pushing counter-norms. Second, weaker states are hollowing out the order by seeking patronage and security partnership from nations outside of the order, such as Saudi Arabia and China. Even though they do not always seek to disrupt American hegemony, these new patron-client relationships lack the same liberal political and economic conditions as those involving the United States and its democratic allies. Third, a new series of transnational networks emphasizing illiberalism, nationalism, and right-wing values increasing challenges the anti-authoritarian, progressive transnational networks of the 1990s. These three pathways erode the primacy of the liberal international order from above, laterally, and from below. The Trump administration, with its 'America First' doctrine, accelerates all three processes, critically lessening America's position as a world power."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (3 ratings)
ISBN 978-0190916473 ?
The Psychology of Christian Nationalism:
Why People Are Drawn In and How to Talk Across the Divide
Pamela Cooper-White
Fortress Press (May 31, 2022)
No Review
"Pamela Cooper-White is the Christiane Brooks Johnson Professor of Psychology and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York. She holds PhDs from Harvard University and the Institute for Clinical Social Work, Chicago, and is the author or coauthor of five books and over seventy scholarly and professional articles. An Episcopal priest and pastoral psychotherapist, Dr. Cooper-White is a certified clinical Fellow in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, a National Board-Certified Counselor, and a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor in the state of Illinois." – Amazon bios

"How do we overcome polarization in American society? How do we advocate for justice when one side won't listen to the other and cycles of outrage escalate?

"These questions have been pressing for years, but the emergence of a vocal, virulent Christian nationalism have made it even more urgent that we find a way forward.

"In three brief, incisive chapters Pamela Cooper-White uncovers the troubling extent of Christian nationalism, explores its deep psychological roots, and discusses ways in which advocates for justice can safely and effectively attempt to talk across the deep divides in our society."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (41 ratings)
ISBN 978-1506482118 ?
Romney:
A Reckoning
McKay Coppins
Scribner (October 24, 2023)
No Review
"McKay Coppins is a staff writer at The Atlantic where he covers politics, religion, and national affairs. He is the author of The Wilderness, a book about the battle for the future of the Republican Party, and he has been a visiting fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics. He won the Aldo Beckman Award from the White House Correspondents Association for his coverage of the Trump presidency, and the Wilbur Award for religion journalism. He lives near Washington, DC, with his wife and children."

"A remarkably illuminating biography of one of America’s most fascinating political figures—including news-making revelations from Mitt Romney himself about dissension within today’s Republican Party—written with his full cooperation by an award-winning writer at The Atlantic.

"Few figures in American politics have seen more and said less than Mitt Romney. An outspoken dissident in Donald Trump’s GOP, he has made headlines in recent years for standing alone against the forces he believes are poisoning the party he once led. Romney was the first senator in history to vote to remove from office a president of his own party. When that president’s supporters went on to storm the US Capitol, Romney delivered a thundering speech from the Senate floor accusing his fellow Republicans of stoking insurrection. Despite these moments of public courage, Romney has shared very little about what he’s witnessed behind the scenes over his three decades in politics—in GOP cloakrooms and caucus lunches, in his private meetings with Donald Trump and his family, in his dealings with John McCain, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mitch McConnell, Joe Manchin, and Kyrsten Sinema. Now, exclusively for this biography, Romney has provided a window to his most private thoughts.

"Based on dozens of interviews with Romney, his family, and his inner circle as well as hundreds of pages of his personal journals and private emails, this in-depth portrait by award-winning journalist McKay Coppins shows a public servant authentically wrestling with the choices he has made over his career. In lively, revelatory detail, the book traces Romney’s early life and rise through the ranks of a fast-transforming Republican Party and exposes how a trail of seemingly small compromises by political leaders has led to a crisis in democracy. Ultimately, Romney: A Reckoning is a redemptive story about a flawed politician who summoned his moral courage just as fear and divisiveness were overtaking American life."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (693 ratings)
ISBN 978-1982196202 ?
American Psychosis:
A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy
David Corn
Twelve (September 13, 2022)
No Review
"David Corn is a veteran Washington journalist and political commentator. He is the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine and an analyst for MSNBC. He is the author or co-author of four New York Times bestsellers, including the #1 bestseller Russian Roulette, Showdown, and Hubris, and the author of the novel Deep Background." – Amazon biography

"A fast-paced, rollicking, behind-the-scenes account of how the GOP since the 1950s has encouraged and exploited extremism, bigotry, and paranoia to gain power, American Psychosis offers readers a brisk, can-you-believe-it journey through the netherworld of far-right irrationality and the Republican Party’s interactions with the darkest forces in America. In a compelling and thoroughly-researched narrative, Corn reveals the hidden history of how the Party of Lincoln forged alliances with extremists, kooks, racists, and conspiracy-mongers and fostered fear, anger, and resentment to win elections—and how this led to Donald Trump’s triumph and the transformation of the GOP into a Trump personality cult that foments and bolsters the crazy and dangerous excesses of the right.

"The Trump-incited insurrectionist attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, was no aberration. American Psychosis shows it was a continuation of the long and deep-rooted Republican practice of boosting and weaponizing the rage and derangement of the right.

"The gripping tale in American Psychosis covers the last seven decades. From McCarthyism to the John Birch Society to segregationists to the New Right to the religious right to Rush Limbaugh to Newt Gingrich to the militia movement to Fox News to Sarah Palin to the Tea Party to Trumpism, the Republican Party has deliberately nurtured and exploited rightwing fear and loathing fueled by paranoia, grievance, and tribalism. This powerful and important account explains how one political party has harnessed the worst elements in politics to poison the nation’s discourse and threaten American democracy."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (924 ratings)
ISBN 978-1538723050 ?
The Politics of Resentment:
Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker
Katherine J. Cramer
University of Chicago Press; Illustrated edition (March 23, 2016)
No Review
"Katherine J. Cramer is professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she is also director of the Morgridge Center for Public Service and an affiliate faculty member in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, the LaFollette School of Public Affairs, the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education, and the Center for Community and Nonprofit Studies. She is the author of Talking about Race and Talking about Politics, both also published by the University of Chicago Press."

"Since the election of Scott Walker, Wisconsin has been seen as ground zero for debates about the appropriate role of government in the wake of the Great Recession. In a time of rising inequality, Walker not only survived a bitterly contested recall that brought thousands of protesters to Capitol Square, he was subsequently reelected. How could this happen? How is it that the very people who stand to benefit from strong government services not only vote against the candidates who support those services but are vehemently against the very idea of big government?

"With The Politics of Resentment, Katherine J. Cramer uncovers an oft-overlooked piece of the puzzle: rural political consciousness and the resentment of the 'liberal elite.' Rural voters are distrustful that politicians will respect the distinct values of their communities and allocate a fair share of resources. What can look like disagreements about basic political principles are therefore actually rooted in something even more fundamental: who we are as people and how closely a candidate’s social identity matches our own. Using Scott Walker and Wisconsin’s prominent and protracted debate about the appropriate role of government, Cramer illuminates the contours of rural consciousness, showing how place-based identities profoundly influence how people understand politics, regardless of whether urban politicians and their supporters really do shortchange or look down on those living in the country.

"The Politics of Resentment shows that rural resentment—no less than partisanship, race, or class—plays a major role in dividing America against itself."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (164 ratings)
ISBN 978-0226349084 ?
Thunder on the Right:
The "New Right" and the Politics of Resentment
Alan Crawford
Pantheon Books (June 1, 1980)
No Review
"Alan Crawford is ???" – Amazon biography

"Drawing from his own experiences as a conservative, Crawford shows that the New Right is, in reality, anticonservative and reveals its damaging effect on the conservative cause."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (5 ratings)
ISBN 978-0394506630 ?
The Godless Crusade:
Religion, Populism and Right-Wing Identity Politics in the West
Tobias Cremer
Cambridge University Press; New edition (March 30, 2023)
No Review
"Tobias Cremer is a Junior Research Fellow at Pembroke College, and an Associate Member of the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the relationship between religion, secularisation and the rise of right-wing identity politics. He is the co-author of Faith, Nationalism and the Future of Liberal Democracy (2021)." – Amazon biography

"This book postulates that the rise of right-wing populism in the West and its references to religion are less driven by a resurgence of religious fervour, than by the emergence of a new secular identity politics. Based on exclusive interviews with 116 populist leaders, key policy makers and faith leaders in the USA, Germany, and France, it shows how right-wing populists use Christianity as a cultural identity marker of the 'pure people' against external 'others' while often remaining disconnected from Christian values, beliefs, and institutions. However, right-wing populists' willingness and ability to employ religion in this way critically depends on the actions of mainstream party politicians and faith leaders. They can either legitimise right-wing populists' identitarian use of religion or challenge it, thereby cultivating 'religious immunity' against populist appeals. As the populist wave breaks across the West, a new debate about the role of religion in society has begun."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.0 (1 rating)
ISBN 978-1009262163 ?
Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization
Maurice T. Cunningham
Palgrave Macmillan (October 9, 2021)
No Review
"Maurice T. Cunningham was Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA from 1999 through 2021. He is a co-founder of the popular MassPoliticsProfs.org blog. He has received awards for his work on dark money from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees and the Massachusetts Teachers Association." – Amazon biography

"This book goes deep behind the scenes of school privatization campaigns to expose the complex networks of funding that sustain these efforts - often hidden from the view of the public. Using the example of a 2016 Massachusetts charter school referendum, Cunningham shows how wealthy individuals support charter school expansion through so-called 'social welfare' organizations, thereby obscuring the true sources of funding while influencing major public policy votes. With vast wealth and a political agenda, foundations have helped to reshape the reform landscape in urban education."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (4 ratings)
ISBN 978-3030732639 ?
Never Enough:
Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success
Michael D'Antonio
Thomas Dunne Books (September 22, 2015)
No Review
"As part of a team of journalists from Newsday, Michael D'Antonio won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting before going on to write many acclaimed books, including Atomic Harvest, The State Boys Rebellion, and The Truth About Trump. He has also written for Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, and Sports Illustrated. He lives in New York."

"In the hours I spent with President Trump as I researched the biography The Truth About Trump he showed interest in me just once. He suggested that if I wrote a 'good book' — meaning one that pleased him — I could make 'millions.' When I explained that a good biography served the reader and not the subject's whims, he replied, 'Well, if that's how you see it...'

"The way I see it is that the reader always comes first. I owe him/her clarity, precision, and a good story. All this is done with loyalty to the facts and respect for the complexities of human character in context.
"Besides the influence of family and growing-up experiences in small town New Hampshire I have been most affected by two people I met in college, my wife Toni and my first mentor, writer Donald Murray. Both have encouraged me to express my creativity, connect with others, and find ways to serve. They understood intuitively what I later found expressed so well by Viktor Frankl in Man's Search for Meaning. Finally, I've found that if I don't take myself too seriously, and add a little silliness, it's a pretty good recipe.

"Today I live in Long Island, not far from the sound. I have two grown daughters, Amy and Elizabeth, who have become the other great influences on my life."

"In the summer of 2015, as he vaulted to the lead among the many GOP candidates for president, Donald Trump was the only one dogged by questions about his true intentions. This most famous American businessman had played the role of provocateur so often that pundits, reporters, and voters struggled to believe that he was a serious contender. Trump stirred so much controversy that his candidacy puzzled anyone who applied ordinary political logic to the race. But as Michael D'Antonio shows in Never Enough, Trump has rarely been ordinary in his pursuit of success and his trademark method is based on a logic that begins with his firm belief that he is a singular and superior human being.

"As revealed in this landmark biography, Donald Trump is a man whose appetite for wealth, attention, power, and conquest is practically insatiable. Declaring that he is still the person he was as a rascally little boy, Trump confesses that he avoids reflecting on himself 'because I might not like what I see' and he believes 'most people aren't worthy of respect.'

"A product of the media age and the Me Generation that emerged in the 1970s, Trump was a Broadway showman before he became a developer. Mentored by the scoundrel attorney Roy Cohn, Trump was a regular on the New York club scene and won press attention as a dashing young mogul before he had built his first major project. He leveraged his father's enormous fortune and political connections to get his business off the ground, and soon developed a larger-than-life persona. In time, and through many setbacks, he made himself into a living symbol of extravagance and achievement.

"Drawing upon extensive and exclusive interviews with Trump and many of his family members, including all his adult children, D'Antonio presents the full story of a truly American icon, from his beginnings as a businessman to his stormy romantic life and his pursuit of power in its many forms. For all those who wonder: Just who is Donald Trump?, Never Enough supplies the answer. He is a promoter, builder, performer and politician who pursues success with a drive that borders on obsession and yet, has given him, almost everything he ever wanted."

It has been asserted that Never Enough and The Truth about Trump are the same book.

Rating by Amazon customers: 3.7 (105 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250042385 ?
Democracy and Its Critics
Robert A. Dahl
Yale University Press; Reissue edition (July 24, 1991)
No Review
"Robert A. Dahl, Sterling Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Yale Universtiy, is also the author of Who Governs?, After the Revolution?, Polyarchy, and Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy, all available from Yale University Press.

"In this prize-winning book, one of the most prominent political theorists of our time makes a major statement about what democracy is and why it is important. Robert Dahl examines the most basic assumptions of democratic theory, tests them against the questions raised by its critics, and recasts the theory of democracy into a new and coherent whole. He concludes by discussing the directions in which democracy must move if advanced democratic states are to exist in the future."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (49 ratings)
ISBN 978-0300049381 ?
Ratf**ked:
The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy
David Daley
Liveright (June 14, 2016)
No Review
"David Daley is the author of the national best-seller Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn't Count (Norton/Liveright) and one of the nation's leading experts on partisan gerrymandering. He is a senior fellow at FairVote, a nonpartisan champion of election reforms. His journalism on redistricting and gerrymandering has appeared in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, New York magazine and many other leading publications. He is the former editor in chief of Salon.com." – Amazon biography

"With Barack Obama’s historic election in 2008, pundits proclaimed the Republicans as dead as the Whigs of yesteryear. Yet even as Democrats swooned, a small cadre of Republican operatives, including Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie, and Chris Jankowski began plotting their comeback with a simple yet ingenious plan. These men had devised a way to take a tradition of dirty tricks―known to political insiders as “ratf**king”―to a whole new, unprecedented level. Flooding state races with a gold rush of dark money made possible by Citizens United, the Republicans reshaped state legislatures, where the power to redistrict is held. Reconstructing this never-told-before story, David Daley examines the far-reaching effects of this so-called REDMAP program, which has radically altered America’s electoral map and created a firewall in the House, insulating the party and its wealthy donors from popular democracy. Ratf**ked pulls back the curtain on one of the greatest heists in American political history."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (453 ratings)
ISBN 978-1631491627 ?
Unrigged:
How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy
David Daley
Liveright (March 17, 2020)
No Review
"David Daley is the author of Ratf**ked. His journalism has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Slate, the Washington Post, and New York magazine. He is a senior fellow at FairVote, the former editor of Salon, and lives in Massachusetts." – Amazon biography

"Following Ratf**ked, his “extraordinary timely and undeniably important” (New York Times Book Review) exposé of how a small cadre of Republican operatives rigged American elections, David Daley emerged as one of the nation’s leading authorities on gerrymandering. In Unrigged, he charts a vibrant political movement that is rising in the wake of his and other reporters’ revelations. With his trademark journalistic rigor and narrative flair, Daley reports on Pennsylvania’s dramatic defeat of a gerrymander using the research of ingenious mathematicians and the Michigan millennial who launched a statewide redistricting revolution with a Facebook post. He tells the stories of activist groups that paved the way for 2018’s historic blue wave and won crucial battles for voting rights in Florida, Maine, Utah, and nationwide. In an age of polarization, Unrigged offers a vivid portrait of a nation transformed by a new civic awakening, and provides a blueprint for what must be done to keep American democracy afloat."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (63 ratings)
ISBN 978-1631495755 ?
Antidemocratic:
Inside the Far Right's 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections
David Daley
Mariner Books (August 6, 2024)
No Review
"David Daley is the author of the national bestseller Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn't Count, which helped spark the drive to reform gerrymandering. He regularly discusses democracy and voting rights on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and other outlets. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and The Guardian, among other publications. He is the former editor in chief of Salon. He lives in Massachusetts."

"A riveting yet disturbing history of the fifty-year Republican plot to hijack voting rights in America, its profound implications for the 2024 presidential election, and the crucial role that Chief Justice John Roberts has played in determining how we vote.

"In 1981, a young lawyer, fresh out of Harvard law school, joined the Reagan administration’s Department of Justice, taking up a cause that had been fomenting in Republican circles for over a decade by that point. From his perch inside the Reagan DOJ, this lawyer would attempt to bring down one of the defining pieces of 20th century legislation—the Voting Rights Act. His name was John Roberts.

"Over thirty years later in 2013, these efforts by John Roberts and the conservative legal establishment culminated when Roberts, now Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, wrote Shelby County v. Holder, one of the most consequential decisions of modern jurisprudence. A dramatic move that gutted the Voting Rights Act, Roberts’s decision—dangerously premised on the flawed notion that racism was a thing of the past—emboldened right-wing, antidemocratic voting laws around the country immediately. No modern court decision has done more to hand elections to Republicans than Shelby.

"Now lauded investigative reporter David Daley reveals the urgent story of this fifty-year Republican plot to end the Voting Rights Act and encourage minority rule in their party’s favor. From the bowels of Reagan’s DOJ to the walls of the conservative Federalist Society to the moneyed Republican resources bankrolling restrictive voting laws today, Daley reveals a hidden history as sweeping as it is troubling. Through careful research and exhaustive reporting, he connects Shelby to a well-funded, highly-coordinated right-wing effort to erode the power of minority voters and Democrats at the ballot box—an effort that has grown stronger with each election cycle. In the process Roberts and his conservative allies have enabled fringe conservative theories about our elections with the potential to shape the 2024 election and topple the foundations of our democracy.

"Timely and alarming, Daley offers a powerful message that, while Shelby was the misguided end of the Voting Rights Act, it was also the beginning of something far darker."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (9 ratings)
ISBN 978-0063321090 ?
Birchers:
How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right
Matthew Dallek
Basic Books (March 21, 2023)
No Review
"Matthew Dallek is a historian and professor of political management at George Washington University’s College of Professional Studies. The author of The Right Moment and Defenseless Under the Night, his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Politico, and other publications. He lives in Washington, DC." – Amazon biography

"How a notorious far right organization set the Republican Party on a long march toward extremism

"At the height of the John Birch Society’s activity in the 1960s, critics dismissed its members as a paranoid fringe. After all, “Birchers” believed that a vast communist conspiracy existed in America and posed an existential threat to Christianity, capitalism, and freedom. But as historian Matthew Dallek reveals, the Birch Society’s extremism remade American conservatism. Most Birchers were white professionals who were radicalized as growing calls for racial and gender equality appeared to upend American life. Conservative leaders recognized that these affluent voters were needed to win elections, and for decades the GOP courted Birchers and their extremist successors. The far right steadily gained power, finally toppling the Republican establishment and electing Donald Trump.

"Birchers is a deeply researched and indispensable new account of the rise of extremism in the United States."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (81 ratings)
ISBN 978-1541673564 ?
How Did We Get Here?:
From Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump
Robert Dallek
Harper (May 26, 2020)
No Review
"Robert Dallek is the author of An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 and Nixon and Kissinger, among other books. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, and Vanity Fair. He lives in Washington, D.C." – Amazon biography

"The struggle to preserve the Republic has never been easy or without perils. The rise of conflicting political parties, which the founders opposed, and President John Adams' Alien and Sedition Acts repressing First Amendment rights made Franklin's observation at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention—'a republic, if you can keep it'—seem prescient.

"In the twentieth century, America endured numerous struggles: economic depression, World War II, McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, Watergate, the Iran-contra scandal, the war in Iraq—all of which gave rise to demagogues, as did the growth and reach of mass media. But this wasn't the Founding Fathers' vision for our leadership. The resistance to putting a demagogue in the White House survived the anti-Communist agitation of the 1950s and the Vietnam War in the 1960s. But the latter opened the way for Richard Nixon's election in 1968 and Watergate, which again tested our democratic institutions and the rule of law. Nixon's resignation in August 1974 moved Vice President Gerald Ford, his successor, to declare, 'My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.'

"But was it? Donald Trump's 2016 election has presented a new challenge. How did past politics and presidential administrations pave the way for this current assault on American democracy? Our nation's history provides reassurance that we will restore our better angels to government. Yet it must be considered that earlier administrations and public outlook facilitated the rise of such an un-presidential character as Trump in the first place. In How Did We Get Here?, Robert Dallek considers a century of modern administrations, from Teddy Roosevelt to today, shining a light on the personalities behind the politics and the voters who elected each. His cautionary tale reminds us that the only constant in history is change, but whether for good or ill the choice is Americans' to make."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (84 ratings)
ISBN 978-0062872999 ?
Culture War:
How the '90s Made Us Who We Are Today (Whether We Like It or Not)
Telly Davidson
McFarland & Company (July 28, 2016)
No Review
"Telly Davidson is an award-winning culture writer who has contributed to the Emmy-nominated Pioneers of Television and the WGA-endorsed The WRITE Environment series. He has written extensively on film, television, and music and was the lead Culture Columnist for The FrumForum (NewMajority) from 2009 to 2012. He lives in southern California."

"What didn't you like about the 1990s—the peace or the prosperity? Setting aside nostalgia for the end of the 20th century, this book takes a candid look at the decade after the Cold War and before 9/11, when America's culture war began with the election of a media-savvy, Baby Boomer president (and his liberal feminist wife). Bill Clinton's postmodern administration betokened gay equality, an education-based labor force and a race and gender-diverse workplace and government, panicking conservatives and sparking the 1994 Republican Revolution.

"Meanwhile, with the advent of the 24-hour cable news cycle and the Internet, a media 'punditocracy' arose. Parsing every event from the O.J. Simpson trial to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, commentators and talk show hosts spun news, politics and pop culture until they became one thing. Beginning with the 'Red and Blue' partitioning of America that would nurture the Tea Party, and ending with the 9/11 attacks, this examination of the 1990s demonstrates how the decade shaped the world we live in today."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (3 ratings)
ISBN 978-1476666198 ?
Authoritarian Nightmare:
Trump and His Followers
John W. Dean & Bob Altemeyer
Melville House (August 25, 2020)
No Review
"John W. Dean served as White House counsel for President Richard Nixon from 1970 to 1973. During the Watergate scandal, his Congressional testimony helped lead to Nixon’s resignation. Dean has written about Watergate in his New York Times bestsellers Blind Ambition and The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It. Among his other books are the national bestsellers Worse Than Watergate and Conservatives Without Conscience. He is a regular political and legal commentator on CNN.
Bob Altemeyer's research on the psychological makeup of authoritarian leaders and followers, and his development of the “RWA” (right-wing authoritarian) test, has [sic] established him as the recognized expert in the field. He is the author of The Authoritarians and Enemies of Freedom: Understanding Right-Wing Authoritarianism. Altemeyer taught psychology at the University of Manitoba and was awarded the American Association for the Advancement of Science Prize for Behavioral Science Research." – Amazon biography

"To fully understand, John Dean, a man with a history of standing up to autocratic presidents, joined with Bob Altemeyer, a professor of psychology with a unique area of expertise: Authoritarianism.

"Relying on social science findings and psychological diagnostic tools (such as the "Power Mad Scale" and the "Con Man Scale"), as well as research and analysis from the Monmouth University Polling Institute (one of America's most respected public opinion research foundations), the authors provide us with an eye-opening understanding of the Trump phenomenon — and how we may be able to stop it."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (1,329 ratings)
ISBN 978-1612199054 ?
Race-Baiter:
How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation
Eric Deggans
St. Martin's Press (October 30, 2012)
No Review
"Eric Deggans is TV and Media Critic for the Tampa Bay Times, Florida’s largest newspaper, as well as a freelance contributor to National Public Radio, CNN.com and the Huffington Post. He is the author of Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation. He regularly appears as a pundit/expert on MSNBC’s “Countdown”; CNN’s “Reliable Sources”; Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends” morning show and “Hannity and Colmes”; PBS’s “The NewsHour”; CNN Headline News’ “Showbiz Tonight”; “The Tavis Smiley Show” on Black Entertainment Television; and the PBS shows “Livelyhood” and “The Calling.” His work has also appeared in a host of newspapers and magazines ranging from the conservative Newsmax magazine to the Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Detroit News and Miami Herald, VIBE magazine, Hispanic magazine and Ebony magazine."

"Gone is the era of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, when news programs fought to gain the trust and respect of a wide spectrum of American viewers. Today, the fastest-growing news programs and media platforms are fighting hard for increasingly narrow segments of the public and playing on old prejudices and deep-rooted fears, coloring the conversation in the blogosphere and the cable news chatter to distract from the true issues at stake. Using the same tactics once used to mobilize political parties and committed voters, they send their fans coded messages and demonize opposing groups, in the process securing valuable audience share and website traffic. Race-baiter is a term born out of this tumultuous climate, coined by the conservative media to describe a person who uses racial tensions to arouse the passion and ire of a particular demographic. Even as the election of the first black president forces us all to reevaluate how we think about race, gender, culture, and class lines, some areas of modern media are working hard to push the same old buttons of conflict and division for new purposes. In Race-Baiter, veteran journalist and media critic Eric Deggans dissects the powerful ways modern media feeds fears, prejudices, and hate, while also tracing the history of the word and its consequences, intended or otherwise."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (70 ratings)
ISBN 978-0230341821 ?
Red State Christians:
Understanding the Voters Who Elected Donald Trump
Angela Denker
Fortress Press (August 6, 2019)
No Review
"Angela Denker is a Lutheran pastor and veteran journalist. She's written for many publications, including Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, and Sojourners. Denker is the mom of two boys and lives with her husband, Ben, in Minneapolis." – Amazon biography

"Donald Trump, a thrice-married, no-need-of-forgiveness, blustery billionaire who rarely goes to church, won more Evangelical Christian votes than any candidate in history on his way to winning the 2016 US presidential election. Veteran journalist Angela Denker set out to uncover why, traveling the United States for a year, meeting the people who support Trump, and listening to their rationale. In Red State Christians, readers will get an honest look at the Christians who gave the presidency to the unlikeliest candidate of all time. From booming, wealthy Orange County megachurches to libertarian farmers in Missouri to a church in Florida where the pastors carry guns to an Evangelical Arab American church in Houston to conservative Catholics on the East Coast—the picture she paints of them is enlightening, at times disturbing, but always empathetic. A must-read for those hoping to truly understand how Donald Trump became president."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (64 ratings)
ISBN 978-1506449081 ?
The Originialism Trap:
How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We the People Can Take It Back
Madiba K. Dennie
Random House (June 4, 2024)
No Review
"Madiba K. Dennie is the deputy editor and senior contributor at the critical legal commentary website Balls and Strikes, the co-director of the Democracy Committee of the New Jersey Reparations Council, and was previously a counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice. Her legal and political commentary has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and elsewhere, and she has been interviewed on the BBC, MSNBC, and other media outlets. She has taught at Western Washington University and New York University School of Law. Dennie is a graduate of Columbia Law School and Princeton University. The Originalism Trap is her first book."

"A rallying cry for a more just approach to the law that bolsters social justice movements by throwing out originalism—the theory that judges should interpret the Constitution exactly as conservatives say the Founders meant it.

"There is no one true way to interpret the Constitution, but that’s not what originalists want you to think. They’d rather we be held hostage to their 'objective' theory that our rights and liberties are bound by history—an idea that was once confined to the fringes of academia. Americans saw just how subjective originalism can be when the Supreme Court cherry-picked the past to deny bodily autonomy to millions of Americans in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. Though originalism is supposed to be a serious intellectual theory, a closer look reveals its many inherent faults, as it deliberately over-emphasizes a version of history that treats civil rights gains as categorically suspect. According to Madiba K. Dennie, it’s time to let it go.

"Dennie discards originalism in favor of a new approach that serves everyone: inclusive constitutionalism. She disentangles the Constitution’s ideals from originalist ideology and underscores the ambition of the Reconstruction Amendments, which were adopted in the wake of the Civil War and sought to build a democracy with equal membership for marginalized persons. The Originalism Trap argues that the law must serve to make that promise of democracy real.

"Seamlessly blending scholarship with sass and written for law people and laypeople alike, The Originalism Trap shows readers that the Constitution belongs to them and how, by understanding its possibilities, they can use it to fight for their rights. As courts—and the Constitution—increasingly become political battlegrounds, The Originalism Trap is a necessary guide to what’s at stake and a vision for a more just future."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (2 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593729250 ?
Ill Winds:
Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency
Larry Diamond
Penguin Press (June 11, 2019)
No Review
"Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also a professor by courtesy of political science and sociology at Stanford University and a past director of its Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. In 2004, Diamond served in Baghdad as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He is the author of numerous books, including The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World, the editor of coeditor of fifty books, and a counding founding coeditor of the Journal of Democracy." – Amazon biography

"Larry Diamond has made it his life's work to secure democracy's future by understanding its past and by advising dissidents fighting autocracy around the world. Deeply attuned to the cycles of democratic expansion and decay that determine the fates of nations, he watched with mounting unease as illiberal rulers rose in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, the Philippines, and beyond, while China and Russia grew increasingly bold and bullying. Then, with Trump's election at home, the global retreat from freedom spread from democracy's margins to its heart.

"Ill Winds' core argument is stark: the defense and advancement of democratic ideals relies on U.S. global leadership. If we do not reclaim our traditional place as the keystone of democracy, today's authoritarian swell could become a tsunami, providing an opening for Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and their admirers to turn the twenty-first century into a dark time of despotism.

"We are at a hinge in history, between a new era of tyranny and an age of democratic renewal. Free governments can defend their values; free citizens can exercise their rights. We can make the internet safe for liberal democracy, exploit the soft, kleptocratic underbelly of dictatorships, and revive America's degraded democracy. Ill Winds offers concrete, deeply informed suggestions to fight polarization, reduce the influence of money in politics, and make every vote count.

"In 2019, freedom's last line of defense still remains 'We the people'."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.1 (29 ratings)
ISBN 978-0525560623 ?
Why the Right Went Wrong:
Conservatism—From Goldwater to Trump and Beyond
E.J. Dionne Jr.
Simon & Schuster (January 19, 2016)
No Review
"E.J. Dionne Jr. is a bestselling author, a syndicated columnist who appears twice weekly in The Washington Post and nearly a hundred other newspapers, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a professor at Georgetown University. His Why Americans Hate Politics won a Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a nominee for the National Book Award. He is a regular commentator on National Public Radio and on other radio and television programs. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, Mary Boyle, and their three children.

"From one of our most engaging political reporters and the author of Why Americans Hate Politics; the story of conservatism from the Goldwater 1960s to the present day Tea Party that has resulted in broken promises and an ideological purity that drives moderate Republicans away.

"Why the Right Went Wrong offers a historical view of the right since the 1960s. Its core contention is that American conservatism and the Republican Party took a wrong turn when they adopted Barry Goldwater’s worldview during and after the 1964 campaign. The radicalism of today’s conservatism is not the product of the Tea Party, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne writes. The Tea Partiers are the true heirs to Goldwater ideology. The purity movement did more than drive moderates out of the Republican Party—it beat back alternative definitions of conservatism.

"Since 1968, no conservative administration—not Nixon not Reagan not two Bushes—could live up to the rhetoric rooted in the Goldwater movement that began to reshape American politics fifty years ago. The collapse of the Nixon presidency led to the rise of Ronald Reagan, the defeat of George H.W. Bush, to Newt Gingrich’s revolution. Bush initially undertook a partial modernization, preaching 'compassionate conservatism' and a 'Fourth Way' to Clinton’s 'Third Way.' Conservatives quickly defined him as an advocate of 'big government' and not conservative enough on spending, immigration, education, and Medicare. A return to the true faith was the only prescription on order. The result was the Tea Party, which Dionne says, was as much a reaction to Bush as to Obama.

"The state of the Republican party, controlled by the strictest base, is diminished, Dionne writes. It has become white and older in a country that is no longer that. It needs to come back to life for its own health and that of the country’s, and in Why the Right Went Wrong, he explains how."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (458 ratings)
ISBN 978-1476763798 ?
Code Red:
How Progressives and Moderates Can Unite to Save Our Country
E.J. Dionne Jr.
St. Martin's Press (February 4, 2020)
No Review
"E.J. Dionne Jr. is a columnist for The Washington Post, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, visiting professor at Harvard University, and professor at Georgetown University. He is a co-author of the recent New York Times bestseller One Nation After Trump and author of Why the Right Went Wrong."" – Amazon biography

"Will progressives and moderates feud while America burns? Or will these natural allies take advantage of the greatest opportunity since the New Deal Era to strengthen American democracy, foster social justice, and turn back the threats of the Trump Era?

"The United States stands at a crossroads. Broad and principled opposition to Donald Trump's presidency has drawn millions of previously disengaged citizens to the public square and to the ballot boxes. This inspired and growing activism for social and political change hasn't been seen since the days of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies and the Progressive and Civil Rights movements. But if progressives and moderates are unable—and unwilling—to overcome their differences, they could not only enable Trump to prevail again but also squander an occasion for launching a new era of reform.

"In Code Red, award-winning journalist E. J. Dionne, Jr., calls for a shared commitment to decency and a politics focused on freedom, fairness, and the future, encouraging progressives and moderates to explore common ground and expand the unity that brought about Democrat victories in the 2018 elections. He offers a unifying model for furthering progress with a Politics of Remedy, Dignity, and More: one that solves problems, resolve disputes, and moves forward; that sits at the heart of the demands for justice by both long-marginalized and recently-displaced groups; and that posits a positive future for Americans with more covered by health insurance, more with decent wages, more with good schools, more security from gun violence, more action to roll back climate change.

"Breaking through the partisan noise and cutting against conventional wisdom to provide a realistic look at political possibilities, Dionne offers a strategy for progressives and moderates to think more clearly and accept the responsibilities that history now imposes on them. Because at this point in our national story, change can't wait."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (99 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250256478 ?
One Nation After Trump:
A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported
E.J. Dionne Jr., Norman J. Ornstein, & Thomas E. Mann
St. Martin's Press (September, 2017)
No Review
"E.J. Dionne Jr. is a columnist for The Washington Post, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and professor at Georgetown University. Thomas E. Mann is a resident scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Norman J. Ornstein is Resident Scholar [at] the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing editor and columnist for National Journal and The Atlantic. They are the authors of recent New York Times bestsellers, Dionne's Why the Right Went Wrong and Mann and Ornstein's It's Even Worse Than It Looks." – Amazon biography

"American democracy was never supposed to give the nation a president like Donald Trump. We have never had a president who gave rise to such widespread alarm about his lack of commitment to the institutions of self-government, to the norms democracy requires, and to the need for basic knowledge about how government works. We have never had a president who raises profound questions about his basic competence and his psychological capacity to take on the most challenging political office in the world.

"Yet if Trump is both a threat to our democracy and a product of its weaknesses, the citizen activism he has inspired is the antidote. The reaction to the crisis created by Trump's presidency can provide the foundation for an era of democratic renewal and vindicate our long experiment in self-rule.

"The award-winning authors of One Nation After Trump explain Trump's rise and the danger his administration poses to our free institutions. They also offer encouragement to the millions of Americans now experiencing a new sense of citizenship and engagement and argue that our nation needs a unifying alternative to Trump's dark and divisive brand of politics—an alternative rooted in a New Economy, a New Patriotism, a New Civil Society, and a New Democracy. One Nation After Trump is the essential book for our era, an unsparing assessment of the perils facing the United States and an inspiring roadmap for how we can reclaim the future."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (125 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250164056 ?
Invisible Rulers:
The People Who Turn Lies into Reality
Renee DiResta
PublicAffairs (June 11, 2024)
No Review
"

Renee DiResta is the technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, a cross-disciplinary program of research, teaching, and policy engagement for the study of abuse in information technologies. Her work examines rumors and propaganda in the digital age. She has analyzed geopolitical campaigns created by foreign powers such as Russia, China, and Iran; voting‑ related rumors that led to the January 6 insurrection; and health misinformation and conspiracy theories pushed by domestic influencers. She is a contributor at The Atlantic. Her bylined writing has appeared in Wired, Foreign Affairs, Columbia Journalism Review, New York Times, Washington Post, Yale Review, The Guardian, POLITICO, Slate, and Noema, as well as many academic journals.

"DiResta has been a Presidential Leadership Scholar (a program run by the Presidents Bush, Clinton, and the LBJ Foundations); named an Emerson Fellow, a Truman National Security Project fellow, Mozilla Fellow in Media, Misinformation, and Trust, a Harvard Berkman-Klein affiliate, and a Council on Foreign Relations term member."

"An 'essential and riveting' (Jonathan Haidt) analysis of the radical shift in the dynamics of power and influence, revealing how the machinery that powered the Big Lie works to create bespoke realities revolutionizing politics, culture, and society.

"Renée DiResta’s powerful, original investigation into the way power and influence have been profoundly transformed reveals how a virtual rumor mill of niche propagandists increasingly shapes public opinion. While propagandists position themselves as trustworthy Davids, their reach, influence, and economics make them classic Goliaths—invisible rulers who create bespoke realities to revolutionize politics, culture, and society. Their work is driven by a simple maxim: if you make it trend, you make it true.

"By revealing the machinery and dynamics of the interplay between influencers, algorithms, and online crowds, DiResta vividly illustrates the way propagandists deliberately undermine belief in the fundamental legitimacy of institutions that make society work. This alternate system for shaping public opinion, unexamined until now, is rewriting the relationship between the people and their government in profound ways. It has become a force so shockingly effective that its destructive power seems limitless. Scientific proof is powerless in front of it. Democratic validity is bulldozed by it. Leaders are humiliated by it. But they need not be.

"With its deep insight into the power of propagandists to drive online crowds into battle—while bearing no responsibility for the consequences—Invisible Rulers not only predicts those consequences but offers ways for leaders to rapidly adapt and fight back."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (72 ratings)
ISBN 978-1541703377 ?
Donald J. Trump's Presidency:
International Perspectives
by John Dixon
Max J. Skidmore (Editor)
Westphalia Press (March 16, 2018)
No Review
"John Dixon is Professor of Public Administration at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. He is a fellow of the British Academy of the Social Sciences in 2004, and has been an honorary life member of the American Phi Beta Delta Honor Society for International Scholars since 2006. Max J. Skidmore is University of Missouri's Curators' Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Thomas Jefferson Fellow at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He has been Distinguished Fulbright Lecturer to India, and Senior Fulbright Scholar at the University of Hong Kong." – Amazon biography

"President Donald J. Trump's foreign policy rhetoric and actions become more understandable by reference to his personality traits, his worldview, and his view of the world. His campaign rhetoric catered to Americans comfortable with isolationism and certainly with no appetite for foreign military engagements. So, his foreign policy emphasis was on American isolationism and economic nationalism. He is not really interested in delving too deeply into some of the substantive issues of international politics, particularly the prevailing quandaries in the East Asia, Middle East and North Africa, and Central and Eastern Europe. Why bother when simple solutions will suffice, for his purposes. He has placed America's global superpower status at risk. The gradual decline of its global influence seems inevitable."

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 978-1633916654 ?
Defending Democracy in an Age of Sharp Power
William J. Dobson, Tarek Masoud & Christopher Walker (Editors)
Johns Hopkins University Press (July 25, 2023)
No Review
"William J. Dobson is a coeditor of the Journal of Democracy and the author of The Dictator’s Learning Curve: Inside the Global Battle for Democracy. He previously served as the Chief International Editor at NPR, the Washington Bureau Chief of Slate magazine, and Managing Editor of Foreign Policy. Tarek Masoud is the Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Governance at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and a coeditor of the Journal of Democracy. Christopher Walker is Vice President for Studies and Analysis at the National Endowment for Democracy. He is a coeditor of Authoritarianism Goes Global: The Challenge to Democracy and Sharp Power: Rising Authoritarian Influence."

"Explores how authoritarian regimes are deploying 'sharp power' to undermine democracies from within by weaponizing universities, institutions, media, technology, and entertainment industries.

"The world's dictators are no longer content with shoring up control over their own populations―they are now exploiting the openness of the free world to spread disinformation, sow discord, and suppress dissent. In Defending Democracy in an Age of Sharp Power, editors William J. Dobson, Tarek Masoud, and Christopher Walker bring together leading analysts to explain how the world's authoritarians are attempting to erode the pillars of democratic societies―and what we can do about it.

"Popular media, entertainment industries, universities, the tech world, and even critical political institutions are being manipulated by dictators who advance their regimes' interests by weakening democracies from within. Autocrats' use of "sharp power" constitutes one of the gravest threats to liberal, representative government today. The optimistic, early twenty-first-century narrative of how globalization, the spread of the internet, and the rise of social media would lead to liberalization everywhere is now giving way to the realization that these same forces provide inroads to those wishing to snuff out democracy at the source. And while autocrats can do much to wall their societies off from democratic and liberal influences, free societies have not yet fully grasped how they can resist the threat of sharp power while preserving their fundamental openness and freedom.

"Far from offering a counsel of despair, the international contributors in this collection identify the considerable resources that democracy provides for blunting sharp power's edge. With careful case studies of successful resistance efforts in such countries as Australia, the Czech Republic, and Taiwan, this book offers an urgent message for anyone concerned with the defense of democracy in the twenty-first century.

"Contributors: Ketty W. Chen, Sarah Cook, William J. Dobson, John Fitzgerald, Martin Hála, Samantha Hoffman, Aynne Kokas, Edward Lucas, Tarek Masoud, Nadège Rolland, Ruslan Stefanov, Glenn Tiffert, Martin Vladimirov, Christopher Walker"

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 978-1421448046 ?
The Court v. The Voters:
The Troubling Story of How the Supreme Court Has Undermined Voting Rights
Joshua A. Douglas
Beacon Press (May 14, 2024)
No Review
"Joshua A. Douglas is a law professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law and legal expert invested and engaged in helping everyday people understand our elections. His media commentaries have appeared in the New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, LA Times, USA Today, Reuters, Politico, The Atlantic, Huffington Post, and Slate, among others, and he has been quoted in major newspapers and on NPR stations throughout the country. He is the author of a previous book, Vote For US: How to Take Back Our Elections and Change the Future of Voting. You can find him active on Twitter at @JoshuaADouglas."

"An urgent and gripping look at the erosion of voting rights and its implications for democracy, told through the stories of 9 Supreme Court decisions—and the next looming case.

"In The Court v. The Voters, law professor Joshua Douglas takes us behind the scenes of significant cases in voting rights—some surprising and unknown, some familiar—to investigate the historic crossroads that have irrevocably changed our elections and the nation. In crisp and accessible prose, Douglas tells the story of each case, sheds light on the intractable election problems we face as a result, and highlights the unique role the highest court has played in producing a broken electoral system.

"Douglas charts infamous cases like:

  • Bush v. Gore, which opened the door to many election law claims
  • Citizens United, which contributed to skewed representation—but perhaps not in the way you might think
  • >Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted the vital protections of the Voting Rights Act
  • Crawford v. Marion County Elections Board, which allowed states to enforce voter ID laws and make it harder for people to vote

"The Court v. The Voters powerfully reminds us of the tangible, real-world effects from the Court’s voting rights decisions. While we can—and should—lament the democracy that might have been, Douglas argues that we can—and should—double down in our efforts to protect the right to vote."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (5 ratings)
ISBN 978-0807010938 ?
Do Not Ask What Good We Do:
Inside the U.S. House of Representatives
Robert Draper
The Free Press (April, 2017)
My Review
"Robert Draper is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and National Geographic and a correspondent to GQ. He is the author of several books, most recently the New York Times bestseller Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush. He lives in Washington, DC."

"The U.S. House of Representatives—a large, often unruly body of men and women elected every other year from 435 distinct microcosms of America—has achieved renown as 'the people’s House,' the world’s most democratic institution, and an acute Rorschach of biennial public passions. In the midterm election year 2010, recession-battered Americans expressed their discontent with a simultaneously overreaching and underperforming government by turning the formerly Democratically controlled House over to the Republicans. Among the new GOP majority were eighty-seven freshmen, many of them political novices with Tea Party backing who pledged a more open, responsive, and fiscally thrifty House. What the 112th Congress instead achieved was a public standing so low—a ghastly 9 percent approval rating— that, as its longest-serving member, John Dingell, would dryly remark, 'I think pedophiles would do better.' What happened?

"Robert Draper explores this question just as he examined the Bush White House in his 2007 New York Times bestselling book Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. BushDead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush—by burrowing deeply inside the subject, gaining cooperation of the major players, and producing a colorful, unsparingly detailed, but evenhanded narrative of how the House of Representatives became a house of ill repute. Draper’s cast of characters spans the full spectrum of political experience and ideologies—from the Democrat Dingell, a congressman since 1955 (though elbowed out of power by the party’s House leader, Nancy Pelosi), to Allen West, a black Republican Tea Party sensation, former Army lieutenant colonel, and political neophyte with a talent for equal opportunity offending. While unspooling the boisterous, at times tragic, and ultimately infuriating story of the 112th Congress, Draper provides unforgettable portraits of Gabrielle Giffords, the earnest young Arizona congresswoman who was gunned down by a madman at the beginning of the legislative session; Anthony Weiner, the Democrats’ clown prince and self-made media star until the New Yorker self-immolated in a sex scandal; the strong-willed Pelosi and her beleaguered if phlegmatic Republican counterpart, House Speaker John Boehner; the affable majority whip, Kevin McCarthy, tasked with instilling team spirit in the iconoclastic freshmen; and most of all, the previously unknown new members who succeeded in shoving Boehner’s Republican Conference to the far right and thereby bringing the nation, more than once, to the brink of governmental shutdown or economic default.

"In this lively work of political narrative, Draper synthesizes some of the most talked-about breaking news of the day with the real story of what happened behind the scenes. This book is a timely and masterfully told parable of dysfunction that may well serve as Exhibit A of how Americans lost faith in their democratic institutions."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (72 ratings)
ISBN 978-1-4516-4208-7 ?
Weapons of Mass Delusion:
When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind
Robert Draper
Penguin Press (October 18, 2022)
My Review
"Robert Draper is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and National Geographic Magazine. He is the author of several books, including the New York Times bestseller Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush. He lives in Washington D.C. with his wife, Kirsten Powers."

"The disturbing eyewitness account of how a new breed of Republicans—led by Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, and Madison Cawthorn—far from moving on from Trump, have taken the politics of hysteria to even greater extremes and brought American democracy to the edge.

"The violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, was a terrible day for American democracy, but many people dared to hope that at least it would break the fever that had overcome the Republican Party and banish Trump's relentless lies about the stealing of the 2020 election. That is not what happened. Instead, 'the big steal' has become dogma among an ever-higher percentage of American Republicans. What happened to the Republican Party, and America, during the Trump presidency is a story we more or less think we know. What has happened to the party since, it turns out, is even more disquieting. That is the story Robert Draper tells in Weapons of Mass Delusion.

"Through his extraordinarily intrepid cross-country reporting, Draper chronicles the road from January 6 to the 2022 midterms among the Republican base and in the U.S. Congress, rendering unforgettable portraits of how Marjorie Taylor Greene and her ilk came to shape their party’s terms of engagement to an extent that would have been unimaginable even five years ago. He also brings to life the efforts of a dwindling group of Republicans who are willing to push back against the falsehoods, in the face of a group of ascendant demagogues who are merrily weaponizing them. With a base whipped up into a perpetual frenzy of outrage by conspiracy theories—not just about the big steal but about COVID and vaccines, pedophilia and Antifa and Black Lives Matter and George Soros and President Obama, and on and on and on—the forces of reason within the GOP are on the defensive, to put it mildly. The book also benefits greatly from reporting conducted in Texas, Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire, and other bellwether states in the country of the mind one might call a fever of undending conspiracies.

"Robert Draper has been a wise, fearless, and fair-minded chronicler of the American political scene for over twenty-five years. He has seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. He has never seen it this ugly. Ultimately, this book tells the story of a fearful test of our ability, as a country, to hold together a system of government grounded in truth and the rule of law. Written on the eve of the 2022 midterm elections, Draper’s account of a party teetering on the precipice of madness reveals how the GOP fringe became its center of gravity."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (322 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593300145 ?
One Thought Scares Me...:
We Teach Our Children What We Wish Them to Know; We Don't Teach Our Children What We Don't Wish Them to Know
Richard Dreyfuss
Skyhorse (October 18, 2022)
Review by Royce Ratterman
You know Richard Dreyfuss as an actor from American Graffiti, Jaws, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He won an Oscar for The Goodbye Girl (1977) and was nominated for another for Mr. Holland's Opus (1995). He has been a strong proponent of restoring civics education to K-12 schools and has served on the National Governing Board of Common Cause. He lives in San Diego with his wife, Svetlana Erokhin.

"We’ve let the meaning of America be reduced to guesswork. It might not be too late.

"Our democratic republic is failing, and it shouldn’t be a surprise. We can’t fly a plane without training; we can’t practice medicine without attending medical school. And yet we expect the American people to wield the full power of their citizenship, the product of the most revolutionary governmental thinking in human history, without any education.

"We no longer teach our children the Bill of Rights or Constitution. We don’t teach the Enlightenment values that underpin them. We don’t teach the critical thinking skills and mental agility necessary for our own sovereignty. We’ve stopped teaching civics, and now we can’t have a civil political discussion. The American experiment may fail if we don’t act.

"Richard Dreyfuss is a forceful advocate for civic education. His latest work, One Thought Scares Me…, explains how the lack of civics education in American education for the last fifty years has led to the deterioration of all aspects of the lives of us, the people. And it shows us the path to reclaiming our American ideals."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (323 ratings)
ISBN 978-1510776128 ?
The Injustice of Place:
Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America
Kathryn J. Edin, H. Luke Shaefer & Timothy J. Nelson
Mariner Books (August 8, 2023)
No Review
Kathryn J. Edin is the William Church Osborne Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. The author of nine books, Edin is widely recognized for using both quantitative research and direct, in-depth observation to illuminate key mysteries about poverty: “In a field of poverty experts who rarely meet the poor, Edin usefully defies convention” (New York Times). H. Luke Shaefer is the Hermann and Amalie Kohn Professor of Social Justice and Social Policy at the University of Michigan Ford School of Public Policy. At U-M, he also directs Poverty Solutions, a university-wide initiative that partners with communities and policymakers to find new ways to prevent and alleviate poverty. Timothy J. Nelson is Director of Undergraduate Studies in Sociology and Lecturer of Public Affairs at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of numerous articles on low-income fathers and is the co-author, with Edin, of the award-winning Doing the Best I Can: Fatherhood in the Inner City."

"A sweeping and surprising new understanding of extreme poverty in America from the authors of the acclaimed $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America.

"Three of the nation’s top scholars ­– known for tackling key mysteries about poverty in America – turn their attention from the country’s poorest people to its poorest places. Based on a fresh, data-driven approach, they discover that America’s most disadvantaged communities are not the big cities that get the most notice. Instead, nearly all are rural. Little if any attention has been paid to these places or to the people who make their lives there.

"This revelation set in motion a five-year journey across Appalachia, the Cotton and Tobacco Belts of the Deep South, and South Texas. Immersing themselves in these communities, poring over centuries of local history, attending parades and festivals, the authors trace the legacies of the deepest poverty in America—including inequalities shaping people’s health, livelihoods, and upward social mobility for families. Wrung dry by powerful forces and corrupt government officials, the “internal colonies” in these regions were exploited for their resources and then left to collapse.

"The unfolding revelation in The Injustice of Place is not about what sets these places apart, but about what they have in common—a history of raw, intensive resource extraction and human exploitation. This history and its reverberations demand a reckoning and a commitment to wage a new War on Poverty, with the unrelenting focus on our nation’s places of deepest need."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (66 ratings)
ISBN 978-0063239494 ?
A Fever in the Heartland:
The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them
Timothy Egan
Viking (April 4, 2023)
No Review
Timothy Egan is a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter and the author of nine other books, most recently the highly acclaimed A Pilgrimage to Eternity and The Immortal Irishman, a New York Times bestseller. His book on the Dust Bowl, The Worst Hard Time, won a National Book Award for Excellence in Nonfiction. His account of photographer Edward Curtis, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, won the Carnegie Medal for nonfiction."

"A historical thriller by the Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning author that tells the riveting story of the Klan's rise to power in the 1920s, the cunning con man who drove that rise, and the woman who stopped them.

"The Roaring Twenties—the Jazz Age—has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of America was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson.

"Stephenson was a magnetic presence whose life story changed with every telling. Within two years of his arrival in Indiana, he’d become the Grand Dragon of the state and the architect of the strategy that brought the group out of the shadows—their message endorsed from the pulpits of local churches, spread at family picnics and town celebrations. Judges, prosecutors, ministers, governors and senators across the country all proudly proclaimed their membership. But at the peak of his influence, it was a seemingly powerless woman—Madge Oberholtzer—who would reveal his secret cruelties, and whose deathbed testimony finally brought the Klan to their knees.

"A Fever in the Heartland marries a propulsive drama to a powerful and page-turning reckoning with one of the darkest threads in American history."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (5,778 ratings)
ISBN 978-0735225268 ?
The Making of a Pandemic:
Social, Political, and Psychological Perspectives on Covid-19
John Ehrenreich
Springer (May 31, 2022)
No Review
"John Ehrenreich has doctorates in biology and psychology. He is Professor Emeritus at SUNY-Old Westbury, where he taught for many years. He has written widely on issues at the intersection of biology, psychology, sociology, and social policy. His previous books include The American Health Empire: Power, Profits, and Politics (with Barbara Ehrenreich and the staff of Health-PAC), The Cultural Crisis of Modern Medicine (edited), The Altruistic Imagination: A History of Social Work and Social Policy in the United States, and Third Wave Capitalism: How Money, Power, and the Pursuit of Self Interest Have Imperiled the American Dream." – Amazon biography

"The Making of a Pandemic provides a systematic account of how societal and psychological forces shaped the Covid-19 pandemic. The first part focuses on how biological and societal factors interact to create a pandemic. The second part explores how characteristics of the American economy, the American approach to public health, and domestic and international inequality combined to prolong the pandemic, hamper mitigation efforts, and arouse opposition to cooperation with public health measures. The third part examines the psychological processes that led to resistance to efforts to mitigate the pandemic and linked the resistance to right-wing ideologies. The book concludes by looking at the limits of the technical and medical reforms others have proposed to protect us from repetitions of the Covid-19 disaster and by calling for a 'deep confrontation' with the societal and psychological factors that created and shaped the pandemic."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (2 ratings)
ISBN 978-3031049637 ?
Overcoming Trumpery:
How to Restore Ethics, the Rule of Law, and Democracy
Norman Eisen
Brookings Institution Press (March 22, 2022)
No Review
"Ambassador Norman Eisen (ret.) is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings and a CNN Legal Analyst. He served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee for the first impeachment and trial of President Trump, and as President Obama’s ethics czar and ambassador to the Czech Republic." – Amazon biography

"U.S. government has been repeatedly renewed—sometimes simply repaired and other times reinvented—during its over 230 years. Major aspects of the federal system were broken again during the four years of the Trump administration, so it’s time for even more fixes. This book sets out the damage that was done and important ideas on how the repairs should be made, focusing on ethics, the rule of law, and democracy.

"Distinguished scholars and practitioners have come together not only to address what went awry over the past four years, but also the deeper weaknesses that have become more evident, and how those weaknesses can be repaired. The problem areas range from ethics and conflicts of interest to the Hatch Act and big money in politics, and from independence at the Department of Justice and government transparency to reestablishing Congressional oversight, and the government’s role in the broader areas of how Americans vote and of international ethics and rule of law.

"Overcoming Trumpery provides a framework to understand the significant developments that are already happening in Washington with respect to ethics, the rule of law, and democracy. These include the “For the People Act,” the “Protecting Our Democracy Act,” and President Biden’s Executive Order on Ethics. The ideas outlined in this book for fixing flaws in federal governance come from the more than century of collective experience of its expert authors. The book represents a burst of sunshine after a very dark period in the nation’s history."

Rating by Amazon customers: 3.4 (8 ratings)
ISBN 978-0815739678 ?
Dark Towers:
Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction
David Enrich
Custom House (February 18, 2020)
No Review
"David Enrich is the Finance Editor at the New York Times. He previously was the Financial Enterprise Editor of the Wall Street Journal, heading a team of investigative reporters. Before that, he was the Journal's European Banking Editor, based in London, and a Journal reporter in New York. He has won numerous journalism awards, including the 2016 Gerald Loeb Award for feature writing. His first book, The Spider Network: How a Math Genius and Gang of Scheming Bankers Pulled Off On of The Greatest Scams in History was short-listed for the Financial Times Best Book of the Year award. Enrich grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, and graduated from Claremont McKenna College in California. He currently lives in New York with his wife and two sons." – Amazon biography

"On a rainy Sunday in 2014, a senior executive at Deutsche Bank was found hanging in his London apartment. Bill Broeksmit had helped build the 150-year-old financial institution into a global colossus, and his sudden death was a mystery, made more so by the bank's efforts to deter investigation. Broeksmit, it turned out, was a man who knew too much.

"In Dark Towers, award-winning journalist David Enrich reveals the truth about Deutsche Bank and its epic path of devastation. Tracing the bank's history back to its propping up of a default-prone American developer in the 1880s, helping the Nazis build Auschwitz, and wooing Eastern Bloc authoritarians, he shows how in the 1990s, via a succession of hard-charging executives, Deutsche made a fateful decision to pursue Wall Street riches, often at the expense of ethics and the law.

"Soon, the bank was manipulating markets, violating international sanctions to aid terrorist regimes, scamming investors, defrauding regulators, and laundering money for Russian oligarchs. Ever desperate for an American foothold, Deutsche also started doing business with a self-promoting real estate magnate nearly every other bank in the world deemed too dangerous to touch: Donald Trump. Over the next twenty years, Deutsche executives loaned billions to Trump, the Kushner family, and an array of scandal-tarred clients, including convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

"Dark Towers is the never-before-told saga of how Deutsche Bank became the global face of financial recklessness and criminality—the corporate equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction. It is also the story of a man who was consumed by fear of what he'd seen at the bank—and his son's obsessive search for the secrets he kept."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (2,525 ratings)
ISBN 978-0062878816 ?
Servants of the Damned:
Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice
David Enrich
Mariner Books (September 13, 2022)
No Review
"David Enrich is the Business Investigations Editor at the New York Times and the #1 bestselling author of Dark Towers. He previously was an editor and reporter at the Wall Street Journal. He has won numerous journalism awards, including the 2016 Gerald Loeb Award for feature writing. His first book, The Spider Network: How a Math Genius and Gang of Scheming Bankers Pulled Off One of the Greatest Scams in History, was short-listed for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year award. Enrich grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, and graduated from Claremont McKenna College in California. He currently lives in New York with his wife and two sons." – Amazon biography

"In his acclaimed #1 bestseller Dark Towers, David Enrich presented the never-before-told saga of how Deutsche Bank became the global face of financial recklessness and criminality. Now Enrich turns his eye towards the world of 'Big Law' and the nearly unchecked influence these firms wield to shield the wealthy and powerful—and bury their secrets. To tell this story, Enrich focuses on Jones Day, one of the world’s largest law firms. Jones Day’s narrative arc—founded in Cleveland in 1893, it became the first law firm to expand nationally and is now a global juggernaut with deep ties to corporate interests and conservative politics—is a powerful encapsulation of the changes that have swept the legal industry in recent decades.

"Since 2016, Jones Day has been in the spotlight for representing Donald Trump and his campaigns (and now his PACs)—and for the fleet of Jones Day attorneys who joined his administration, including White House Counsel Don McGahn. Jones Day helped Trump fend off the Mueller investigation and challenged Obamacare. Its once and future lawyers defended Trump’s Muslim ban and border policies and handled his judicial nominations. Jones Day even laid some of the legal groundwork for Trump to challenge the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

"But the Trump work is but one chapter in the firm’s checkered history. Jones Day, like many of its peers, have become highly effective enablers of the business world’s worst misbehavior. The firm has for decades represented Big Tobacco in its fight to avoid liability for its products. Jones Day worked tirelessly for the Catholic Church as it tried to minimize its sexual-abuse scandals. And for Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, as it sought to protect its right to make and market its dangerously addictive drug. And for Fox News as it waged war against employees who were the victims of sexual harassment and retaliation. And for Russian oligarchs as their companies sought to expand internationally.

"In this gripping and revealing new work of narrative nonfiction, Enrich makes the compelling central argument that law firms like Jones Day play a crucial yet largely hidden role in enabling and protecting powerful bad actors in our society, housing their darkest secrets, and earning billions in revenue for themselves."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (177 ratings)
ISBN 978-0063142176 ?
One Nation Under Guns:
How Gun Culture Distorts Our History and Threatens Our Democracy
Dominic Erdozain
Crown (January 30, 2024)
No Review
"I’ve always been drawn to the radicals, troublemakers, and skeptics—brave thinkers, who refused to take the world as they found it. History, for me, is partly a study of origins—explaining how we got here—and partly an escape: a refuge from the tyranny of now. My interest in the origins of democracy began with a book I wrote in 2015 called The Soul of Doubt, which introduced me to a body of thinkers who wrestled over the meaning of freedom and sketched the rudiments of the modern state. Muzzled in their own land, their ideas came to fruition in the United States. My new book One Nation Under Guns asks two simple questions: What happened to that vision of freedom? How do gun rights, as we now know them, sit with the American promise of peace and 'domestic tranquility'? This book is not a fix. It’s a challenge." – Dominic Erdozain

"This 'brilliant and gut-wrenching' (The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice) takedown of American gun culture argues that the nation’s founders did not intend the Second Amendment to guarantee an individual right to bear arms—and that this distortion of the record is an urgent threat to democracy.

" 'At once eye-opening and enraging, One Nation Under Guns is that rare book that can help change the way we live in this country.' —Eddie S. Glaude Jr., bestselling author of Begin Again

"More than a hundred lives are lost to firearms every day in America. The cost is more than the numbers—it is the fear, the anxiety, the dread of public spaces that an armed society has created under the tortured rubric of freedom. But the norms of today are not the norms of American history or the values of its founders. They are the product of a gun culture that has imposed its vision on a sleeping nation.

"Historian Dominic Erdozain argues that we have wrongly ceded the big-picture argument on guns: As we parse legislation on background checks and automatic-weapons bans, we fail to ask what place guns should have in a functioning democracy. Taking readers on a brilliant historical journey, Erdozain shows how the founders feared the tyranny of individuals as much as the tyranny of kings—the idea that any person had a right to walk around armed was anathema to their notion of freedom and the peaceful republic they hoped to build. They wrote these ideas into the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, ideas that were subsequently affirmed by two centuries of jurisprudence.

"And yet the twin scourges of racism and nationalism would combine to create a darker American vision—a rogue and reckless freedom based on birth and blood. It was this freedom, not the liberty promised by the Constitution, that generated our modern gun culture, with its mystic conceptions of good guys and bad guys, innocence and guilt. By the time the U.S. Supreme Court reinvented the Second Amendment in 2008’s District of Columbia v. Heller, an opinion that Erdozain convincingly eviscerates, many Americans had already acceded to the fiction: the unfreedom of an armed society. To save our democracy, he argues, we must fight for the founders’ true idea of what it means to be free."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (4 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593594315 ?
The Coming of the Third Reich
Book 1 of 3: The History of the Third Reich
Richard J. Evans
The Penguin Press (February 9, 2004)
No Review
"Richard J. Evans was educated at Oxford, has taught at Columbia and the University of London, and is currently the Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. His books include Death in Hamburg (winner of the Wolfson Literary Award for History), In Hitler's Shadow, Rituals of Retribution (winner of the Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History), In Defense of History, and Lying About Hitler." – Amazon biography

"A definitive history of Adolf Hitler's rise to power and the collapse of democracy in Nazi Germany explains why Nazism's ideology of hatred and racism found fertile ground in a country embittered by military defeat and economic disaster following World War I, undermined by an alienated army and civil service, and prey to widespread resentment, suspicion, and extremism. 75,000 first printing."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (1,099 ratings)
ISBN 978-1594200045 ?
Believe Me:
The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump
John Fea
Eerdmans (January 7, 2020)
No Review
"John Fea teaches American history at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, PA. He is the author of The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian's Vocation (Notre Dame University Press, 2010); Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction (Westminster/John Knox Press, Feb. 2011, revised ed. Sept. 2016); Why Study History: Reflecting on the Importance of the Past (Baker, 2014); The Bible Cause: A History of the American Bible Society (Oxford, 2016); and, most recently Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump (Eerdmans, 2018). He blogs daily at The Way of Improvement Leads Home" – Amazon biography

" 'Believe me' may be the most commonly used phrase in Donald Trump’s lexicon. Whether about building a wall or protecting a Christian heritage, the refrain has been constant. And to the surprise of many, a good 80 percent of white evangelicals have believed Trump—at least enough to help propel him into the White House.

"Historian John Fea is not surprised, however—and in these pages he explains how we have arrived at this unprecedented moment in American politics. An evangelical Christian himself, Fea argues that the embrace of Donald Trump is the logical outcome of a long-standing evangelical approach to public life defined by the politics of fear, the pursuit of worldly power, and a nostalgic longing for an American past.

"Now in paperback and as insightful as it is timely, Fea’s Believe Me challenges Christians to replace fear with hope, the pursuit of power with humility, and nostalgia with history."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (122 ratings)
ISBN 978-0802877420 ?
The Constitution In Jeopardy:
An Unprecedented Effort to Rewrite Our Fundamental Law and What We Can Do About It
Russ Feingold & Peter Prindiville
PublicAffairs (August 30, 2022)
No Review
"As a lawmaker, diplomat, attorney, and professor, Russ Feingold has devoted his career to protecting the Constitution's bedrock guarantees. Serving nearly two decades in the United States Senate, Feingold was the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act, citing civil liberty concerns, and cosponsored the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold Act), the most important campaign finance reform in decades. He sat on the Senate Judiciary Committee and chaired its Sub-committee on the Constitution. Feingold has also served as a U.S. special envoy and taught at Stanford, Harvard, Yale, and Marquette Law Schools. He is now president of the American Constitution Society, the nation's leading progressive legal organization, and an affiliated scholar of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center. He is a recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. His previous book, While America Sleeps: a Wake-up Call for the Post-9/11 Era, was a New York Times bestseller.
Peter Prindiville is a nonresident fellow at the Stanford Constitutional Law Center. He previously was a fellow on the Senate Judiciary Committee and a high school history and civics teacher. Prindiville earned a law degree from Stanford; Master's degrees from Notre Dame and University College Cork, Ireland, where he was a Mitchell Scholar; and an undergraduate degree from Georgetown." – Amazon biography

"A former U.S. senator joins a legal scholar to examine a hushed effort to radically change our Constitution, offering a warning and a way forward.

"Over the last two decades, a fringe plan to call a convention under the Constitution's amendment mechanism—the nation's first ever—has inched through statehouses. Delegates, like those in Philadelphia two centuries ago, would exercise nearly unlimited authority to draft changes to our fundamental law, potentially altering anything from voting and free speech rights to regulatory and foreign policy powers. Such a watershed moment would present great danger, and for some, great power.

"In this important book, Feingold and Prindiville distill extensive legal and historical research and examine the grave risks inherent in this effort. But they also consider the role of constitutional amendment in modern life. Though many focus solely on judicial and electoral avenues for change, such an approach is at odds with a cornerstone ideal of the Founding: that the People make constitutional law, directly. In an era defined by faction and rejection of long-held norms, The Constitution in Jeopardy examines the nature of constitutional change and asks urgent questions about what American democracy is, and should be."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (26 ratings)
ISBN 978-1541701526 ?
Delay, Deny, Defend:
Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It
Jay M. Feinman
Portfolio Hardcover (March 18, 2010)
No Review
"Jay M. Feinman is a Distinguished Professor of Law at the Rutgers University School of Law, Camden, where he teaches contracts, torts, insurance law, and other subjects. He is a member of The American Law Institute."

"An expose of insurance injustice and a plan for consumers and lawmakers to fight it.

"Over the last two decades, insurance has become less of a safety net and more of a spider's web: sticky and complicated, designed to ensnare as much as to aid. Insurance companies now often try to delay payment of justified claims, deny payment altogether, and defend these actions by forcing claimants to enter litigation.

"Jay M. Feinman, a legal scholar and insurance expert, explains how these trends developed, how the government ought to fix the system, and what the rest of us can do to protect ourselves. He shows that the denial of valid claims is not occasional or accidental or the fault of a few bad employees. It's the result of an increasing and systematic focus on maximizing profits by major companies such as Allstate and State Farm.

"Citing dozens of stories of victims who were unfairly denied payment, Feinman explains how people can be more cautious when shopping for policies and what to do when pursuing a disputed claim. He also lays out a plan for the legal reforms needed to prevent future abuses. This exposé will help drive the discussion of this increasingly hot-button issue."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (52 ratings)
ISBN 978-1591843153 ?
Scorpions:
The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices
Noah Feldman
Twelve; Reprint edition (October 3, 2011)
No Review
"Noah Feldman is the author of four previous books: The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State (Princeton University Press, 2008), Divided By God (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005); What We Owe Iraq (Princeton University Press, 2004); and After Jihad (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003).

"A tiny, ebullient Jew who started as America's leading liberal and ended as its most famous judicial conservative. A Klansman who became an absolutist advocate of free speech and civil rights. A backcountry lawyer who started off trying cases about cows and went on to conduct the most important international trial ever. A self-invented, tall-tale Westerner who narrowly missed the presidency but expanded individual freedom beyond what anyone before had dreamed.

"Four more different men could hardly be imagined. Yet they had certain things in common. Each was a self-made man who came from humble beginnings on the edge of poverty. Each had driving ambition and a will to succeed. Each was, in his own way, a genius.

"They began as close allies and friends of FDR, but the quest to shape a new Constitution led them to competition and sometimes outright warfare. Scorpians tells the story of these four great justices: their relationship with Roosevelt, with each other, and with the turbulent world of the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. It also serves as a history of the modern Constitution itself."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (328 ratings)
ISBN 978-0446699280 ?
Can Schools Save Democracy?:
Civic Education and the Common Good
Michael J. Feuer
Johns Hopkins University Press (November 7, 2023)
No Review
"Michael J. Feuer is Dean of the Graduate School of Education and Human Development and Professor of Education Policy at The George Washington University, and President of the National Academy of Education. Before coming to GW in 2010, Feuer held several positions at the National Research Council of the National Academies: he was the founding director of the Board on Testing and Assessment and most recently served as the executive director of the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Prior to joining the NRC he was a senior analyst and project director at the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment. Feuer received his BA in English from Queens College (CUNY), an MA in public management from the Wharton School, and a PhD in public policy analysis from the University of Pennsylvania. He was on the faculty at Drexel University from 1981-1986, and has taught courses in education policy and research at Penn and Georgetown. Feuer consults regularly to educational institutions and government in the US, Israel, Europe, and the Middle East. He has published in education, economics, philosophy, and policy journals and has had reviews, essays, and poems in newspapers and magazines in Washington, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and New York. Feuer is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Educational Research Association, and co-chair of the Consortium for Applied Studies in Jewish Education (CASJE). In 2014 President Obama appointed Feuer to the National Board of Education Sciences. Feuer lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, Regine. The Feuers have two grown children."

"How can education protect and strengthen democracy?

"In an era when democracy is at critical risk, is it reasonable to expect the education system―already buckling under the ordeal of a global pandemic―to solve the converging problems of inequality, climate change, and erosion of trust in government and science? Will more civics instruction help? In Can Schools Save Democracy? Michael J. Feuer offers a new approach to addressing these questions with a strategy for improving the process and substance of civic education.

"Although schooling alone cannot save democracy, it must play a part. Feuer introduces a framework for educator preparation that emphasizes collective action, experiential learning, and partnerships between schools and their complex constituencies. His proposed reform aims to equip teachers with an appreciation of the paradoxes of pluralism―in particular, the tensions between individual choice and social outcomes. And he offers practical suggestions for how to bring those concepts to life so that students in and out of the classroom acquire the skills, knowledge, and dispositions for enlightened democratic leadership.

"Adopting a definition of public education that celebrates the engagement between schools and their environments, Feuer argues for reinforced partnerships within the education system and between educators and their diverse constituents. He anticipates new collaborations between education faculty and their colleagues in the behavioral, social, and physical sciences and humanities; stronger links between schools and their complex outside environments; and improved mechanisms for global cooperation. Can Schools Save Democracy? includes lively examples of how theoretical principles can inform familiar problems and offers a hopeful path for progress toward a stronger democracy."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (1 rating)
ISBN 978-1421447773 ?
Mussolini Also Did a Lot of Good:
The Spread of Historical Amnesia
Francesco Filippi
John Irving (Translator)
Baraka Books (October 1, 2021)
No Review
"Francesco Filippi is a historian of mentalities and an educator. He presides the Deina Association of Social Promotion, which organises journeys in memory and training courses for schools, history institutes and universities. He has contributed to manuals and educational courses on the relationship between memory and the present. Mussolini Also Did A Lot of Good Things is his first book to appear in English. He lives in Trento, Italy. John Irving is a writer and translator who was born in the UK and has lived in Italy for many years. He holds a degree in Italian Language and Literature from the University of Edinburgh. His translations include works in history, sports, philosophy and gastronomy. He has also translated award winning screenplays. He lives in Bra, Italy."

"Surgically, but with wit, Francesco Filippi demolishes each and every myth that has taken root about Mussolini and fascism in an uplifting handbook for political and intellectual self-defense. No stones are left unturned, including the colonial devastation of Libya and Ethiopia."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (5 ratings)
ISBN 978-1771862622 ?
American Oligarchy:
The Permanent Political Class
Ron Formisano
University of Illinois Press (September 27, 2017)
No Review
"Ron Formisano is the William T. Bryan Chair of American History and professor emeritus of history at the University of Kentucky. His books include Plutocracy in America: How Increasing Inequality Destroys the Middle Class and Exploits the Poor; The Tea Party: A Brief History; and For the People: American Populist Movements from the Revolution to the 1850s."

"A permanent political class has emerged on a scale unprecedented in our nation 's history. Its self-dealing, nepotism, and corruption contribute to rising inequality. Its reach extends from the governing elite throughout nongovernmental institutions. Aside from constituting an oligarchy of prestige and power, it enables the creation of an aristocracy of massive inherited wealth that is accumulating immense political power. In a muckraking tour de force reminiscent of Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair, and C. Wright Mills, American Oligarchy demonstrates the way the corrupt culture of the permanent political class extends down to the state and local level. Ron Formisano breaks down the ways this class creates economic inequality and how its own endemic corruption infects our entire society. Formisano delves into the work of not just politicians but lobbyists, consultants, appointed bureaucrats, pollsters, celebrity journalists, behind-the-scenes billionaires, and others. Their shameless pursuit of wealth and self-aggrandizement, often at taxpayer expense, rewards channeling the flow of income and wealth to elites. That inequality in turn has choked off social mobility and made a joke of meritocracy. As Formisano shows, these forces respond to the oligarchy's power and compete to bask in the presence of the .01 percent. They also exacerbate the dangerous instability of an American democracy divided between extreme wealth and extreme poverty."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (35 ratings)
ISBN 978-0252041273 ?
Political Advertising in the United States
Erika Franklin Fowler, Michael Franz & Travis Ridout
Routledge; 2nd edition (November 25, 2021)
No Review
"Erika Franklin Fowler is Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project. Michael Franz is Professor of Government and Legal Studies at Bowdoin College and co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project. Travis Ridout is Thomas S. Foley Distinguished Professor of Government and Public Policy and Director of the School of Politics, Philosophy and Public Affairs at Washington State University and is co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project."

"Political Advertising in the United States examines the volume, distribution, content, and effects of political advertising in congressional and presidential elections. The book considers the role of television ads using extensive data on ad airings on local broadcast stations. It also analyzes newly available data on paid digital ads, including ads on Facebook, Instagram, Google, and YouTube. The book covers the role of outside groups in airing ads, including the rise of dark money groups and gaps in existing federal campaign finance laws around transparency of outside group spending. The authors consider how ad sponsors design and target ads. They also review the positive and negative implications of an electoral system where billions are spent on paid advertising. With detailed analysis of presidential and congressional campaign ads and discussion questions in each chapter, this accessibly written book is a must-read for students, scholars, and practitioners who want to understand the ins and outs of political advertising.

"New to the Second Edition:

  • Covers the spending, content, and tone of political advertising in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections and the 2018 midterms, looking ahead to 2022 and 2024.
  • Addresses the interference of foreign actors in elections and their connection to political advertising.
  • Expands the discussion of digital political advertising and incorporates this topic into every chapter.
  • Adds a new chapter specifically addressing digital ad content and spending.
  • Includes data from the Facebook, Google, and Snapchat ad libraries and explores the role of these companies in regulating the sale of political advertising.
  • Incorporates new data on the effects of race and gender in advertising, including what is known about the way in which advertising may activate prejudicial attitudes."
Rating by Amazon customers: 3.5 (2 ratings)
ISBN 978-0367761493 ?
Mafia Democracy:
How Our Republic Became a Mob Racket
Michael Franzese
Rudy Giuliani (Fwd.)
Lioncrest Publishing (May 13, 2022)
No Review
"Best-selling author and speaker Michael Franzese was born into Mafia life as a second-generation member of the Colombo crime family. Called one of the biggest mob earners since Al Capone by Vanity Fair and featured in Fortune's list of the fifty most powerful Mafia bosses, Michael left mob life behind after meeting his wife and serving eight years of a ten-year prison sentence. Today, Michael Franzese is a new man, sharing the lessons he's learned from organized crime with audiences around the world and mentoring thousands through his private online community and various media channels. Now, he mentors at-risk youth and shares the lessons he's learned from organized crime with audiences around the country."

"It is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity."—Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

"Greed. Lies. Corruption. These are the foundational elements of the American Mafia story. Here, the pursuit of power overshadows even the desire for a dollar, and self-interest outweighs the greater good.

"It’s a world that’s foreign to the average American—or is it?

"The values of our democracy and those of Mafia culture are separated by a thin line that’s quickly disintegrating. No one sees this more clearly than former mob boss Michael Franzese. Born into one of New York’s most feared crime families, Michael spent eight years in prison before he walked away from the Mafia for good. Now, he’s sharing the undeniable parallels between mobster and politician. In Mafia Democracy, Michael exposes our government for what it’s become, revealing the psychology behind the gangster lifestyle and how these ideologies have infiltrated the landscape of American politics. With in-depth investigation and astounding examples, this book is your chance to see politicians through a new lens, hold them accountable, and reclaim the democratic ideals that once united our great nation."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (927 ratings)
ISBN 978-1544530819 ?
The Democracy Fix:
How to Win the Fight for Fair Rules, Fair Courts, and Fair Elections
Caroline Fredrickson
The New Press (April 23, 2019)
No Review
"Caroline Fredrickson is the president of the American Constitution Society (ACS), a senior fellow at Demos, and the author of Under the Bus: How Working Women Are Being Run Over and the forthcoming The Democracy Fix: How to Win the Fight for Fair Rules, Fair Courts, and Fair Elections (both from The New Press). She has been widely published on a range of legal and constitutional issues and is a frequent guest on television and radio shows. Before joining ACS, Caroline served as the director of the ACLU's Washington legislative office and as general counsel and legal director of NARAL Pro-Choice America. In addition, Caroline was chief of staff to Senator Maria Cantwell and deputy chief of staff to the then Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle. During the Clinton administration, she served as special assistant to the president for legislative affairs. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland." – Amazon biography

"Despite representing the beliefs of a minority of the American public on many issues, conservatives are in power not just in Washington, DC, but also in state capitals and courtrooms across the country. They got there because, while progressives fought to death over the nuances of policy and to bring attention to specific issues, conservatives focused on simply gaining power by gaming our democracy. They understood that policy follows power, not the other way around.

"Now, in a sensational new book, Caroline Fredrickson—who has had a front-row seat on the political drama in DC for decades while working to shape progressive policies as special assistant for legislative affairs to President Clinton, chief of staff to Senator Maria Cantwell, deputy chief of staff to Senator Tom Daschle, and president of the American Constitution Society—argues that it's time for progressives to focus on winning. She shows us how we can learn from the Right by having the determination to focus on judicial elections, state power, and voter laws without stooping to their dishonest, rule-breaking tactics. We must be ruthless in thinking through how to change the rules of the game to regain power, expand the franchise, end voter suppression, win judicial elections, and fight for transparency and fairness in our political system, and Fredrickson shows us how."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (6 ratings)
ISBN 978-1620973899 SJ0
Divided We Fall:
America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation
David French
St. Martin's Press (September 22, 2020)
No Review
"David French is a senior editor of The Dispatch, a columnist at Time, a former senior writer at National Review, an Iraq War veteran, and the co-author of several books, including Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Can’t Ignore, a New York Times bestseller. He lives in Tennessee." – Amazon biography

"Two decades into the 21st Century, the U.S. is less united than at any time in our history since the Civil War. We are more diverse in our beliefs and culture than ever before. But red and blue states, secular and religious groups, liberal and conservative idealists, and Republican and Democratic representatives all have one thing in common: each believes their distinct cultures and liberties are being threatened by an escalating violent opposition. This polarized tribalism, espoused by the loudest, angriest fringe extremists on both the left and the right, dismisses dialogue as appeasement; if left unchecked, it could very well lead to secession.

"An engaging mix of cutting edge research and fair-minded analysis, Divided We Fall is an unblinking look at the true dimensions and dangers of this widening ideological gap, and what could happen if we don't take steps toward bridging it. French reveals chilling, plausible scenarios of how the United States could fracture into regions that will not only weaken the country but destabilize the world.

"But our future is not written in stone. By implementing James Madison’s vision of pluralism―that all people have the right to form communities representing their personal values―we can prevent oppressive factions from seizing absolute power and instead maintain everyone’s beliefs and identities across all fifty states. Reestablishing national unity will require the bravery to commit ourselves to embracing qualities of kindness, decency, and grace towards those we disagree with ideologically. French calls on all of us to demonstrate true tolerance so we can heal the American divide. If we want to remain united, we must learn to stand together again."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (409 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250201973 SJ0
At War with Government:
How Conservatives Weaponized Distrust from Goldwater to Trump
Amy Fried & Douglas B. Harris
Columbia University Press (August 3, 2021)
No Review
"Amy Fried is John Mitchell Nickerson Professor of Political Science at the University of Maine. She is the author of Muffled Echoes: Oliver North and the Politics of Public Opinion (Columbia, 1997) and Pathways to Polling: Crisis, Cooperation, and the Making of Public Opinion Professions (2012). Douglas B. Harris is professor of political science at Loyola University Maryland. He is coauthor of Choosing the Leader: Leadership Elections in the U.S. House of Representatives (2019) and The Austin-Boston Connection: Fifty Years of House Democratic Leadership, 1937–1989 (2009) and coeditor of Doing Archival Research in Political Science (2012)." – Amazon biography

"Polling shows that since the 1950s Americans’ trust in government has fallen dramatically to historically low levels. In At War with Government, the political scientists Amy Fried and Douglas B. Harris reveal that this trend is no accident. Although distrust of authority is deeply rooted in American culture, it is fueled by conservative elites who benefit from it. Since the postwar era conservative leaders have deliberately and strategically undermined faith in the political system for partisan aims.

"Fried and Harris detail how conservatives have sown distrust to build organizations, win elections, shift power toward institutions that they control, and secure policy victories. They trace this strategy from the Nixon and Reagan years through Gingrich’s Contract with America, the Tea Party, and Donald Trump’s rise and presidency. Conservatives have promoted a political identity opposed to domestic state action, used racial messages to undermine unity, and cultivated cynicism to build and bolster coalitions. Once in power, they have defunded public services unless they help their constituencies and rolled back regulations, perversely proving the failure of government. Fried and Harris draw on archival sources to document how conservative elites have strategized behind the scenes. With a powerful diagnosis of our polarized era, At War with Government also proposes how we might rebuild trust in government by countering the strategies conservatives have used to weaken it."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (13 ratings)
ISBN 978-0231195218 ?
Liberalism and Its Discontents
Francis Fukuyama
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (May 10, 2022)
No Review
"Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He has previously taught at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University and at the George Mason University School of Public Policy. He was a researcher at the RAND Corporation and served as the deputy director in the State Department's policy planning staff. He is the author of The End of History and the Last Man, Trust, and America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy. He lives with his wife in California." – Amazon biography

"Classical liberalism is in a state of crisis. Developed in the wake of Europe’s wars over religion and nationalism, liberalism is a system for governing diverse societies, which is grounded in fundamental principles of equality and the rule of law. It emphasizes the rights of individuals to pursue their own forms of happiness free from encroachment by government.

"It's no secret that liberalism didn't always live up to its own ideals. In America, many people were denied equality before the law. Who counted as full human beings worthy of universal rights was contested for centuries, and only recently has this circle expanded to include women, African Americans, LGBTQ+ people, and others. Conservatives complain that liberalism empties the common life of meaning. As the renowned political philosopher Francis Fukuyama shows in Liberalism and Its Discontents, the principles of liberalism have also, in recent decades, been pushed to new extremes by both the right and the left: neoliberals made a cult of economic freedom, and progressives focused on identity over human universality as central to their political vision. The result, Fukuyama argues, has been a fracturing of our civil society and an increasing peril to our democracy.

"In this short, clear account of our current political discontents, Fukuyama offers an essential defense of a revitalized liberalism for the twenty-first century."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (63 ratings)
ISBN 978-0374606718 ?
USA:
The Ruthless Empire
Daniele Ganser
Skyhorse (January 17, 2023)
No Review
"Daniele Ganser, born in Lugano in 1972, is a historian who specializes in contemporary history since 1945 and international politics. His main research focuses on peace studies, geostrategy, covert warfare, resource conflicts, and economic policy. He is the founder and director of the Swiss Institute for Peace and Energy Research in Basel, and is the author of Illegal Wars: From Cuba to Syria—How NATO Countries Sabotaged the UN.

"Empires rise and fall; they do not last.

"In the eyes of many, the US exerts the strongest destabilizing influence on world events, and thus presents the greatest threat to world peace. World power #1 hasn’t acquired this top position by chance. Since 1945, no other nation has bombed as many other countries or toppled as many governments as the US. It maintains the most military bases, exports the most weapons, and has the highest defense budget in the world. USA: The Ruthless Empire explains the background factors, motives, and resources of this world power."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (29 ratings)
ISBN 978-1510776784 ?
When the Clock Broke:
Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s
John Ganz
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (June 18, 2024)
No Review
"John Ganz writes the widely acclaimed Unpopular Front newsletter for Substack. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Artforum, the New Statesman, and other publications.

"A lively, revelatory look back at the convulsions at the end of the Reagan era―and their dark legacy today.

"With the Soviet Union extinct, Saddam Hussein defeated, and U.S. power at its zenith, the early 1990s promised a 'kinder, gentler America.' Instead, it was a period of rising anger and domestic turmoil, anticipating the polarization and resurgent extremism we know today.

"In When the Clock Broke, the acclaimed political writer John Ganz tells the story of America’s late-century discontents. Ranging from upheavals in Crown Heights and Los Angeles to the advent of David Duke and the heartland survivalists, the broadcasts of Rush Limbaugh, and the bitter disputes between neoconservatives and the 'paleo-con' right, Ganz immerses us in a time when what Philip Roth called the 'indigenous American berserk' took new and ever-wilder forms. In the 1992 campaign, Pat Buchanan's and Ross Perot’s insurgent populist bids upended the political establishment, all while Americans struggled through recession, alarm about racial and social change, the specter of a new power in Asia, and the end of Cold War–era political norms. Conspiracy theories surged, and intellectuals and activists strove to understand the 'Middle American Radicals' whose alienation fueled new causes. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton appeared to forge a new, vital center, though it would not hold for long.

"In a rollicking, eye-opening book, Ganz narrates the fall of the Reagan order and the rise of a new and more turbulent America."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.0 (9 ratings)
ISBN 978-0374605445 ?
World War Trump:
The Risks of America's New Nationalism
Hall Gardner
Prometheus (March 6, 2018)
No Review
"Hall Gardner has been the chair or co-chair of the Department of International and Comparative Politics at the American University of Paris since 1992. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of twelve books on global politics, most recently, Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History and The Failure to Prevent World War I: The Unexpected Armageddon. His research blends a historical and theoretical approach with contemporary international affairs, concentrating on questions involving NATO and European Union enlargement, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its impact on China and Eurasia in general, as well as the global ramifications of the "war on terrorism"—with an eye toward conflict resolution. He is additionally an internationally published poet. He completed his BA at Colgate University and both his MA and PhD at the Johns Hopkins Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies." – Amazon biography

"An expert on global politics details the dangers of Trump's nationalist agenda and its destabilizing effects on the world. How will Donald Trump's "America First" policy impact international stability? This sobering book argues that it will put the country on a path toward war. International relations expert Hall Gardner analyzes the twists and turns of our president's foreign policy pronouncements from the beginning of his campaign to the present. He argues that Trump's proposed economic nationalism and military buildup—if implemented—will alienate America's friends and rivals alike. The unintended and perilous consequence could well be to press Russia, Iran, Turkey, and China into a closer counter-alliance versus the United States, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Gardner has long warned that the uncoordinated NATO and European Union enlargement into former Soviet spheres of influence and security would not only provoke a Russian revanchist backlash, but could also encourage Moscow to forge a Sino-Russian alliance. That Russian backlash has already taken place since the annexation of Crimea in 2014 during the Obama administration. Now Trump's seeming contempt of trade pacts and multilateral relations, plus his confrontation with both Iran and North Korea, could push Russia to construct closer ties with a more assertive China to form a polarizing alliance. At the same time, "America First" trade and monetary disputes with allies could tempt some of those states to move into neutrality or else drift into the Russia-China orbit. Against this dangerous and destabilizing unilateralism, Gardner makes a convincing case that the only workable means of maintaining a peaceful world order is through patient and thoroughly engaged diplomacy and a realist rapprochement with both Russia and China."

Rating by Amazon customers: 3.8 (13 ratings)
ISBN 978-1633883956 ?
The New Power Elite
Heather Gautney
Oxford University Press (December 1, 2022)
No Review
"Heather Gautney is Associate Professor of Sociology at Fordham University. She has written and edited books, opinion essays, and academic articles on US politics, social movements, social inequality, and workforce issues in the entertainment industry. Gautney was a senior policy advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders on his presidential campaign and in the US Senate Budget Committee. In 2020, she served on the Democratic Party's platform drafting committee and was co-chair of the Biden-Sanders Task Force on Education."

"Revisiting C. Wright Mills' classic, an analysis of power structures in the neoliberal era and America's drift toward authoritarianism.

"In 1956, radical icon C. Wright Mills wrote The Power Elite, a scathing critique of elite power in the United States that has become a classic for generations of nonconformists and students of social and political inequality. With rising rates of inequality and social stratification, Mills' work is now more relevant than ever, revealing a need for a fresh examination of American elitism and the nature of centralized power.

"In The New Power Elite, Heather Gautney takes up the problem of concentrated political, economic, and military power in America that Mills addressed in his original text and echoes his outrage over the injustices and ruin brought by today's elites. Drawing from years of experience at the highest levels of government and in the entertainment industry, Gautney examines the dynamics of elite power from the postwar period to today and grounds her analysis in political economy, rather than in institutional authority, as Mills did. In doing so, she covers diverse, yet interconnected centers of elite power, from the US State and military apparatus, to Wall Street and billionaires, to celebrities and mass media. Gautney also accounts for changes in global capitalism over the last forty years, arguing that neoliberalism and the centering of the market in political and social life has ushered in ever more extreme forms of violence and exploitation, and a drift toward authoritarianism.

"A contemporary companion to Mills' work through a fresh critique of elites for the new millennium, The New Power Elite offers a comprehensive look at the structure of American power and its tethers around the world."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (9 ratings)
ISBN 978-0190637446 ?
Impeachment:
What Everyone Needs To Know
Michael J. Gerhardt
Oxford University Press (July 6, 2018)
No Review
"Michael J. Gerhardt is Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor in Constitutional Law at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, a scholar in residence at the National Constitutional Center, and a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He is the author of five books, including The Forgotten Presidents: Their Untold Constitutional Legacy, selected as one of the best non-fiction books of 2013 by the Financial Times. He participated in the confirmation hearings for six of the nine justices currently on the Supreme Court, was the only joint witness in the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton, and is the first independent scholar selected by the Library of Congress to advise on the updating of the official United States Constitution Annotated." – Amazon biography

"Impeachment: What Everyone Needs to Know® is the step back and deep reflection on the law of impeachment that everyone needs now. Written in an accessible and lively question-and-answer format, it offers a timely explanation of the impeachment process from its very meaning to its role in politics today. The book defines the scope of impeachable offenses, and how the Constitution provides alternative procedures and sanctions for addressing misconduct in office. It explains why the only two presidential impeachments, those of Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, failed to lead to conviction, and how the impeachments of federal judges illuminate the law and politics of the process.

"As a legal expert and the only joint witness in the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton, author Michael J. Gerhardt also explores a question frequently asked-will Donald Trump be impeached? This book does not take a side in the debate over the possible impeachment of the president; instead, it is a primer for anyone eager to learn about impeachment's origins, practices, limitations, and alternatives."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (6 ratings)
ISBN 978-0190903664 ?
The Federal Impeachment Process:
A Constitutional and Historical Analysis, Third Edition
Michael J. Gerhardt
University of Chicago Press; Third edition (April 12, 2019)
No Review
"Michael J. Gerhardt is Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor in Constitutional Law at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, a scholar in residence at the National Constitutional Center, and a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He is the author of five books, including The Forgotten Presidents: Their Untold Constitutional Legacy, selected as one of the best non-fiction books of 2013 by the Financial Times. He participated in the confirmation hearings for six of the nine justices currently on the Supreme Court, was the only joint witness in the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton, and is the first independent scholar selected by the Library of Congress to advise on the updating of the official United States Constitution Annotated." – Amazon biography

"As President Trump and Congressional Democrats battle over the findings of the Mueller report, talk of impeachment is in the air. But what are the grounds for impeaching a sitting president? Who is subject to impeachment? Is impeachment effective as a safeguard against presidential misconduct? What challenges does today’s highly partisan political climate pose to the impeachment process, and what, if any, meaningful alternatives are there for handling presidential misconduct?

"For more than twenty years, The Federal Impeachment Process has served as the most complete analysis of the constitutional and legal issues raised in every impeachment proceeding in American history. Impeachment, Michael J. Gerhardt shows, is an inherently political process designed to expose and remedy political crimes—serious breaches of duty or injuries to the Republic. Subject neither to judicial review nor to presidential veto, it is a unique congressional power that involves both political and constitutional considerations, including the gravity of the offense charged, the harm to the constitutional order, and the link between an official’s misconduct and duties. For this third edition, Gerhardt updates the book to cover cases since President Clinton, as well as recent scholarly debates. He discusses the issues arising from the possible impeachment of Donald Trump, including whether a sitting president may be investigated, prosecuted, and convicted for criminal misconduct or whether impeachment and conviction in Congress is the only way to sanction a sitting president; what the 'Emoluments Clause' means and whether it might provide the basis for the removal of the president; whether gross incompetence may serve as the basis for impeachment; and the extent to which federal conflicts of interest laws apply to the president and other high ranking officials.

"Significantly updated, this book will remain the standard work on the federal impeachment process for years to come."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (14 ratings)
ISBN 978-0226554839 ?
The Paradox of Democracy:
Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion
Zac Gershberg & Sean Illing
University of Chicago Press (June 16, 2022)
No Review
"Zac Gershberg is associate professor of journalism and media studies at Idaho State University. Sean Illing is a senior writer at Vox and the host of its Conversations podcast. He lives in Gulfport, Mississippi." – Amazon biography

"At the heart of democracy lies a contradiction that cannot be resolved, one that has affected free societies since their advent: Though freedom of speech and media has always been a necessary condition of democracy, that very freedom is also its greatest threat. When new forms of communications arrive, they often bolster the practices of democratic politics. But the more accessible the media of a society, the more susceptible that society is to demagoguery, distraction, and spectacle. Tracing the history of media disruption and the various responses to it over time, Zac Gershberg and Sean Illing reveal how these changes have challenged democracy—often with unsettling effects.

"The Paradox of Democracy captures the deep connection between communication and political culture, from the ancient art of rhetoric and the revolutionary role of newspapers to liberal broadcast media and the toxic misinformation of the digital public sphere. With clear-eyed analysis, Gershberg and Illing show that our contemporary debates over media, populism, and cancel culture are not too different from democratic cultural experiences of the past. As we grapple with a fast-changing, hyper-digital world, they prove democracy is always perched precipitously on a razor’s edge, now as ever before."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (13 ratings)
ISBN 978-0226681702 ?
City of Man:
Religion and Politics in a New Era
Michael Gerson & Peter Wehner
Timothy Keller (Foreword)
Moody Publishers; New edition (October, 2010)
No Review
"Michael Gerson, former policy advisor and chief speechwriter to President George W. Bush, writes a nationally syndicated column that appears in the Washington Post. He is the author of Heroic Conservatism. Peter Wehner, former deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives, is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He writes widely on political, cultural, religious, and national security issues for Commentary, the Weekly Standard, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications." – Amazon biography

"Our nation is in a political nightmare. With the rise of the Alt-Right, and increasing division between liberals and conservatives, it is hard to know how to be politically engaged while maintaining Christian integrity.

"Former White House insiders Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner call evangelicals toward a new kind of political engagement—a kind that is better both for the church and the country, a kind that cannot be co-opted by either political party, a kind that avoids the historic mistakes of both the Religious Right and the Religious Left.

"A product of the authors' own wrestling with the complicated relationship between religion and politics, City of Man deals with questions central to evangelicals' future political role, including:

  • How can religious people exercise influence while maintaining their integrity?
  • What tone should they be known for?
  • How should they think about the role and purpose of government?
  • Which causes and issues, both at home and abroad, ought to be a part of their agenda?

"Incisive, bold, and marked equally by pragmatism and idealism, Gerson and Wehner's book charts a new political future not just for civic-minded Christians and 'values voters,' but for the nation as a whole."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (56 ratings)
ISBN 978-0802458575 ?
Surviving Autocracy
Masha Gessen
Riverhead Books (June 1, 2020)
No Review
"Masha Gessen is the author of eleven books, including the National Book Award-winning The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia and The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. A staff writer at the New Yorker and the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Carnegie Fellowship, Gessen teaches at Amherst College and lives in New York City." – Amazon biography

"In the run-up to the 2016 election, Masha Gessen stood out from other journalists for the ability to convey the ominous significance of Donald Trump's speech and behavior, unprecedented in a national candidate. Within forty-eight hours of his victory, the essay 'Autocracy: Rules for Survival' had gone viral, and Gessen's coverage of his norm-smashing presidency became essential reading for a citizenry struggling to wrap their heads around the unimaginable. Thanks to the special perspective that is the legacy of a Soviet childhood and two decades covering the resurgence of totalitarianism in Russia, Gessen has a sixth sense for signs of autocracy—and the unique cross-cultural fluency to delineate its emergence to Americans. This incisive book provides an indispensable overview of the calamitous trajectory of the past few years. Gessen not only highlights the corrosion of the media, the judiciary, and the cultural norms we hoped would save us but also tells us the story of how a short few years have changed us, from a people who saw ourselves as a nation of immigrants to a populace haggling over a border wall, heirs to a degraded sense of truth, meaning, and possibility. Surviving Autocracy is an inventory of ravages but also a beacon to recovery—or to enduring, and resisting, an ongoing assault."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (974 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593188934 ?
The Persuaders:
At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy
Anand Giridharadas
Riverhead Books (June 1, 2020)
No Review
"Anand Giridharadas is the author of the international best-seller Winners Take All, The True American, and India Calling. A former foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times for more than a decade, he has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Time, and is the publisher of the newsletter The.Ink. He is an on-air political analyst for MSNBC. He has received the Radcliffe Fellowship, the Porchlight Business Book of the Year Award, Harvard University’s Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award for Humanism in Culture, and the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. He lives in Brooklyn, New York."

"The lifeblood of any free society is persuasion: changing other people’s minds in order to change things. But America is suffering a crisis of faith in persuasion that is putting its democracy and the planet itself at risk. Americans increasingly write one another off instead of seeking to win one another over. Debates are framed in moralistic terms, with enemies battling the righteous. Movements for justice build barriers to entry, instead of on-ramps. Political parties focus on mobilizing the faithful rather than wooing the skeptical. And leaders who seek to forge coalitions are labeled sellouts.

"In The Persuaders, Anand Giridharadas takes us inside these movements and battles, seeking out the dissenters who continue to champion persuasion in an age of polarization. We meet a leader of Black Lives Matter; a trailblazer in the feminist resistance to Trumpism; white parents at a seminar on raising adopted children of color; Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; a team of door knockers with an uncanny formula for changing minds on immigration; an ex-cult member turned QAnon deprogrammer; and, hovering menacingly offstage, Russian operatives clandestinely stoking Americans’ fatalism about one another.

"As the book’s subjects grapple with how to call out threats and injustices while calling in those who don’t agree with them but just might one day, they point a way to healing, and changing, a fracturing country."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (250 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593318997 ?
We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For:
(The W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures)
Eddie Glaude Jr.
Harvard University Press (April 16, 2024)
No Review
"Eddie Glaude Jr. is the author of several books, including Democracy in Black and the New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, winner of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Book Prize. He frequently appears in the media as an MSNBC contributor on programs like Morning Joe and Deadline: White House. A native of Moss Point, Mississippi, Glaude is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor at Princeton University."

"From the author of the New York Times bestseller Begin Again, a politically astute, lyrical meditation on how ordinary people can shake off their reliance on a small group of professional politicians and assume responsibility for what it takes to achieve a more just and perfect democracy.

"We are more than the circumstances of our lives, and what we do matters. In We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For, one of the nation’s preeminent scholars and a New York Times bestselling author, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., makes the case that the hard work of becoming a better person should be a critical feature of Black politics. Through virtuoso interpretations of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Ella Baker, Glaude shows how we have the power to be the heroes that our democracy so desperately requires.

"Based on the Du Bois Lectures delivered at Harvard University, the book begins with Glaude’s unease with the Obama years. He felt then, and does even more urgently now, that the excitement around the Obama presidency constrained our politics as we turned to yet another prophet-like figure. He examines his personal history and the traditions that both shape and overwhelm his own voice.

"Glaude weaves anecdotes about his evolving views on Black politics together with the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Dewey, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison, encouraging us to reflect on the lessons of these great thinkers and address imaginatively the challenges of our day in voices uniquely our own.

"Narrated with passion and philosophical intensity, this book is a powerful reminder that if American democracy is to survive, we must step out from under the shadows of past giants to build a better society―one that derives its strength from the pew, not the pulpit."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (1 rating)
ISBN 978-0674737600 ?
Kingdom Coming:
The Rise of Christian Nationalism
Michelle Goldberg
W. W. Norton & Company (May 11, 2006)
No Review
"Michelle Goldberg is a contributing editor at Religion Dispatches and a senior correspondent for American Prospect. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, the New York Observer, the Guardian [London], Newsday, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn, New York." – Amazon biography

"Michelle Goldberg, a senior political reporter for Salon.com, has been covering the intersection of politics and ideology for years. Before the 2004 election, and during the ensuing months when many Americans were trying to understand how an administration marked by cronyism, disregard for the national budget, and poorly disguised self-interest had been reinstated, Goldberg traveled through the heartland of a country in the grips of a fevered religious radicalism: the America of our time. From the classroom to the mega-church to the federal court, she saw how the growing influence of dominionism-the doctrine that Christians have the right to rule nonbelievers-is threatening the foundations of democracy.

"In Kingdom Coming, Goldberg demonstrates how an increasingly bellicose fundamentalism is gaining traction throughout our national life, taking us on a tour of the parallel right-wing evangelical culture that is buoyed by Republican political patronage. Deep within the red zones of a divided America, we meet military retirees pledging to seize the nation in Christ's name, perfidious congressmen courting the confidence of neo-confederates and proponents of theocracy, and leaders of federally funded programs offering Jesus as the solution to the country's social problems.

"With her trenchant interviews and the telling testimonies of the people behind this movement, Goldberg gains access into the hearts and minds of citizens who are striving to remake the secular Republic bequeathed by our founders into a Christian nation run according to their interpretation of scripture. In her examination of the ever-widening divide between believers and nonbelievers, Goldberg illustrates the subversive effect of this conservative stranglehold nationwide. In an age when faith rather than reason is heralded and the values of the Enlightenment are threatened by a mystical nationalism claiming divine sanction, Kingdom Coming brings us face to face with the irrational forces that are remaking much of America."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (192 ratings)
ISBN 978-0393060942 ?
The Plot to Change America:
How Identity Politics is Dividing the Land of the Free
Mike Gonzalez
Encounter Books (July 28, 2020)
No Review
"Mike Gonzalez is the Angeles T. Arredondo Senior Fellow on E Pluribus Unum at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. He spent close to twenty years as a journalist, fifteen of them writing from Europe, Asia, and Latin America. He left journalism to join the Bush administration, where he was a speechwriter for Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox before moving on to the State Department’s European Bureau, where he wrote speeches and op-eds. Since 2009, he has been at The Heritage Foundation, where he writes on national identity, diversity, multiculturalism, assimilation, and nationalism, as well as foreign policy in general." – Amazon biography

"The Plot to Change America exposes the myths that help identity politics perpetuate itself. This book reveals what has really happened, explains why it is urgent to change course, and offers a strategy to do so. Though we should not fool ourselves into thinking that it will be easy to eliminate identity politics, we should not overthink it, either. Identity politics relies on the creation of groups and then on giving people incentives to adhere to them. If we eliminate group making and the enticements, we can get rid of identity politics.

"The first myth that this book exposes is that identity politics is a grassroots movement, when from the beginning it has been, and continues to be, an elite project. For too long, we have lived with the fairy tale that America has organically grown into a nation gripped by victimhood and identitarian division; that it is all the result of legitimate demands by minorities for recognition or restitutions for past wrongs. The second myth is that identity politics is a response to the demographic change this country has undergone since immigration laws were radically changed in 1965. Another myth we are told is that to fight these changes is as depraved as it is futile, since by 2040, America will be a minority-majority country, anyway. This book helps to explain that none of these things are necessarily true."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (297 ratings)
ISBN 978-1641771009 ?
American Exception:
Empire and the Deep State
Aaron Good
Peter Phillips (Foreword)
Skyhorse (June 21, 2022)
No Review
"Aaron Good has a PhD in Political Science from Temple University. His dissertation, “American Exception: Hegemony and the Tripartite State,” examined the state, elite criminality, and US hegemony. It was an expansion of a previously published article, “American Exception: Hegemony and the Dissimulation of the State.” Prior to completing his doctorate, he worked on the 2008 Obama campaign in Missouri. Born and raised in Indiana, he has since lived and worked in Taiwan and Shanghai. He currently resides with his wife and son in the greater Philadelphia area where he has been a history and social science instructor."

"American Exception seeks to explain the breakdown of US democracy. In particular, how we can understand the uncanny continuity of American foreign policy, the breakdown of the rule of law, and the extreme concentration of wealth and power into an overworld of the corporate rich. To trace the evolution of the American state, the author takes a deep politics approach, shedding light on those political practices that are typically repressed in 'mainstream' discourse.

"In its long history before World War II, the US had a deep political system—a system of governance in which decision-making and enforcement were carried out within—and outside of—public institutions. It was a system that always included some degree of secretive collusion and law-breaking. After World War II, US elites decided to pursue global dominance over the international capitalist system. Setting aside the liberal rhetoric, this project was pursued in a manner that was by and large imperialistic rather than progressive. To administer this covert empire, US elites created a massive national security state characterized by unprecedented levels of secrecy and lawlessness. The 'Global Communist Conspiracy' provided a pretext for exceptionism—an endless 'exception' to the rule of law.

"What gradually emerged after World War II was a tripartite state system of governance. The open democratic state and the authoritarian security state were both increasingly dominated by an American deep state. The term deep state was badly misappropriated during the Trump era. In the simplest sense, it herein refers to all those institutions that collectively exercise undemocratic power over state and society. To trace how we arrived at this point, American Exception explores various deep state institutions and history-making interventions. Key institutions involve the relationships between the overworld of the corporate rich, the underworld of organized crime, and the national security actors that mediate between them. History-making interventions include the toppling of foreign governments, the launching of aggressive wars, and the political assassinations of the 1960s. The book concludes by assessing the prospects for a revival of US democracy."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (96 ratings)
ISBN 978-1510769137 ?
Davos Man:
How the Billionaires Devoured the World
Peter S. Goodman
Custom House (January 18, 2022)
No Review
"Peter S. Goodman is the Global Economics Correspondent for the New York Times, based in London. He was previously the NYT’s national economics correspondent, based in New York, where he played a leading role in the paper’s award-winning coverage of the Great Recession, including a series that was a Pulitzer finalist. Previously, he covered the Internet bubble and bust as the Washington Post’s telecommunications reporter, and served as WashPo’s China-based Asian economics correspondent. He is the author of Past Due: The End of Easy Money and the Renewal of the American Economy. He graduated from Reed College and completed a master’s in Vietnamese history from the University of California, Berkeley." – Amazon biography

"If you belong to the 'choir' in a 'religion' called anti-capitalism, then 'Davos Man' is a sermon you will love. The book’s over-the-top subtitle ('How [the] Billionaires Devoured the World') pretty much says what the author, Peter Goodman, thinks of today’s billionaires and the book’s cover (depicting a corporate jet in the foreground with the earth in flames behind) confirms this. Mr. Goodman obviously believes that billionaires are too greedy for anyone’s good, and their wealth must be taxed away and used for better things. The annual gathering of the wealthy and powerful at Switzerland’s Davos, is only (according to Mr. Goodman) so billionaires can give lip-service to 'doing good,' when, in reality, they’re all greedy bastards.

"After singling out eight billionaires (Including Mark Benioff and Jeff Bezos) and going into what Mr. Goodman believes are their shortcomings, the book implies that all billionaires’ philanthropic efforts are too insignificant to be of any importance and the bulk of their wealth should be taxed out of existence. Except for an interesting chapter (entitled 'The Money Is Right There In the Community Now') focusing on what local organizations can do without involving outside money, (that includes an innovative jobs and vocational training program for convicted felons), Mr. Goodman repeats his mantra about billionaire wealth redistribution. In a chapter entitled 'Taxes, Taxes, Taxes, The Rest Is Bullshit,' Mr. Goodman ignores his previous observations (about avoiding outside money) and speculates that the time has come for Universal Basic Income for everyone.

"If you are independent-minded, like to see both sides before jumping in, and are perhaps something of a capitalist, then Davos Man (sic) will not be for you. The book overlooks that capitalism has delivered more value, and pulled more out of poverty, than any other system. It also overlooks that each billionaire criticized by Davos Man, (sic) has created a business that delivered far more to the world than the smaller amount that person received individually (consider, for example, how much civil unrest there would have been during the Covid pandemic if Amazon had not managed to deliver so many necessaries to our various doorsteps). Beyond this, Davos Man (sic) fails to mention the 'Giving Pledge' in which an increasing number of the world’s billionaires have pledged to give at least ½ of their wealth to charity. Beyond this, the book neglects to mention that, unlike the US government, most worthy charities are good financial stewards who regularly live within their budgets. Finally, Davos Man (sic) doesn’t consider the negative effect giveaways like universal basic income would have on individual incentive and whether the world’s progress would be the same without the talented and driven people who manage to become billionaires.

The above passage highlighted in red is part of a one-star customer review dated 15 October 2022. Although the reviewer later admits that capitalism is not perfect, he still reacts to Goodman's criticism as if it were a total condemnation of the capitalist system. I would tell him so directly — if Amazon still allowed comments on reviews.

"The New York Times’s Global Economics Correspondent masterfully reveals how billionaires’ systematic plunder of the world—brazenly accelerated during the pandemic—has transformed 21st-century life and dangerously destabilized democracy.

"The history of the last half century in America, Europe, and other major economies is in large part the story of wealth flowing upward. The most affluent people emerged from capitalism’s triumph in the Cold War to loot the peace, depriving governments of the resources needed to serve their people, and leaving them tragically unprepared for the worst pandemic in a century.

"Drawing on decades of experience covering the global economy, award-winning journalist Peter S. Goodman profiles five representative “Davos Men”—members of the billionaire class—chronicling how their shocking exploitation of the global pandemic has hastened a fifty-year trend of wealth centralization. Alongside this reporting, Goodman delivers textured portraits of those caught in Davos Man’s wake, including a former steelworker in the American Midwest, a Bangladeshi migrant in Qatar, a Seattle doctor on the front lines of the fight against COVID, blue-collar workers in the tenements of Buenos Aires, an African immigrant in Sweden, a textile manufacturer in Italy, an Amazon warehouse employee in New York City, and more.

"Goodman’s revelatory exposé of the global billionaire class reveals their hidden impact on nearly every aspect of modern society: widening wealth inequality, the rise of anti-democratic nationalism, the shrinking opportunity to earn a livable wage, the vulnerabilities of our health-care systems, access to affordable housing, unequal taxation, and even the quality of the shirt on your back. Meticulously reported yet compulsively readable, Davos Man is an essential read for anyone concerned about economic justice, the capacity of societies to grapple with their greatest challenges, and the sanctity of representative government."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (415 ratings)
ISBN 978-0063078307 ?
The Second Coming of the KKK:
The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition
Linda Gordon
Liveright; Reprint edition (October, 2018)
No Review
"Linda Gordon, winner of two Bancroft Prizes and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, is the author of The Second Coming of the KKK, Dorothea Lange, and Impounded, and the coauthor of Feminism Unfinished. She is the Florence Kelley Professor of History at New York University and lives in New York and Madison, Wisconsin." – Amazon biography

"Extraordinary national acclaim accompanied the publication of award-winning historian Linda Gordon’s disturbing and markedly timely history of the reassembled Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. Dramatically challenging our preconceptions of the hooded Klansmen responsible for establishing a Jim Crow racial hierarchy in the 1870s South, this 'second Klan' spread in states principally above the Mason-Dixon line by courting xenophobic fears surrounding the flood of immigrant 'hordes' landing on American shores. 'Part cautionary tale, part expose' (Washington Post), The Second Coming of the KKK 'illuminates the surprising scope of the movement' (The New Yorker); the Klan attracted four-to-six-million members through secret rituals, manufactured news stories, and mass 'Klonvocations' prior to its collapse in 1926―but not before its potent ideology of intolerance became part and parcel of the American tradition. A 'must-read' (Salon) for anyone looking to understand the current moment, The Second Coming of the KKK offers 'chilling comparisons to the present day' (New York Review of Books). 8 pages of illustrations"

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (265 ratings)
ISBN 978-1631494925 ?
Opus:
The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church
Gareth Gore
Simon & Schuster (October 1, 2024)
No Review
"Gareth Gore is a financial journalist and editor with close to two decades of experience, who had reported from over twenty-five countries and covered some of the biggest financial stories. His writing has been published by Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, and International Financing Review. He is the host of The Syndicate, which tells the behind-the-scenes stories of the biggest financial deals in history."

"A thrilling exposé recounting how members of Opus Dei—a secretive, ultra-conservative Catholic sect—pushed its radical agenda within the Church and around the globe, using billions of dollars siphoned from one of the world’s largest banks.

"For over half a century, Banco Popular was one of the most profitable banks in the world—until one day, in 2017, when the Spanish bank suddenly collapsed overnight. When investigative journalist Gareth Gore was dispatched to report on the story, he expected to find yet another case of unbridled capitalist ambition gone wrong. Instead, he uncovered decades of deception that hid one of the most brazen cases of corporate pillaging in history, perpetrated by a group of men sworn to celibacy and self-flagellation who had secretly controlled Popular and abused their positions there to help spread Opus Dei to every corner of the world.

"Drawing on unparalleled access to bank records, insider accounts, and exclusive interviews with whistle-blowers from within Opus Dei, Gore reveals how money from the bank was used to lure unsuspecting recruits—some of them only children—into a life of servitude. He also tracks the ascent of Opus Dei within the United States, exposing its role in bankrolling many right-wing causes, including the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.

"In an era of disinformation and deep fakes, here is a real-life conspiracy which hid in plain sight for more than sixty years. Gore tells a shocking story of money and power that spans decades and continents. Documenting Opus Dei’s secret history for the first time, this thrilling work of investigative storytelling raises important questions about the dark forces that shape our society."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (83 ratings)
ISBN 978-1668016145 ?
The Flag and the Cross:
White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy
Philip S. Gorski & Samuel L. Perry
Jemar Tisby (Foreword)
Oxford University Press (April 1, 2022)
No Review
"Philip S. Gorski, Professor of Sociology at Yale University, is a comparative and historical sociologist who writes on religion and politics in early modern and modern Europe and North America. His work has been featured and discussed in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NPR and other national media outlets. He is the author, most recently, of American Babylon: Christianity and Democracy Before and After Trump (2020) and American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present (2017).
Samuel L. Perry is a sociologist of American religion, race, politics, sexuality, and families and serves as Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Oklahoma. In addition to his scholarship in leading scientific journals, he has written for outlets like The Washington Post and Time Magazine and his work has been featured in Time, The New Yorker, The Economist, The New York Times, and elsewhere. He is the author or co-author of Growing God's Family (2017), Addicted to Lust (Oxford 2019), [and] Taking America Back for God (Oxford 2020)."

"Most Americans were shocked by the violence they witnessed at the nation's Capital on January 6th, 2021. And many were bewildered by the images displayed by the insurrectionists: a wooden cross and wooden gallows; "Jesus saves" and "Don't Tread on Me;" Christian flags and Confederate Flags; even a prayer in Jesus' name after storming the Senate chamber. Where some saw a confusing jumble, Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry saw a familiar ideology: white Christian nationalism.

"In this short primer, Gorski and Perry explain what white Christian nationalism is and is not; when it first emerged and how it has changed; where it's headed and why it threatens democracy. Tracing the development of this ideology over the course of three centuries―and especially its influence over the last three decades―they show how, throughout American history, white Christian nationalism has animated the oppression, exclusion, and even extermination of minority groups while securing privilege for white Protestants. It enables white Christian Americans to demand 'sacrifice' from others in the name of religion and nation, while defending their 'rights' in the names of 'liberty' and 'property.'

"White Christian nationalism motivates the anti-democratic, authoritarian, and violent impulses on display in our current political moment. The future of American democracy, Gorski and Perry argue, will depend on whether a broad spectrum of Americans―stretching from democratic socialists to classical liberals―can unite in a popular front to combat the threat to liberal democracy posed by white Christian nationalism."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (398 ratings)
ISBN 978-0197618684 ?
A Republic, If You Can Keep It
Neil Gorsuch
Forum Books; NO-VALUE edition (September 10, 2019)
No Review
"Neil Gorsuch is an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. A Colorado native, he served as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which is based in Colorado and hears appeals from six western states, before his appointment to the Supreme Court in April 2017. He has also worked as a senior official at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he helped oversee its civil litigating divisions; as a partner at a law firm; as a law professor; and as a law clerk for Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy."

"Justice Neil Gorsuch reflects on his journey to the Supreme Court, the role of the judge under our Constitution, and the vital responsibility of each American to keep our republic strong.

"As Benjamin Franklin left the Constitutional Convention, he was reportedly asked what kind of government the founders would propose. He replied, 'A republic, if you can keep it.' In this book, Justice Neil Gorsuch shares personal reflections, speeches, and essays that focus on the remarkable gift the framers left us in the Constitution.

"Justice Gorsuch draws on his thirty-year career as a lawyer, teacher, judge, and justice to explore essential aspects our Constitution, its separation of powers, and the liberties it is designed to protect. He discusses the role of the judge in our constitutional order, and why he believes that originalism and textualism are the surest guides to interpreting our nation’s founding documents and protecting our freedoms. He explains, too, the importance of affordable access to the courts in realizing the promise of equal justice under law—while highlighting some of the challenges we face on this front today.

"Along the way, Justice Gorsuch reveals some of the events that have shaped his life and outlook, from his upbringing in Colorado to his Supreme Court confirmation process. And he emphasizes the pivotal roles of civic education, civil discourse, and mutual respect in maintaining a healthy republic.

"A Republic, If You Can Keep It offers compelling insights into Justice Gorsuch's faith in America and its founding documents, his thoughts on our Constitution’s design and the judge’s place within it, and his beliefs about the responsibility each of us shares to sustain our distinctive republic of, by, and for 'We the People'.”

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (1,106 ratings)
ISBN 978-0525576785 ?
America's Unholy Ghosts
Joel Edward Goza
Cascade Books (March 22, 2019)
No Review
"Joel Edward Goza is a writer, minister, and advocate working from Houston's Fifth Ward. When not working, Joel spends his time pestering his wife Sarah, daughter Naomi, and son Samuel Roger as they enjoy their life together. Connect with Joel's work by visiting joeledwardgoza.com."

"America's Unholy Ghosts examines the DNA of the ideologies that shape our nation, ideologies that are as American as apple pie but that too often justify and perpetuate racist ideas and racial inequalities. MLK challenged us to investigate the 'ideational roots of race hate' and Ghosts does just that by examining a philosophical 'trinity'—Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Adam Smith—whose works collectively helped to institutionalize, imagine, and ingrain racist ideologies into the hearts and minds of the American people. As time passed, America's racial imagination evolved to form people incapable of recognizing their addiction to racist ideas. Thus, Ghosts comes to a close with the brilliant faith and politics of Martin Luther King, Jr. who sought to write the conscience of the Prophetic Black Church onto American hearts, minds, and laws. If our nation's racist instincts still haunt our land, so too do our hopes and desires for a faith and politics marked by mercy, justice, and equity—and there is no better guide to that land than the Prophetic Black Church and the one who saw such a land from the mountaintop.”

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (123 ratings)
ISBN 978-1532651441 ?
The Rebels:
Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Struggle for a New American Politics
Joshua Green
Penguin Press (January 9, 2024)
No Review
"Joshua Green is author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency (Penguin), a national correspondent for Bloomberg Businessweek, and a CNN political analyst. Previously, Green was an editor at The Atlantic and the Washington Monthly, and a political columnist for the Boston Globe. He's also written for the New Yorker, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair and other publications. Green regularly appears on CNN's shows, HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, and PBS’s Washington Week and Frontline."

"From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Devil’s Bargain comes the revelatory inside story of the uprising within the Democratic Party, of the economic populists led by Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

"In his classic book Devil’s Bargain, Joshua Green chronicled how the forces of economic populism on the right, led by the likes of Steve Bannon, turned Donald Trump into their flawed but powerful vessel. In The Rebels, he gives an epic account of the long struggle that has played out in parallel on the left, told through an intimate reckoning with the careers of the three political figures who have led the charge most prominently. Based on remarkable inside sourcing and razor-sharp analysis, The Rebels uses the grand narrative of a political party undergoing tumult and transformation to tell an even larger story about the fate of America.

"For many years, as Green recounts, the Democrats made their bed with Wall Street and big tech, relying on corporate money for electioneering and embracing the worldview that technological and financial innovation and globalization were a powerful net good, a rising tide lifting all boats. Yes, there were howls of pain, but they were written off by most of the elites as the moaning of sore losers mired in the past. There were always some Democratic politicians representing the old labor base who resisted the new dispensation, but these figures never made it very far on a national level. For one thing, they didn’t have the money. But as income inequality ballooned, widening the gulf between the wealthy elite and everyone else, pressures began to build.

"With the 2008 crisis, those forces finally erupted into plain sight, turning this book’s protagonists into national icons. At its heart, The Rebels tells the riveting human story of the rise and fight of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from the financial crisis on, as outrage over the unfairness of the American system formed a flood tide of political revolution. That same tide that would sweep Trump into office was blunted on the left, as the Democratic party found itself riven by culture war issues between its centrists and its progressives. But the winds behind economic populism still howl at gale force. Whether the Democrats can bridge their divisions and home in on a vision that unites the party, and perhaps even the country, in the face of the most violently deranged political landscape since the Civil War will be the ultimate test of the legacies of all three characters.

"A masterful account of one of the defining political stories of our age, The Rebels cements Joshua Green’s stature at the first rank of American writers explaining how we’ve arrived at this pass and what lies ahead."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (33 ratings)
ISBN 978-0525560241 ?
Subtle Tools:
The Dismantling of American Democracy from the War on Terror to Donald Trump
Karen J. Greenberg
Princeton University Press (August 24, 2021)
No Review
"Karen J. Greenberg is director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law, an international studies fellow at New America, and a permanent member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Her books include Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State and The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days." – Amazon biography

"In the wake of the September 11 terror attacks, the American government implemented a wave of overt policies to fight the nation’s enemies. Unseen and undetected by the public, however, another set of tools were brought to bear on the domestic front. In this riveting book, one of today’s leading experts on the US security state shows how these 'subtle tools' imperiled the very foundations of democracy, from the separation of powers and transparency in government to adherence to the Constitution.

"Taking readers from Ground Zero to the Capitol insurrection, Karen Greenberg describes the subtle tools that were forged under George W. Bush in the name of security: imprecise language, bureaucratic confusion, secrecy, and the bypassing of procedural and legal norms. While the power and legacy of these tools lasted into the Obama years, reliance on them increased exponentially in the Trump era, both in the fight against terrorism abroad and in battles closer to home. Greenberg discusses how the Trump administration weaponized these tools to separate families at the border, suppress Black Lives Matter protests, and attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

"Revealing the deeper consequences of the war on terror, Subtle Tools paints a troubling portrait of an increasingly undemocratic America where disinformation, xenophobia, and disdain for the law became the new norm, and where the subtle tools of national security threatened democracy itself."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (21 ratings)
ISBN 978-0691215839 ?
It Could Happen Here:
Why America Is Tipping from Hate to the Unthinkable―And How We Can Stop It
Jonathan Greenblatt
Mariner Books (January 4, 2022)
No Review
"Jonathan Greenblatt is the CEO of ADL (the Anti-Defamation League), the world’s leading anti-hate organization with a distinguished record of fighting antisemitism and advocating for just and fair treatment to all. Jonathan joined ADL in 2015 after serving in the White House as special assistant to President Obama and director of the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation. He joined the government after a distinguished career in business as a successful social entrepreneur and corporate executive: he cofounded Ethos Brands, the company that launched Ethos Water (acquired by Starbucks, 2005), founded All for Good (acquired by Points of Light, 2011), and served as a senior executive at realtor.com (acquired by News Corp, 2014)." – Amazon biography

"It’s almost impossible to imagine that unbridled hate and systematic violence could come for us or our families. But it has happened in our lifetimes in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. And it could happen here.

"Today, as CEO of the storied ADL (the Anti-Defamation League), Jonathan Greenblatt has made it his personal mission to demonstrate how antisemitism, racism, and other insidious forms of intolerance can destroy a society, taking root as quiet prejudices but mutating over time into horrific acts of brutality. In this urgent book, Greenblatt sounds an alarm, warning that this age-old trend is gathering momentum in the United States—and that violence on an even larger, more catastrophic scale could be just around the corner.

"But it doesn’t have to be this way. Drawing on ADL’s decades of experience in fighting hate through investigative research, education programs, and legislative victories as well as his own personal story and his background in business and government, Greenblatt offers a bracing primer on how we—as individuals, as organizations, and as a society—can strike back against hate. Just because it could happen here, he shows, does not mean that the unthinkable is inevitable."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (292 ratings)
ISBN 978-0358617280 ?
Justice on the Brink:
A Requiem for the Supreme Court
Linda Greenhouse
Random House (November 9, 2021)
No Review
"Linda Greenhouse has reported on and written about the Supreme Court for The New York Times for more than four decades, earning numerous accolades, including a Pulitzer Prize. She currently writes an opinion column on the court and teaches at Yale Law School. She lives in New Haven, Connecticut, and Stockbridge, Massachusetts." – Amazon biography

"In Justice on the Brink, legendary journalist Linda Greenhouse gives us unique insight into a court under stress, providing the context and brilliant analysis readers of her work in The New York Times have come to expect. In a page-turning narrative, she recounts the twelve months when the court turned its back on its legacy and traditions, abandoning any effort to stay above and separate from politics. With remarkable clarity and deep institutional knowledge, Greenhouse shows the seeds being planted for the court’s eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade, expansion of access to guns, and unprecedented elevation of religious rights in American society. Both a chronicle and a requiem, Justice on the Brink depicts the struggle for the soul of the Supreme Court, and points to the future that awaits all of us."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (252 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593447932 ?
How Would a Patriot Act?:
Defending American Values from a President Run Amok
Glenn Greenwald
Working Assets Publishing; English Language edition (May 12, 2006)
No Review
"Glenn Greenwald is a Constitutional law attorney, and author of the political blog "Unclaimed Territory." Greenwald has written for American Conservative magazine and appeared on a variety of television and radio programs, including C-Span's "Washington Journal," Air America's "Majority Report" and Public Radio International's "To the Point." His reporting and analysis have been credited in The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Salon, Slate and a variety of other print and online publications."

"Glenn Greenwald was not a political man — neither liberal nor conservative. To him, the U.S. was generally on track and would remain forever centrist. But all that has changed.

"Over the past five years, a creeping extremism has taken hold of our federal government, which threatens to alter our system of governing ourselves and our national character. This extremism is neither liberal nor conservative, but is driven by the Bush administration's radical theories of executive power. Greenwald writes that we cannot abide these unlimited and unchecked presidential powers if we are to remain a constitutional republic. Because when you answer to no one, you're not a president — you're a despot.

"This is one man's story of being galvanized into action to defend his country, and his concise and penetrating analysis of what is at stake for America when its president has secretly bestowed upon himself the powers of a king. From 9/11 to the question of nuclear war in Iran, Greenwald shows how Bush's claims of unlimited power play out. In the spirit of the colonists who once mustered the strength to denounce a king, Greenwald asks: how would a patriot act today?"

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (75 ratings)
ISBN 978-0977944002 ?
A Tragic Legacy:
How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency
Glenn Greenwald
Crown (June 26, 2007)
No Review
"Glenn Greenwald Glenn Greenwald was a constitutional law attorney and is now a contributing writer at Salon and the author of the political blog Unclaimed Territory. Greenwald has appeared on a variety of television and radio programs, including The Al Franken Show, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, Air America’s Majority Report, and Public Radio International’s To the Point. He is a regular contributor to The American Conservative, and his reporting and analysis have been credited in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Slate, and a variety of other print and online publications. His first book, How Would a Patriot Act?, was an instant bestseller."

"What will be the legacy of President George Walker Bush? In this fascinating, timely book, Glenn Greenwald examines the Bush presidency and its long-term effect on the nation. What began on shaky, uncertain ground and was bolstered and propelled by tragedy, has ultimately faltered and failed on the back of the dichotomous worldview—good versus evil—that once served it so well. In A Tragic Legacy, Greenwald charts the rise and steep fall of the current administration, dissecting the rhetoric and revealing the faulty ideals upon which George W. Bush built his policies.

"On September 12, 2001, President Bush addressed the nation and presented a very clear view of what was to come—a view that can be said to define his entire presidency: 'This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil.' Based on his own Christian faith and backed by biblical allusions, Bush’s worldview was basic and binary—and everyone was forced to choose a side. Riding high on public support, Bush sailed through the early 'War on Terror,' easily defining our enemies and clearly setting an agenda for defeating them.

"But once the war became murkier—its target unclear, its combatants no longer seen in black-and-white—support for Bush and his policies dropped precipitously. Glenn Greenwald brilliantly reveals the reasons behind the collapse of Bush’s power and approval, and argues that his greatest weakness is the same rhetoric that once propelled him so far forward. Facing issues that could not be turned into simple good versus evil choices—the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, his plans for Social Security 'reform,' and, most ironic, the failed Dubai ports deal—Bush faltered and fell. Now, Greenwald argues, Bush is trapped by his own choices, unable to break out of the mold that once served him so well, and indifferent to the consequences.

"A Tragic Legacy is the first true character study of one of the most controversial men ever to hold the office of president. Enlightening, powerful, and eye-opening, this is an in-depth look at the man whose incapability and cowboy logic have left America at risk."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (83 ratings)
ISBN 978-0307354198 ?
With Liberty and Justice for Some:
How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful
Glenn Greenwald
Metropolitan Books (October 25, 2011)
No Review
"Glenn Greenwald is the author of several bestsellers, including How Would a Patriot Act? and With Liberty and Justice for Some. Acclaimed as one of the 25 most influential political commentators by The Atlantic, one of America’s top 10 opinion writers by Newsweek, and one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers for 2013 by Foreign Policy, Greenwald is a former constitutional law and civil rights litigator. He was a columnist for The Guardian until October 2013 and is now a founding editor of a new media outlet, The Intercept. He is a frequent guest on CNN, MSNBC, and various other television and radio outlets. He has won numerous awards for his NSA reporting, including the 2013 Polk Award for national security reporting, the top 2013 investigative journalism award from the Online News Association, the Esso Award for Excellence in Reporting (the Brazilian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize), and the 2013 Pioneer Award from Electronic Frontier Foundation. He also received the first annual I. F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism in 2009 and a 2010 Online Journalism Award for his investigative work on the arrest and detention of Chelsea Manning. In 2013, Greenwald led the Guardian reporting that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for public service."

"From 'the most important voice to have entered the political discourse in years' (Bill Moyers), a scathing critique of the two-tiered system of justice that has emerged in America.

From the nation's beginnings, the law was to be the great equalizer in American life, the guarantor of a common set of rules for all. But over the past four decades, the principle of equality before the law has been effectively abolished. Instead, a two-tiered system of justice ensures that the country's political and financial class is virtually immune from prosecution, licensed to act without restraint, while the politically powerless are imprisoned with greater ease and in greater numbers than in any other country in the world.

"Starting with Watergate, continuing on through the Iran-Contra scandal, and culminating with Obama's shielding of Bush-era officials from prosecution, Glenn Greenwald lays bare the mechanisms that have come to shield the elite from accountability. He shows how the media, both political parties, and the courts have abetted a process that has produced torture, war crimes, domestic spying, and financial fraud.

"Cogent, sharp, and urgent, this is a no-holds-barred indictment of a profoundly un-American system that sanctions immunity at the top and mercilessness for everyone else."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (276 ratings)
ISBN 978-0805092059 ?
When Politicians Attack:
Party Cohesion in the Media
Tim Groeling
Cambridge University Press (July 19, 2010)
No Review
"Tim Groeling is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at UCLA. With Matthew A. Baum, he is the co-author of War Stories: The Causes and Consequences of Public Views of War. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Politics, International Organization, Political Communication, Political Behavior, and Presidential Studies Quarterly, among other publications.

"Fostering a positive brand name is the chief benefit parties provide for their members. They do this both by coordinating their activities in the legislative process and by communicating with voters. Whereas political scientists have generally focused on the former, dismissing partisan communication as cheap talk, this book argues that a party’s ability to coordinate its communication has important implications for the study of politics. The macro-level institutional setting of a party’s communication heavily influences that party’s prospects for cohesive communication. Paradoxically, unified government presents the greatest challenge to unified communication within the president’s party. As this book argues, the challenge stems primarily from two sources: the constitutional separation of powers and the intervening role of the news media. In this setting, internal disputes with the president or within the congressional majority are more likely to arise; these disputes are disproportionately likely to be featured by the news media, and stories of intra-party strife become the most credible and damaging type of partisan story."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.0 (3 ratings)
ISBN 978-0521603072 ?
Asymmetric Politics:
Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats
Matt Grossmann & David A. Hopkins
Oxford University Press (September 7, 2016)
No Review
"Matt Grossmann is Director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research and Associate Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University. David A. Hopkins is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Boston College." – Amazon biography

"Why do Republican politicians promise to rein in government, only to face repeated rebellions from Republican voters and media critics for betraying their principles? Why do Democratic politicians propose an array of different policies to match the diversity of their supporters, only to become mired in stark demographic divisions over issue priorities? In short, why do the two parties act so differently-whether in the electorate, on the campaign trail, or in public office?

"Asymmetric Politics offers a comprehensive explanation: The Republican Party is the vehicle of an ideological movement while the Democratic Party is a coalition of social groups. Republican leaders prize conservatism and attract support by pledging loyalty to broad values. Democratic leaders instead seek concrete government action, appealing to voters' group identities and interests by endorsing specific policies.

"This fresh and comprehensive investigation reveals how Democrats and Republicans think differently about politics, rely on distinct sources of information, argue past one another, and pursue divergent goals in government. It provides a rigorous new understanding of contemporary polarization and governing dysfunction while demonstrating how longstanding features of American politics and public policy reflect our asymmetric party system."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (34 ratings)
ISBN 978-0190626600 ?
Polarized by Degrees:
How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics
Matt Grossmann & David A. Hopkins
Cambridge University Press (September 5, 2024)
No Review
"Matt Grossmann is Director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research and Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University. He serves as Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center and Contributor to FiveThirtyEight. He is author of six books, including How Social Science Got Better (2021) and Asymmetric Politics (2021). David A. Hopkins is Associate Professor of Political Science at Boston College. He is the author of Red Fighting Blue (2017) and the co-author of Asymmetric Politics (2021) and Presidential Elections. His political analysis has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vox, and Bloomberg Opinion."

"Over the past several decades, American society has experienced fundamental changes – from shifting relations between social groups and evolving language and behavior norms to the increasing value of a college degree. These transformations have polarized the nation's political climate and ignited a perpetual culture war. In a sequel to their award-winning collaboration Asymmetric Politics, Grossmann and Hopkins draw on an extensive variety of evidence to explore how these changes have affected both major parties. They show that the Democrats have become the home of highly-educated citizens with progressive social views who prefer credentialed experts to make policy decisions, while Republicans have become the populist champions of white voters without college degrees who increasingly distrust teachers, scientists, journalists, universities, non-profit organizations, and even corporations. The result of this new “diploma divide” between the parties is an increasingly complex world in which everything is about politics – and politics is about everything."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.0 (1 ratings)
ISBN 978-1316512012 ?
My Trials:
Inside America's Deportation Factories
Paul Grussendorf
Hyang Suk Oh (Cover Art)
Paul Grussendorf (October 15, 2020)
No Review
"Paul Grussendorf is a lawyer specializing in asylum and refugee law. His first legal job was with the Central American Refugee Center in Washington, DC, and then he directed the immigration law clinic at George Washington University Law School for a decade, before being selected to be an immigration law judge. He served as a judge in Philadelphia and San Francisco a total of seven years. He served as Legal Protection Officer with UN Refugee Agency in South Korea in 2005. He joined the U.S. government's Refugee Affairs Division in 2006, working in Africa, Asia and Cuba to process refugees for resettlement to the United States. He currently works as a legal consultant to several international refugee agencies and as a consultant to other immigration lawyers acting as appellate counsel. He has taught immigration and refugee law at George Washington University Law School, University of San Francisco Law School, and Howard University School of Law."

"Judge Grussendorf shares his twenty-five years of experience battling both inside and outside of America's immigration law system for the rights of immigrants and refugees. He directed the George Washington University's Immigration Law Clinic for a decade before his appointment to the immigration bench, where he served as judge in Philadelphia and San Francisco. My Trials is the only book that goes behind the scenes to expose the often arbitrary and capricious manner in which life-and-death decisions are made by representatives of the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (20 ratings)
ISBN 978-1735953601 ?
Nations Under God:
How Churches Use Moral Authority to Influence Policy
Anna M. Grzymała-Busse
Princeton University Press (April 27, 2015)
No Review
"Anna M. Grzymała-Busse is the Ronald and Eileen Weiser Professor of European and Eurasian Studies at the University of Michigan. Her books include Rebuilding Leviathan: Party Competition and State Exploitation in Post-Communist Democracies."

"Why churches in some democratic nations wield enormous political power while churches in other democracies don't.

"In some religious countries, churches have drafted constitutions, restricted abortion, and controlled education. In others, church influence on public policy is far weaker. Why? Nations under God argues that where religious and national identities have historically fused, churches gain enormous moral authority―and covert institutional access. These powerful churches then shape policy in backrooms and secret meetings instead of through open democratic channels such as political parties or the ballot box.

"Through an in-depth historical analysis of six Christian democracies that share similar religious profiles yet differ in their policy outcomes―Ireland and Italy, Poland and Croatia, and the United States and Canada―Anna Grzymała-Busse examines how churches influenced education, abortion, divorce, stem cell research, and same-sex marriage. She argues that churches gain the greatest political advantage when they appear to be above politics. Because institutional access is covert, they retain their moral authority and their reputation as defenders of the national interest and the common good.

"Nations under God shows how powerful church officials in Ireland, Canada, and Poland have directly written legislation, vetoed policies, and vetted high-ranking officials. It demonstrates that religiosity itself is not enough for churches to influence politics―churches in Italy and Croatia, for example, are not as influential as we might think―and that churches allied to political parties, such as in the United States, have less influence than their notoriety suggests."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (10 ratings)
ISBN 978-0691164762 ?
Spin Dictators:
The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century
Sergei Guriev & Daniel Treisman
Princeton University Press (April 5, 2022)
No Review
"Sergei Guriev is professor of economics and provost at Sciences Po in Paris and former chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Daniel Treisman is professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of The Return: Russia’s Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev." – Amazon biography

"Hitler, Stalin, and Mao ruled through violence, fear, and ideology. But in recent decades a new breed of media-savvy strongmen has been redesigning authoritarian rule for a more sophisticated, globally connected world. In place of overt, mass repression, rulers such as Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Viktor Orbán control their citizens by distorting information and simulating democratic procedures. Like spin doctors in democracies, they spin the news to engineer support. Uncovering this new brand of authoritarianism, Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman explain the rise of such 'spin dictators,' describing how they emerge and operate, the new threats they pose, and how democracies should respond.

"Spin Dictators traces how leaders such as Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and Peru’s Alberto Fujimori pioneered less violent, more covert, and more effective methods of monopolizing power. They cultivated an image of competence, concealed censorship, and used democratic institutions to undermine democracy, all while increasing international engagement for financial and reputational benefits. The book reveals why most of today’s authoritarians are spin dictators―and how they differ from the remaining 'fear dictators' such as Kim Jong-un and Bashar al-Assad, as well as from masters of high-tech repression like Xi Jinping.

"Offering incisive portraits of today’s authoritarian leaders, Spin Dictators explains some of the great political puzzles of our time―from how dictators can survive in an age of growing modernity to the disturbing convergence and mutual sympathy between dictators and populists like Donald Trump."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (84 ratings)
ISBN 978-0691211411 ?
Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies
David P. Gushee
Eerdmans (October 3, 2023)
No Review
"David P. Gushee is Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University, Atlanta, Georgia. He also serves as chair in Christian social ethics at Vrije Universiteit and senior research fellow at International Baptist Theological Study Centre, both in Amsterdam. His many other books include Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust: Genocide and Moral Obligation."

"American democracy is in danger. How do we protect it from authoritarian reactionary Christianity?

"On January 6, 2021, hundreds of Americans stormed the Capitol to prevent the certification of their political opponent’s election. At the forefront were Christians claiming to act in the name of Jesus Christ and his supposed representative on earth, Donald Trump. How can this have happened?

"David P. Gushee tackles the question in this timely work of Christian political ethics. Gushee calls us to preserve democratic norms, including constitutional government, the rule of law, and equal rights for all, even as many Christians take a reactionary and antidemocratic stance. Surveying global politics and modern history, he analyzes how Christians have discarded their commitment to democracy and bought into authoritarianism. He urges us to fight back by reviving our hard-won traditions of congregational democracy, dissident Black Christian politics, and covenantal theology. 

"Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies makes a robust case for a renewed commitment to democracy on the part of Christians—not by succumbing to secular liberalism, but by drawing on our own best traditions. Any concerned Christian will leave its pages with eyes wide open to the dangers of our current form of political engagement. Readers will gain insight into what democracy is truly meant to be and why Christians once supported it wholeheartedly—and should do so again."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (48 ratings)
ISBN 978-0802882936 ?
American Carnage:
Shattering the Myths That Fuel Gun Violence
Fred Guttenberg & Thomas Gabor
Steve Kerr (Foreword)
Mango (May 2, 2023)
No Review
"Fred Guttenberg began his public life after the murder of his beautiful fourteen-year-old daughter Jaime in the Parkland, Florida, school shooting on Feb 14, 2018. The day after the murder, Fred decided to attend a public vigil. While there, the mayor asked him to speak. His words shook a nation and he has not stopped since. Only four months prior to the murder of his daughter, Fred’s brother Michael passed away in October 2017 from cancer related to his service in 9/11 in New York City. He was one of the original first responders at the World Trade Center with a team of doctors who got trapped in the WTC as it collapsed. Amazingly, the room that they hid out in did not collapse and Michael and his team of physicians spent sixteen days at ground zero taking care of others. Following his involvement in these two distinctly American tragedies, Fred has traveled the country talking about both events but also talking about perspective, perseverance, and resilience. He discusses pivotal moments in our lives and how we respond to those moments, using his speech to inspire others. Prior to these events, Fred Guttenberg’s professional life included over a decade in sales and management with Johnson & Johnson, followed by almost fifteen years as an entrepreneur, having built a business including nineteen Dunkin Donuts. Fred and his wife Jennifer now spend time challenging elected officials to do more. They began a nonprofit organization dedicated to Jaime’s life called 'Orange Ribbons for Jaime.' He has been a regular on TV news programs and myriad online and print media. The nonprofit is now his full-time mission.
Thomas Gabor, formerly Professor of Criminology at Ottawa University, is an international gun policy consultant. An author of 200 works, he has testified in front of Parliamentary committees, served as an advisor to the United Nations, and advised governmental agencies. He is author of Confronting Gun Violence in America and ENOUGH!.
Steve Kerr is an American professional basketball coach and former player who is the head coach of the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association. He is an eight-time NBA champion, having won five titles as a player as well as three with the Warriors as a head coach." – Amazon biography

"Fred Guttenberg, who lost his beloved daughter Jaime in the 2018 Parkland school shooting, and International gun policy consultant Thomas Gabor team up in American Carnage to dismantle some of the most common myths about guns and gun violence.

"A national disgrace. In America, over 40,000 die each year as a result of gun violence. Relative to other advanced countries, the U.S. has a dismal gun violence record. Gun law reforms could reduce the number of gun deaths, but many political challenges stand in the way. A widespread multi-year misinformation assault on truth by the gun lobby and gun-extremists sows doubt about the dangers of pervasive gun ownership, gun carrying, and potential effectiveness of gun laws.

"Debunking popular gun myths. Countering with strong evidence-based research the many slogans and myths repeated incessantly by spokespersons for the gun lobby and its surrogates is essential if we are to have a society where kids can attend school safely and people can work and enjoy life without fear of being shot. Over the last 30 years, the NRA’s campaign to achieve an armed society has succeeded in persuading many Americans that having a gun in the home or carrying a gun makes them safer. The evidence is overwhelming this is not the case. Guns in the home are far more likely to be used against a family member or in a suicide attempt than against an intruder. Tackling this and other myths is critical.

"Myths and slogans exposed as false in American Carnage include:

  • Gun owners frequently use firearms to fend off attackers
  • An armed society is a safer society
  • Guns don’t kill people, people kill people

"If you have read Trigger Points, The Violence Project, Warning Signs, or Fred Guttenberg’s Find the Helpers, American Carnage is a must read."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.1 (8 ratings)
ISBN 978-1684812059 ?
The Bill of Obligations:
The Ten Habits of Good Citizens
Richard Haass
Penguin Press (January 24, 2023)
No Review
"Dr. Richard Haass is president of the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations. An experienced diplomat and policymaker, he served in the Pentagon, State Department, and White House under four presidents, Democrat and Republican alike. A recipient of the Presidential Citizens Medal, the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award, and the Tipperary International Peace Award, he is the author or editor of fifteen other books, including the bestselling The World: A Brief Introduction, A World in Disarray, and Foreign Policy Begins at Home." – Amazon biography

"A provocative guide to how we must reenvision citizenship if American democracy is to survive.

"The United States faces dangerous threats from Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, terrorists, climate change, and future pandemics. The greatest peril to the country, however, comes not from abroad but from within, from none other than ourselves. The question facing us is whether we are prepared to do what is necessary to save our democracy.

"The Bill of Obligations is a bold call for change. In these pages, New York Times bestselling author Richard Haass argues that the very idea of citizenship must be revised and expanded. The Bill of Rights is at the center of our Constitution, yet our most intractable conflicts often emerge from contrasting views as to what our rights ought to be. As former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer pointed out, 'Many of our cases, the most difficult ones, are not about right versus wrong. They are about right versus right.' The lesson is clear: rights alone cannot provide the basis for a functioning, much less flourishing, democracy.

"But there is a cure: to place obligations on the same footing as rights. The ten obligations that Haass introduces here are essential for healing our divisions and safeguarding the country’s future. These obligations reenvision what it means to be an American citizen. They are not a burden but rather commitments that we make to fellow citizens and to the government to uphold democracy and counter the growing apathy, anger, selfishness, division, disinformation, and violence that threaten us all. Through an expert blend of civics, history, and political analysis, this book illuminates how Americans can rediscover and recover the attitudes and behaviors that have contributed so much to this country’s success over the centuries.

"As Richard Haass argues, 'We get the government and the country we deserve. Getting the one we need, however, is up to us.' The Bill of Obligations gives citizens across the political spectrum a plan of action to achieve it."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (205 ratings)
ISBN 978-0525560654 ?
Let them Eat Tweets:
How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality
Jacob S. Hacker & Paul Pierson
Liveright (July 7, 2020)
No Review
"Jacob Hacker is a political scientist at Yale University, and the coauthor of three books, including the New York Times bestseller Winner-Take-All Politics. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut. Paul Pierson is a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, and the coauthor of three books, including the New York Times bestseller Winner-Take-All Politics. He lives in Berkeley, California." – Amazon biography

"The Republican Party appears to be divided between a tax-cutting old guard and a white-nationalist vanguard—and with Donald Trump’s ascendance, the upstarts seem to be winning. Yet how are we to explain that, under Trump, the plutocrats have gotten almost everything they want, including a huge tax cut for corporations and the wealthy, regulation-killing executive actions, and a legion of business-friendly federal judges? Does the GOP represent 'forgotten' Americans? Or does it represent the superrich?

"In Let Them Eat Tweets, best-selling political scientists Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson offer a definitive answer: the Republican Party serves its plutocratic masters to a degree without precedent in modern global history. Conservative parties, by their nature, almost always side with the rich. But when faced with popular resistance, they usually make concessions, allowing some policies that benefit the working and middle classes. After all, how can a political party maintain power in a democracy if it serves only the interests of a narrow and wealthy slice of society?

"Today's Republicans have shown the way, doubling down on a truly radical, elite-benefiting economic agenda while at the same time making increasingly incendiary racial and cultural appeals to their almost entirely white base. Telling a forty-year story, Hacker and Pierson demonstrate that since the early 1980s, when inequality started spiking, extreme tax cutting, union busting, and deregulation have gone hand in hand with extreme race-baiting, outrage stoking, and disinformation. Instead of responding to the real challenges facing voters, the Republican Party offers division and distraction—most prominently, in the racist, nativist bile of the president's Twitter feed.

"As Hacker and Pierson argue, Trump isn't a break with the GOP's recent past. On the contrary, he embodies its tightening embrace of plutocracy and right-wing extremism―a dynamic Hacker and Pierson call 'plutocratic populism.' As Trump and his far-right allies spew hatred and lies, Republicans in Congress and in statehouses attack social programs and funnel more and more money to the top 0.1 percent of Americans. Far from being at war with each other, reactionary plutocrats and right-wing populists have become the two faces of a party that now actively undermines democracy to achieve its goals against the will of the majority of Americans. Drawing on decades of research, Hacker and Pierson authoritatively explain the doom loop of tax cutting and fearmongering that characterizes our era—and reveal how we can fight back."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (224 ratings)
ISBN 978-1631496844 ?
Illiberal America:
A History
Steven Hahn
W. W. Norton & Company (March 19, 2024)
No Review
"Steven Hahn is a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian who studies American political and social movements. His acclaimed works include A Nation Under Our Feet and A Nation Without Borders. He teaches at New York University and lives in New York City and Southold, on Long Island."

"If your reaction to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol was to think, 'That’s not us,' think again: in Illiberal America, a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian uncovers a powerful illiberalism as deep-seated in the American past as the founding ideals.

"A storm of illiberalism, building in the United States for years, unleashed its destructive force in the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021. The attack on American democracy and images of mob violence led many to recoil, thinking 'That’s not us.' But now we must think again, for Steven Hahn shows in his startling new history that illiberalism has deep roots in our past. To those who believe that the ideals announced in the Declaration of Independence set us apart as a nation, Hahn shows that Americans have long been animated by competing values, equally deep-seated, in which the illiberal will of the community overrides individual rights, and often protects itself by excluding perceived threats, whether on grounds of race, religion, gender, economic status, or ideology.

"Driven by popular movements and implemented through courts and legislation, illiberalism is part of the American bedrock. The United States was born a republic of loosely connected states and localities that demanded control of their domestic institutions, including slavery. As white settlement expanded west and immigration exploded in eastern cities, the democracy of the 1830s fueled expulsions of Blacks, Native Americans, Catholics, Mormons, and abolitionists. After the Civil War, southern states denied new constitutional guarantees of civil rights and enforced racial exclusions in everyday life. Illiberalism was modernized during the Progressive movement through advocates of eugenics who aimed to reduce the numbers of racial and ethnic minorities as well as the poor. The turmoil of the 1960s enabled George Wallace to tap local fears of unrest and build support outside the South, a politics adopted by Richard Nixon in 1968. Today, with illiberalism shaping elections and policy debates over guns, education, and abortion, it is urgent to understand its long history, and how that history bears on the present crisis."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (38 ratings)
ISBN 978-0393635928 ?
The Righteous Mind:
Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
Jonathan Haidt
Pantheon; Illustrated edition (March 13, 2012)
No Review
"Jonathan Haidt is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University's Stern School of Business. He is the author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. He lives in New York City."

"Drawing on his twenty-five years of groundbreaking research on moral psychology, Jonathan Haidt shows how moral judgments arise not from reason but from gut feelings. He shows why liberals, conservatives, and libertarians have such different intuitions about right and wrong, and he shows why each side is actually right about many of its central concerns.

"In this subtle yet accessible book, Haidt gives you the key to understanding the miracle of human cooperation, as well as the curse of our eternal divisions and conflicts. If you’re ready to trade in anger for understanding, read The Righteous Mind."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (10,967 ratings)
ISBN 978-0307377906 ?
The Problem of Democracy:
America, the Middle East, and the Rise and Fall of an Idea
Shadi Hamid
Oxford University Press (October 15, 2022)
No Review
"Shadi Hamid is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, research professor of Islamic Studies at Fuller Seminary, and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He was named one of the world's top 50 thinkers by Prospect magazine in 2019. Hamid is the author of Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World, which was shortlisted for the 2017 Lionel Gelber Prize for best book on foreign affairs, and co-editor of Rethinking Political Islam. His first book, Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East, was named a Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2014."

"Shadi Hamid reimagines the ongoing debate on democracy's merits and proposes an ambitious agenda for reviving the lost art of democracy promotion in the world's most undemocratic regions.

"What happens when democracy produces 'bad' outcomes? Is democracy good because of its outcomes or despite them? This 'democratic dilemma' is one of the most persistent, vexing problems for America abroad, particularly in the Middle East—we want democracy in theory but not necessarily in practice.

"When Islamist parties rise to power through free elections, the United States has too often been ambivalent or opposed, preferring instead pliable dictators. With this legacy of democratic disrespect in mind, and drawing on new interviews with top American officials, Shadi Hamid explores universal questions of morality, power, and hypocrisy. Why has the United States failed so completely to live up to its own stated ideals in the Arab world? And is it possible for it to change?

"In The Problem of Democracy, Hamid offers an ambitious reimagining of this ongoing debate and argues for 'democratic minimalism' as a path to resolving democratic dilemmas in the Middle East and beyond. In the seemingly eternal tension between democracy and liberalism, recognized by the ancient Greeks and the American founders alike, it may be time to prioritize one over the other, rather than acting as if the two are intertwined when increasingly they are not.

"At the end of the Cold War, the democratic idea was victorious, so much so that it took on more meaning than it could bear. Democracy became a means to other ends, whether it was liberalism, economic development, or cultural progress. What if, instead, democracy was reconceptualized as its own end? What if the people are right even when they're wrong?

"The problem of democracy is no longer just a Middle Eastern problem. The polarizing effects of identity, culture, and religion are now haunting the world's oldest democracies. At home, a growing number of Americans are realizing that respecting election results when the other side wins is easier said than done. To look then at the democratic dilemma abroad is to consider a deeper set of questions around why we believe democracy is good as well as whether we think it is good for other nations and cultures."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (10 ratings)
ISBN 978-0197579466 ?
Shadow State:
Murder, Mayhem, and Russia's Remaking of the West
Luke Harding
Harper (June 30, 2020)
No Review
"Luke Harding is a journalist, writer, and award-winning correspondent with the Guardian. He has reported from Delhi, Berlin, and Moscow, and covered wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Between 2007 and 2011, he was the Guardian's Moscow bureau chief. In February 2011, the Kremlin deported him from the country in the first case of its kind since the Cold War. He is the author of several books, most recently the number one New York Times bestseller Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win." – Amazon biography

"March 2018. Two Russian assassins arrive in a provincial English city to kill a former officer from Russia's GRU intelligence agency. His crime? Passing secrets to British spies. The poison? A lethal nerve agent, novichok. The attempted execution was a reminder — as if one were needed — of Russia's contempt for international norms. The Soviet Union and its doctrine are long gone, but the playbook used by the Kremlin's spies during that long confrontation with the West is back. And the underlying goal remains the same: to undermine democracy and exploit divisions within American and European society and politics.

"Moscow's support for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election has grown into the biggest political scandal of modern times. Its American players are well-known. In Shadow State, award-winning journalist and bestselling author Luke Harding reveals the Russians behind the story: the spies, hackers and internet trolls. Harding charts how the Kremlin has updated Communist-era methods of influence and propaganda for the age of Facebook and Twitter, and considers the compelling question of our age: what exactly does Vladimir Putin have on President Trump?

"Similar to those of the Cold War, Putin's ambitions are truly global. His emissaries include oligarchs, bankers, lawyers, mercenaries, and agents of influence. They roam from Salisbury to Helsinki, Ukraine to Central Africa, London to Washington, D.C. Shadow State is the singular account of how the Kremlin seeks to reshape the world, to divide the US from its European friends, and to remake America in its own dark and kleptocratic image. This is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand how our politics came to be so chaotic and divided. Nothing less than the future of Western democracy is at stake."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (652 ratings)
ISBN 978-0062966001 ?
Socialism: Past and Future
Michael Harrington
Arcade; Critical edition (September 22, 2020)
No Review
"Michael Harrington was an American democratic socialist, bestselling writer, political activist, professor of political science, NPR commentator, atheist, and founder of the Democratic Socialists of America. He is also credited with coining the term 'neoconservatism' in the 1970s. A major figure of the American left, Harrington is the author of eighteen books including The Other America: Poverty in the United States, The Social-Industrial Complex, The Twilight of Capitalism, and his autobiography The Long Distance Runner. He passed away in 1989."

"A Thoughtful, Compassionate Treatise on the Role of Democratic Socialism in Modern Society.

"On learning his cancer was inoperable, renowned intellectual Michael Harrington simply asked the doctors to keep him alive long enough 'to complete a summary statement of the themes I had thought of throughout an activist life.' And they did. Socialism: Past and Future is prominent thinker and democratic socialist Michael Harrington’s final contribution: a thoughtful, intelligent, and compassionate treatise on the role of socialism both past and present in modern society. He is convincing in his application of classic socialist theory to current economic situations and modern political systems, and he examines the validity of the idea of 'visionary gradualism' in bringing about a socialist agenda. He believes that if freedom and justice are to survive into the next century, the socialist movement will be a critical factor. This is the definitive text on the role of socialism throughout history which Publishers Weekly calls 'succinct, readable' and the Los Angeles Times Book Review says is 'magnificent . . . more than anything, this is a book about hope.'

"In this passionate book, the late Michael Harrington draws on a lifetime of thinking and politicking to reject much that has passed for socialism and to define the new forms that will make it the only 'hope for human freedom and justice' (Foreign Affairs) in the twenty-first century."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (163 ratings)
ISBN 978-1950691517 ?
Black Women, Ivory Tower:
Revealing the Lies of White Supremacy in American Education
Jasmine L. Harris
Broadleaf Books (January 16, 2024)
No Review
"Dr. Jasmine L. Harris is associate professor of African American Studies and coordinator of the African American Studies Program in the Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Texas, San Antonio. A rising voice in the study of Black lives in the US, Dr. Harris's research and teaching focus on the experiences of Black people in predominantly white schools, specifically the social, physical, and economic impacts of their presence there. She has been published in the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, Boston Globe, Baltimore Sun, Women's Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy."

"A first-of-its-kind compelling exploration of what it means to be a Black woman in higher education.

"Black women are heading to college in record numbers, and more and more Black women are teaching in higher education. But increasing numbers in college don't guarantee our safety there. Willpower and grit may improve achievement for Black people in school, but they don't secure our belonging. In fact, the very structure of higher education ensures that we're treated as guests, outsiders to the institutional family—outnumbered and unwelcome.

"Dr. Jasmine Harris shares her own experiences attempting to be a Vassar girl and reckoning with a lack of legacy and agency. Moving beyond the "data points", Dr. Harris examines the day-to-day impacts on Black women as individuals, the longer-term consequences to our professional lives, and the generational costs to our entire families.

" 'I want to arm as many Black girls and women as I can with the knowledge about these spaces that I lacked,' says Dr. Harris. 'By laying bare my own traumas, and those of Black women before me, I am providing them the tools to protect themselves, with an understanding of how deliberately many institutions will try to undercut them.'

"Trial and error has been required of Black students to navigate systems of discrimination and disadvantage. But this book now offers useful support, illuminating the community of Black women dealing with similar issues. The author's story is not unusual, nor are her interactions anomalies. Black Women, Ivory Tower explores why."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (4 ratings)
ISBN 978-1506489834 ?
Battle of Ink and Ice:
A Sensational Story of News Barons, North Pole Explorers, and the Making of Modern Media
Darrell Hartman
Viking (June 6, 2023)
No Review
"Darrell Hartman has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The Paris Review, Travel + Leisure, Condé Nast Traveler, and Granta. He holds a B.A. in literature from Yale University and is a member of The Explorers Club in New York. A native Mainer, he now lives with his wife, Dana, in the Catskills region of New York."

"A sixty-year saga of frostbite and fake news that follows the no-holds-barred battle between two legendary explorers to reach the North Pole, and the newspapers which stopped at nothing to get–and sell–the story.

In the fall of 1909, a pair of bitter contests captured the world’s attention. The American explorers Robert Peary and Frederick Cook both claimed to have discovered the North Pole, sparking a vicious feud that was unprecedented in international scientific and geographic circles. At the same time, the rivalry between two powerful New York City newspapers—the storied Herald and the ascendant Times—fanned the flames of the so-called polar controversy, as each paper financially and reputationally committed itself to an opposing explorer and fought desperately to defend him.

The Herald was owned and edited by James Gordon Bennett, Jr., an eccentric playboy whose nose for news was matched only by his appetite for debauchery and champagne. The Times was published by Adolph Ochs, son of Jewish immigrants, who’d improbably rescued the paper from extinction and turned it into an emerging powerhouse. The battle between Cook and Peary would have enormous consequences for both newspapers, and help to determine the future of corporate media.

"Battle of Ink and Ice presents a frank portrayal of Arctic explorers, brave men who both inspired and deceived the public. It also sketches a vivid portrait of the newspapers that funded, promoted, narrated, and often distorted their exploits. It recounts a sixty-year saga of frostbite and fake news, one that culminates with an unjustly overlooked chapter in the origin story of the modern New York Times.

"By turns tragic and absurd, Battle of Ink and Ice brims with contemporary relevance, touching as it does on themes of class, celebrity, the ever-quickening news cycle, and the benefits and pitfalls of an increasingly interconnected world. Above all, perhaps, its cast of characters testifies—colorfully and compellingly—to the ongoing role of personality and publicity in American cultural life as the Gilded Age gave way to the twentieth century—the American century."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (171 ratings)
ISBN 978-0062966001 ?
The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America
Thom Hartmann
Alameda, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers (October 1, 2019)
No Review
"Thom Hartmann is a progressive national and internationally syndicated talk show host. Talkers Magazine named him America's #1 most important progressive host, and the host of one of the top 10 talk radio shows in the country every year for over a decade. A four-time recipient of the Project Censored Award, Hartmann is also a New York Times bestselling author of twenty-four books, translated in multiple languages." – Amazon biography

"Thom Hartmann, the most popular progressive radio host in America and a New York Times bestselling author, lays out a sweeping and largely unknown history of the Supreme Court of the United States, from Alexander Hamilton's arguments against judicial review to modern-day debates, with key examples of cases where the Supreme Court overstepped its constitutional powers using the excuse of judicial review, and possible solutions.

"Hartmann explains how the Supreme Court has spilled beyond its Constitutional powers in a series of rulings, including how it turned our elections over to American and foreign oligarchs with twin decisions in the 1970s, setting the stage for the very richest of that day to bring Ronald Reagan to power.

"You'll hear the story of a series of Republican presidents who used fraud and treason to secure their elections, and how the GOP knew it but looked the other way because 'the Court is hanging in the balance.' A court that then went on to gut hundreds of pieces of progressive legislation, as Republicans had hoped.

Ironically, Hartmann points out, John Roberts (now the Court's Chief Justice), when he worked for Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, came up with a novel theory about how Congress could go around the Supreme Court. His goal was to effectively reverse Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board, but in the process provides us with an elegant legal argument and legislative solution that could, in an emergency, be used by a progressive Congress and president to clean up much of the damage the Court has done in past decades.

"Thomas Jefferson argued it is not the role of the Supreme Court to decide what the Constitution means, but rather the duty of the people themselves (and how they can do it). America may soon be forced to decide if it's going to continue to be governed as a constitutional monarchy, with nine unelected royals who have final say on everything, or if we are to revert to being a democratic republic as was largely the case before the late 1800s when America's first industrial era oligarchs corrupted the Court."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (342 ratings)
ISBN 978-1523085941 ?
The Hidden History of the American Dream:
The Demise of the Middle Class―and How to Rescue Our Future
(The Thom Hartmann Hidden History Series)
Thom Hartmann
Alameda, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers (October 8, 2024)
No Review

"Thom Hartmann is the four-time Project Censored Award-winning, New York Times best-selling author of 25 books currently in print in over a dozen languages on five continents. Hartmann is also an internationally known speaker on culture and communications, an author, and an innovator in the fields of psychiatry, ecology, and economics.

"A guest faculty member at Goddard College in Vermont, he also synthesized the 'Younger/Older Culture model' for describing the underpinnings - and possible solutions - to the world's ecological and socio-political crises, suggesting that many of our problems are grounded in cultural 'stories' which go back thousands of years.

"Talkers Magazine named Thom Hartmann as the most important progressive talk show host in America for the past decade, and for three of the past five years the #1 most important progressive host, in their 'Heavy Hundred' ranking. His radio show is syndicated on for-profit radio stations nationwide by WYD Media, on non-profit and community stations nationwide by Pacifica, across the entire North American continent on SiriusXM Satellite radio, on cable systems nationwide by Cable Radio Network (CRN) and Free Speech TV, on its own YouTube channel, via subscription podcasts, worldwide through the US American Forces Network, and through the Thom Hartmann App in the App Store. The radio show is also simulcast as TV in realtime into nearly 60 million US and Canadian homes by the Free Speech TV Network on Dish Network, DirectTV, and cable TV systems nationwide."

"America’s most popular progressive radio host and New York Times bestselling author explores the fall of the American Dream and the steps we can take to bring it back.

"The widening wealth gap is all too familiar to many Millennials and GenZers, especially when home ownership and the lack of debt seem like faraway fantasies. And it’s no surprise when they only hold about 4.6% of the country’s wealth while Boomers held 22% at around the same age. So what happened to the promise of the American Dream?

"In this new, final entry of his celebrated Hidden History Series, Thom Hartmann uncovers the rise of the American middle class through the progressive policies of FDR, through to its downfall with the increasing privatization and economic deregulations of the Reagan era.

He also explores potential solutions including:

  • Wealth and inheritance taxes to lessen economic inequality
  • Supporting unions through increasing labor rights
  • Renationalizing public spaces and transportation

"The American Dream often remains just a dream for many, but this book highlights what needs to be done to take it back and help make it a reality for us all."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (15 ratings)
ISBN 978-1523007288 ?
Cheap Speech:
How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics―and How to Cure It
Richard L. Hasen
Yale University Press (March 8, 2022)
No Review
"Richard L. Hasen is Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. His previous books include The Voting Wars, Plutocrats United, The Justice of Contradictions, and Election Meltdown. He lives in Studio City, CA." – Amazon biography

"What can be done consistent with the First Amendment to ensure that American voters can make informed election decisions and hold free elections amid a flood of virally spread disinformation and the collapse of local news reporting? How should American society counter the actions of people like former President Donald J. Trump, who used social media to convince millions of his followers to doubt the integrity of U.S. elections and helped foment a violent insurrection? What can we do to minimize disinformation campaigns aimed at suppressing voter turnout?

"With piercing insight into the current debates over free speech, censorship, and Big Tech’s responsibilities, Richard L. Hasen proposes legal and social measures to restore Americans’ access to reliable information on which democracy depends. In an era when quack COVID treatments and bizarre QAnon theories have entered mainstream, this book explains how to assure both freedom of ideas and a commitment to truth."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.1 (29 ratings)
ISBN 978-0300259377 ?
A Real Right To Vote:
How a Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard American Democracy
Richard L. Hasen
Princeton University Press (February 20, 2024)
No Review
"Richard L. Hasen is professor of law and political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and director of UCLA Law’s Safeguarding Democracy Project. His previous books include Cheap Speech, The Voting Wars, Plutocrats United, The Justice of Contradictions, and Election Meltdown. He lives in Studio City, CA."

"Throughout history, too many Americans have been disenfranchised or faced needless barriers to voting. Part of the blame falls on the Constitution, which does not contain an affirmative right to vote. The Supreme Court has made matters worse by failing to protect voting rights and limiting Congress’s ability to do so. The time has come for voters to take action and push for an amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee this right for all.

"Drawing on troubling stories of state attempts to disenfranchise military voters, women, African Americans, students, former felons, Native Americans, and others, Richard Hasen argues that American democracy can and should do better in assuring that all eligible voters can cast a meaningful vote that will be fairly counted. He shows how a constitutional right to vote can deescalate voting wars between political parties that lead to endless rounds of litigation and undermine voter confidence in elections, and can safeguard democracy against dangerous attempts at election subversion like the one we witnessed in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.

"The path to a constitutional amendment is undoubtedly hard, especially in these polarized times. A Real Right to Vote explains what’s in it for conservatives who have resisted voting reform and reveals how the pursuit of an amendment can yield tangible dividends for democracy long before ratification."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.0 (1 rating)
ISBN 978-0691257716 ?
The Internationalists:
How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World
Oona A. Hathaway & Scott J. Shapiro
Simon & Schuster; Advance Reading Copy edition (September 12, 2017)
No Review
"Oona A. Hathaway is the Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law at Yale Law School and the Director of the Center for Global Legal Challenges. She has published essays and opinion pieces in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, and Foreign Policy. She served as the Special Counsel to the General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Defense in 2014-2015, for which she was awarded the Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Excellence. She is a member of the Advisory Committee on International Law for the Legal Adviser of the US Department of State and an active member of the US Supreme Court bar. She earned her BA from Harvard College and a JD from Yale Law School, where she was Editor-in-Chief of The Yale Law Journal. She lives in New Haven, Connecticut. Scott J. Shapiro is the Charles F. Southmayd Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at Yale Law School, where he is the Director of the Center for Law and Philosophy. He is also the Visiting Quain Professor of Jurisprudence at University College, London. He earned his BA and PhD degrees in philosophy from Columbia University and a JD from Yale Law School, where he was senior editor of The Yale Law Journal. He is the author of Legality and editor of The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and the Philosophy of Law. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut."

"A bold and provocative history of the men who fought to outlaw war and how an often overlooked treaty signed in 1928 was among the most transformative events in modern history.

"On a hot summer afternoon in 1928, the leaders of the world assembled in Paris to outlaw war. Within the year, the treaty signed that day, known as the Peace Pact, had been ratified by nearly every state in the world. War, for the first time in history, had become illegal the world over. But the promise of that summer day was fleeting. Within a decade of its signing, each state that had gathered in Paris to renounce war was at war. And in the century that followed, the Peace Pact was dismissed as an act of folly and an unmistakable failure. This book argues that that understanding is inaccurate, and that the Peace Pact ushered in a sustained march toward peace that lasts to this day.

"The Internationalists tells the story of the Peace Pact by placing it in the long history of international law from the seventeenth century through the present, tracing this rich history through a fascinating and diverse array of lawyers, politicians and intellectuals—Hugo Grotius, Nishi Amane, Salmon Levinson, James Shotwell, Sumner Welles, Carl Schmitt, Hersch Lauterpacht, and Sayyid Qutb. It tells of a centuries-long struggle of ideas over the role of war in a just world order. It details the brutal world of conflict the Peace Pact helped extinguish, and the subsequent era where tariffs and sanctions take the place of tanks and gunships.

"The Internationalists examines with renewed appreciation an international system that has outlawed wars of aggression and brought unprecedented stability to the world map. Accessible and gripping, this book will change the way we view the history of the twentieth century—and how we must work together to protect the global order the internationalists fought to make possible."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (125 ratings)
ISBN 978-1501109867 ?
The Age of Reagan:
The Fall of the Old Liberal Order, 1964-1980
Steven F. Hayward
Prima Publishing, Forum (August 23, 2001)
No Review
"Steven F. Hayward is a senior fellow of the Pacific Research Institute, a public policy think-tank based in San Francisco, and a contributing editor for Reason magazine. He holds a doctorate in history from the Claremont Graduate School."

"The Age of Reagan brings to life the tumultuous decade and a half that preceded Ronald Reagan's ascent to the White House. Based on scores of interviews and years of research, Steven F. Hayward takes us on an engrossing journey through the most politically divisive years the United States has had to endure since the decade before the Civil War. Overseas, we were embroiled in a war we couldn't win; at home our streets had become battlefields; and in Washington, the old liberal order was collapsing under the weight of a long string of failed policies. 'It seemed that an era of American optimism and progress had come to a close,' Hayward writes. 'The concatenation of Vietnam, Watergate, the recurrent energy crisis, the swooning economy, the increasingly disorderly world scene, and the failed presidencies associated with these events robbed Americans of their native optimism for the future.'

"Meanwhile, from out of the West arose a new conservative movement led by Ronald Reagan, a one-time Hollywood actor whose speech in 1964 in support of the doomed candidacy of Barry Goldwater not only electrified a national television audience but also created a political star who would change the course of history.

"With meticulous detail, Hayward captures an America at war with itself—and an era whose reverberations we feel to this very day. He brings new insight into the profound failure of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, the oddly liberal nature of Richard Nixon's administration, the significance of Reagan's years as California's governor, and the sudden-death drama of his near defeat of Gerald Ford in the 1976 Republican primary, the listlessness of Jimmy Carter's leadership, and the political earthquake that was Reagan's victorious presidential campaign in 1980.

"Provocative, authoritative, and majestic in scope, The Age of Reagan is an unforgettable account of the rebirth and triumph of the American spirit."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (80 ratings)
ISBN 978-0761513377 ?
The Age of Reagan:
The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989
Steven F. Hayward
Crown Forum (August 25, 2009)
No Review
"Steven F. Hayward is the author of The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order, 1964—1980, the first of two volumes on Ronald Reagan and his political legacy. He has also written Greatness: Reagan, Churchill, and the Making of Extraordinary Leaders; The Real Jimmy Carter; and Churchill on Leadership. He is an F. K. Weyerhaeuser fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute. He divides his time between Washington, D.C., and California."

"Hero. It was a word most Americans weren’t using much in 1980. As they waited on gas and unemployment lines, as their enemies abroad grew ever more aggressive, and as one after another their leaders failed them, Americans began to believe the country’s greatness was fading. Yet within two years the recession and gas shortage were over. Before the decade was out, the Cold War was won, the Berlin Wall came crashing down, and America was once more at the height of prosperity. And the nation had a new hero: Ronald Wilson Reagan.

"Reagan’s greatness is today widely acknowledged, but his legacy is still misunderstood. Democrats accept the effectiveness of his foreign policy but ignore the success of his domestic programs; Republicans cheer his victories over liberalism while ignoring his bitter battles with his own party’s establishment; historians speak of his eloquence and charisma but gloss over his brilliance in policy and clarity of vision.

"From Steven F. Hayward, the critically acclaimed author of The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order, comes the first complete, true story of this misunderstood, controversial, and deeply consequential presidency. Hayward pierces the myths and media narratives, masterfully documenting exactly what transpired behind the scenes during Reagan’s landmark presidency and revealing his real legacy.

"What emerges is a compelling portrait of a man who arrived in office after thirty years of practical schooling in the ways of politics and power, possessing a clear vision of where he wanted to take the nation and a willingness to take firm charge of his own administration. His relentless drive to shrink government and lift the burdens of high taxation was born of a deep appreciation for the grander blessings of liberty. And it was this same outlook, extended to the world’s politically and economically enslaved nations, that shaped his foreign policy and lent his statecraft its great unifying power.

"Over a decade in the making, and filled with fresh revelations, surprising insights, and an unerring eye for the telling detail, this provocative and authoritative book recalls a time when true leadership inspired a fallen nation to pick itself up, hold its head high, and take up the cause of freedom once again."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (64 ratings)
ISBN 978-1400053575 ?
American Fascists:
The Christian Right and the War On America
Chris Hedges
Free Press (January, 2007)
No Review
"Chris Hedges is a cultural critic and author who was a foreign correspondent for nearly two decades for The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and National Public Radio. He reported from Latin American, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He was a member of the team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for The New York Times coverage of global terrorism, and he received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. Hedges, who holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, is the author of the bestsellers American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle and was a National Book Critics Circle finalist for his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He is a Senior Fellow at The Nation Institute and writes an online column for the web site Truthdig. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and the University of Toronto."

"Twenty-five years ago, when Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists first spoke of the United States becoming a Christian nation that would build a global Christian empire, it was hard to take such hyperbolic rhetoric seriously. Today, such language no longer sounds like hyperbole but poses, instead, a very real threat to our freedom and our way of life. In American Fascists, Chris Hedges, veteran journalist and author of the National Book Award finalist War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, challenges the Christian Right's religious legitimacy and argues that at its core it is a mass movement fueled by unbridled nationalism and a hatred for the open society.

"Hedges, who grew up in rural parishes in upstate New York where his father was a Presbyterian pastor, attacks the movement as someone steeped in the Bible and Christian tradition. He points to the hundreds of senators and members of Congress who have earned between 80 and 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups as one of many signs that the movement is burrowing deep inside the American government to subvert it. The movement's call to dismantle the wall between church and state and the intolerance it preaches against all who do not conform to its warped vision of a Christian America are pumped into tens of millions of American homes through Christian television and radio stations, as well as reinforced through the curriculum in Christian schools. The movement's yearning for apocalyptic violence and its assault on dispassionate, intellectual inquiry are laying the foundation for a new, frightening America.

"American Fascists, which includes interviews and coverage of events such as pro-life rallies and weeklong classes on conversion techniques, examines the movement's origins, its driving motivations and its dark ideological underpinnings. Hedges argues that the movement currently resembles the young fascist movements in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and '30s, movements that often masked the full extent of their drive for totalitarianism and were willing to make concessions until they achieved unrivaled power. The Christian Right, like these early fascist movements, does not openly call for dictatorship, nor does it use physical violence to suppress opposition. In short, the movement is not yet revolutionary. But the ideological architecture of a Christian fascism is being cemented in place. The movement has roused its followers to a fever pitch of despair and fury. All it will take, Hedges writes, is one more national crisis on the order of September 11 for the Christian Right to make a concerted drive to destroy American democracy. The movement awaits a crisis. At that moment they will reveal themselves for what they truly are — the American heirs to fascism. Hedges issues a potent, impassioned warning. We face an imminent threat. His book reminds us of the dangers liberal, democratic societies face when they tolerate the intolerant."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (880 ratings)
ISBN 978-0743284431 ?
The World As It Is:
Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress
Chris Hedges
Nation Books (April, 2011)
My Review
"Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. He spent nearly two decades as a correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans, with fifteen years at the New York Times. He is the author of numerous bestselling books, including Empire of Illusion; Death of the Liberal Class; War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning; and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which he co-wrote with Joe Sacco. He writes a weekly column for the online magazine Truthdig. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey."

"Drawing on two decades of experience as a war correspondent and based on his numerous columns for Truthdig, Chris Hedges presents The World As It Is, a panorama of the American empire at home and abroad, from the coarsening effect of America's War on Terror to the front lines in the Middle East and South Asia and the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"Underlying his reportage is a constant struggle with the nature of war and its impact on human civilization. 'War is always about betrayal,' Hedges notes. 'It is about betrayal of the young by the old, of cynics by idealists, and of soldiers and Marines by politicians. Society's institutions, including our religious institutions, which mold us into compliant citizens, are unmasked.' "

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (187 ratings)
ISBN 978-1568586403 ?
Messengers of the Right:
Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics
Nicole Hemmer
University of Pennsylvania Press; Reprint Edition (August 17, 2018)
No Review
"Nicole Hemmer is Assistant Professor of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Center." – Amazon biography

"From Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to Glenn Beck and Matt Drudge, Americans are accustomed to thinking of right-wing media as integral to contemporary conservatism. But today's well-known personalities make up the second generation of broadcasting and publishing activists. Messengers of the Right tells the story of the little-known first generation.

"Beginning in the late 1940s, activists working in media emerged as leaders of the American conservative movement. They not only started an array of enterprises—publishing houses, radio programs, magazines, book clubs, television shows—they also built the movement. They coordinated rallies, founded organizations, ran political campaigns, and mobilized voters. While these media activists disagreed profoundly on tactics and strategy, they shared a belief that political change stemmed not just from ideas but from spreading those ideas through openly ideological communications channels.

"In Messengers of the Right, Nicole Hemmer explains how conservative media became the institutional and organizational nexus of the conservative movement, transforming audiences into activists and activists into a reliable voting base. Hemmer also explores how the idea of liberal media bias emerged, why conservatives have been more successful at media activism than liberals, and how the right remade both the Republican Party and American news media. Messengers of the Right follows broadcaster Clarence Manion, book publisher Henry Regnery, and magazine publisher William Rusher as they evolved from frustrated outsiders in search of a platform into leaders of one of the most significant and successful political movements of the twentieth century."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (68 ratings)
ISBN 978-0812224306 ?
Partisans:
The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s
Nicole Hemmer
Basic Books (August 30, 2022)
No Review
"Nicole Hemmer is associate professor of history and director of the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Center for the Study of the Presidency at Vanderbilt University. She is a columnist at CNN, and hosts the podcasts Past Present and This Day in Esoteric Political History. In 2017, she co-founded Made by History, the historical analysis section of the Washington Post, where she was an editor until 2020." – Amazon biography

"Ronald Reagan has long been lionized for building a conservative coalition sustained by an optimistic vision of American  exceptionalism, small government, and free markets. But as historian Nicole Hemmer reveals, the Reagan coalition was short-lived; it fell apart as soon as its charismatic leader left office. In the 1990s — a decade that has yet to be recognized as the breeding ground for today’s polarizing politics — changing demographics and the emergence of a new political-entertainment media fueled the rise of combative far-right politicians and pundits. These partisans, from Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich to Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham, forged a new American right that emphasized anti-globalism, appeals to white resentment, and skepticism about democracy itself.

"Partisans is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the crisis of American politics today."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (71 ratings)
ISBN 978-1541646889 ?
Unmaking the Presidency:
Donald Trump's War on the World's Most Powerful Office
Susan Hennessey & Benjamin Wittes
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (January 21, 2020)
No Review
"Susan Hennessey is executive editor and editor in chief of Lawfare. A senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and CNN contributor, she was previously an attorney at the National Security Agency. Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of Law and the Long War and The Future of Violence, among other books." – Amazon biography

"The extraordinary authority of the U.S. presidency has no parallel in the democratic world. Today that authority resides in the hands of one man, Donald J. Trump. But rarely if ever has the nature of a president clashed more profoundly with the nature of the office. Unmaking the Presidency tells the story of the confrontation between a person and the institution he almost wholly embodies.

"From the moment of his inauguration, Trump has challenged our deepest expectations of the presidency. But what are those expectations, where did they come from, and how great is the damage? As editors of the 'invaluable' (The New York Times) Lawfare website, Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes have attracted a large audience to their hard-hitting and highly informed commentary on the controversies surrounding the Trump administration. In this book, they situate Trump-era scandals and outrages in the deeper context of the presidency itself. How should we understand the oath of office when it is taken by a man who may not know what it means to preserve, protect, and defend something other than himself? What aspects of Trump are radically different from past presidents and what aspects have historical antecedents? When has he simply built on his predecessors' misdeeds, and when has he invented categories of misrule entirely his own?

"By setting Trump in the light of history, Hennessey and Wittes provide a crucial and durable account of a presidency like no other."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (201 ratings)
ISBN 978-0374175368 ?
The Truth about Immigration:
Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers
Zeke Hernandez
St. Martin's Press (June 4, 2024)
No Review
"Zeke Hernandez is the Max and Bernice Garchik Family Presidential Associate Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. A thought leader in the areas of global and corporate strategy, Hernandez has won an unprecedented three consecutive Emerging Scholar awards and was selected by Poets & Quants as one of the Best 40 Under 40 business professors in the world. His research has been published in scholarly journals and profiled by media outlets such as NPR, Forbes, and the Wall Street Journal. He holds bachelors and masters degrees in accounting from Brigham Young University and a PhD in business administration from the University of Minnesota."

"The go-to book on immigration: fact-based, comprehensive, and nonpartisan.

"Immigration is one of the most controversial topics in the United States and everywhere else. Pundits, politicians, and the public usually depict immigrants as either villains or victims. The villain narrative is that immigrants pose a threat―to our economy because they steal our jobs; our way of life because they change our culture; and to our safety and laws because of their criminality. The victim argument tells us that immigrants are needy outsiders―the poor, huddled masses whom we must help at our own cost if necessary. But the data clearly debunks both narratives. From jobs, investment, and innovation to cultural vitality and national security, more immigration has an overwhelmingly positive impact on everything that makes a society successful.

"In The Truth About Immigration, Wharton professor Zeke Hernandez draws from nearly 20 years of research to answer all the big questions about immigration. He combines moving personal stories with rigorous research to offer an accessible, apolitical, and evidence-based look at how newcomers affect our local communities and our nation. You'll learn about the overlooked impact of immigrants on investment and job creation; realize how much we take for granted the novel technologies, products, and businesses newcomers create; get the facts straight about perennial concerns like jobs, crime, and undocumented immigrants; and gain new perspectives on misunderstood issues such as the border, taxes, and assimilation.

"Most books making a case for immigration tell you that immigration is good for immigrants. This book is all about how newcomers benefit you, your community, and your country. Skeptics fear that newcomers compete economically with locals because of their similarities and fail to socially assimilate because of their differences. You'll see that it's exactly the opposite: newcomers bring enduring economic benefits because of their differences and contribute positively to society because of their similarities. Destined to become the go-to book on one of the most important issues of our time, this book turns fear into hope by proving a simple truth: immigrants are essential for economically prosperous and socially vibrant nations."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (55 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250288240 ?
State Capture:
How Conservative Activists, Big Businesses, and Wealthy Donors Reshaped the American States — and the Nation
Alex Hertel-Fernandez
Oxford University Press (February 4, 2019)
No Review
"Alex Hertel-Fernandez is an Assistant Professor in Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. His research has appeared in the American Prospect, Democracy Journal, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post, as well as numerous scholarly journals. He is also the author of Politics at Work (Oxford, 2018)." – Amazon biography

"Most Americans pay little attention to the massive number of elections that occur at the state level every year. Yet cumulatively, a party's success in state-level races across the country can produce major shifts in policymaking and governance. That is precisely what has happened in the US since 2010. In a wave election that year, the Republican Party began their ascendancy in state-level elections, and by 2016 had solidified their dominance. The party now fully controls 25 state legislatures and governorships-one of the largest advantages either party has had since the New Deal.

"After the GOP wave, a broad swathe of states began considering and enacting a near-identical set of conservative priorities-often even using the exact same text. Where did this flood of new legislation come from? How did so many states arrive at the same proposals at precisely the same time? As Alexander Hertel-Fernandez shows in the eye-opening State Capture, the answer can be found in a trio of powerful interest groups: the Koch Brothers-run Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and the State Policy Network (SPN). Drawing from an impressive evidence base, Hertel-Fernandez explains how, since the 1970s, conservative activists, wealthy donors, and big businesses constructed a right-wing "troika" of overlapping and influential lobbying groups.

"But it is about more than this. It also teases out how conservative-corporate mobilization has fostered epochal shifts in the American political economy: the decline of unions, party polarization, and the skyrocketing concentration of wealth. State Capture will be essential reading for anyone interested in understanding contemporary American politics."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (20 ratings)
ISBN 978-0190870799 ?
The Securitarian Personality:
What Really Motivates Trump's Base and Why It Matters for the Post-Trump Era
John R. Hibbing
Oxford University Press (September 1, 2020)
No Review
John R. Hibbing is the Foundation Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His previous works include Stealth Democracy and Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Biology of Political Differences. He has received nine National Science Foundation grants, been named a NATO Fellow in Science and a Guggenheim Fellow, and appeared on Star Talk, NPR's Hidden Brain, and The Daily Show." – Amazon biography

"The Authoritarian Personality, which was published by Theordor Adorno and a set of colleagues in the 1950s, was the first broad-based empirical attempt to explain why certain individuals are attracted to the authoritarian, even fascist, leaders that dominated the political scene in the 1930s and 1940s. Today, the concept has been applied to leaders ranging from Trump to Viktor Orban to Rodrigo Duterte. But is it really accurate to label Trump supporters as authoritarians?

"In The Securitarian Personality, John R. Hibbing argues that an intense desire for authority is not central to those constituting Trump's base. Drawing from participant observation, focus groups, and especially an original, nationwide survey of the American public that included over 1,000 ardent Trump supporters, Hibbing demonstrates that what Trump's base really craves is actually a specific form of security. Trump supporters do not strive for security in the face of all threats, such as climate change, Covid-19, and economic inequality, but rather only from those threats they perceive to be emanating from human outsiders, defined broadly to include welfare cheats, unpatriotic athletes, norm violators, non-English speakers, religious and racial minorities, and certainly people from other countries. The central objective of these "securitarians" is to strive for protection for themselves, their families, and their dominant cultural group from these embodied outsider threats.

"A radical reinterpretation of the support for Trumpism, The Securitarian Personality not only provides insight into a political movement that many find baffling and frustrating, but offers a compelling thesis that all observers of American political behavior will have to contend with, even if they disagree with it."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.0 (23 ratings)
ISBN 978-0190096489 ?
The Divide:
Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets
Jason Hickel
W. W. Norton & Company (February 13, 2018)
No Review
Jason Hickel is an award-winning professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. His research focuses on globalization, development, and political economy, and he writes regularly for the Guardian. He lives in London." – Amazon biography

"Global inequality doesn’t just exist; it has been created.

"More than four billion people―some 60 percent of humanity―live in debilitating poverty, on less than $5 per day. The standard narrative tells us this crisis is a natural phenomenon, having to do with things like climate and geography and culture. It tells us that all we have to do is give a bit of aid here and there to help poor countries up the development ladder. It insists that if poor countries would only adopt the right institutions and economic policies, they could overcome their disadvantages and join the ranks of the rich world.

"Anthropologist Jason Hickel argues that this story ignores the broader political forces at play. Global poverty―and the growing inequality between the rich countries of Europe and North America and the poor ones of Africa, Asia, and South America―has come about because the global economy has been designed over the course of five hundred years of conquest, colonialism, regime change, and globalization to favor the interests of the richest and most powerful nations. Global inequality is not natural or inevitable, and it is certainly not accidental. To close the divide, Hickel proposes dramatic action rooted in real justice: abolishing debt burdens in the global South, democratizing the institutions of global governance, and rolling out an international minimum wage, among many other vital steps. Only then will we have a chance at a world where all begin on more equal footing."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (174 ratings)
ISBN 978-0393651362 ?
There Is Nothing for You Here:
Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century
Fiona Hill
Mariner Books (October 5, 2021)
No Review
Fiona Hill is the Robert Bosch Senior Fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. From 2017 to 2019, she served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council. From 2006 to 2009, she served as national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council. She has researched and published extensively on issues related to Russia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, regional conflicts, energy, and strategic issues. Coauthor of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin and The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold, she holds a master’s degree in Soviet studies and a doctorate in history from Harvard University and a master’s in Russian and modern history from St. Andrews University in Scotland. She also has pursued studies at Moscow’s Maurice Thorez Institute of Foreign Languages. Hill is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and lives in the Washington, DC, area." – Amazon biography

"Fiona Hill grew up in a world of terminal decay. The last of the local mines had closed, businesses were shuttering, and despair was etched in the faces around her. Her father urged her to get out of their blighted corner of northern England: 'There is nothing for you here, pet,' he said.

"The coal-miner’s daughter managed to go further than he ever could have dreamed. She studied in Moscow and at Harvard, became an American citizen, and served three U.S. Presidents. But in the heartlands of both Russia and the United States, she saw troubling reflections of her hometown and similar populist impulses. By the time she offered her brave testimony in the first impeachment inquiry of President Trump, Hill knew that the desperation of forgotten people was driving American politics over the brink—and that we were running out of time to save ourselves from Russia’s fate. In this powerful, deeply personal account, she shares what she has learned, and shows why expanding opportunity is the only long-term hope for our democracy."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (2,692 ratings)
ISBN 978-0358574316 ?
It Can Happen Here:
White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US
Alexander Laban Hinton
NYU Press (June 8, 2021)
No Review
Alexander Laban Hinton is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Founder and Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, and UNESCO Chair on Genocide Prevention at Rutgers University, and the author over a dozen books including the award-winning Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide." – Amazon biography

"If many people were shocked by Donald Trump’s 2016 election, many more were stunned when, months later, white supremacists took to the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting 'Blood and Soil' and 'Jews will not replace us!' Like Trump, the Charlottesville marchers were dismissed as aberrations—crazed extremists who did not represent the real US. It Can Happen Here demonstrates that, rather than being exceptional, such white power extremism and the violent atrocities linked to it are a part of American history. And, alarmingly, they remain a very real threat to the US today.

"Alexander Hinton explains how murky politics, structural racism, the promotion of American exceptionalism, and a belief that the US has achieved a color-blind society have diverted attention from the deep roots of white supremacist violence in the US’s brutal past. Drawing on his years of research and teaching on mass violence, Hinton details the warning signs of impending genocide and atrocity crimes, the tools used by ideologues to fan the flames of hate, and the shocking ways in which 'us' versus 'them' violence is supported by inherently racist institutions and policies.

"It Can Happen Here is an essential new assessment of the dangers of contemporary white power extremism in the United States. While revealing the threat of genocide and atrocity crimes that loom over the country, Hinton offers actions we can take to prevent it from happening, illuminating a hopeful path forward for a nation in crisis."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (12 ratings)
ISBN 978-1479808014 ?
America on Fire:
The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s
Elizabeth Hinton
Liveright (May 18, 2021)
No Review
Elizabeth Hinton is an associate professor of history and African American studies at Yale University and a professor of law at Yale Law School. The author of From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, she lives in New Haven, Connecticut."

"What began in spring 2020 as local protests in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police quickly exploded into a massive nationwide movement. Millions of mostly young people defiantly flooded into the nation’s streets, demanding an end to police brutality and to the broader, systemic repression of Black people and other people of color. To many observers, the protests appeared to be without precedent in their scale and persistence. Yet, as the acclaimed historian Elizabeth Hinton demonstrates in America on Fire, the events of 2020 had clear precursors―and any attempt to understand our current crisis requires a reckoning with the recent past.

"Even in the aftermath of Donald Trump, many Americans consider the decades since the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s as a story of progress toward greater inclusiveness and equality. Hinton’s sweeping narrative uncovers an altogether different history, taking us on a troubling journey from Detroit in 1967 and Miami in 1980 to Los Angeles in 1992 and beyond to chart the persistence of structural racism and one of its primary consequences, the so-called urban riot. Hinton offers a critical corrective: the word riot was nothing less than a racist trope applied to events that can only be properly understood as rebellions―explosions of collective resistance to an unequal and violent order. As she suggests, if rebellion and the conditions that precipitated it never disappeared, the optimistic story of a post–Jim Crow United States no longer holds.

"Black rebellion, America on Fire powerfully illustrates, was born in response to poverty and exclusion, but most immediately in reaction to police violence. In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson launched the 'War on Crime,' sending militarized police forces into impoverished Black neighborhoods. Facing increasing surveillance and brutality, residents threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at officers, plundered local businesses, and vandalized exploitative institutions. Hinton draws on exclusive sources to uncover a previously hidden geography of violence in smaller American cities, from York, Pennsylvania, to Cairo, Illinois, to Stockton, California.

"The central lesson from these eruptions―that police violence invariably leads to community violence―continues to escape policymakers, who respond by further criminalizing entire groups instead of addressing underlying socioeconomic causes. The results are the hugely expanded policing and prison regimes that shape the lives of so many Americans today. Presenting a new framework for understanding our nation’s enduring strife, America on Fire is also a warning: rebellions will surely continue unless police are no longer called on to manage the consequences of dismal conditions beyond their control, and until an oppressive system is finally remade on the principles of justice and equality."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (232 ratings)
ISBN 978-1631498909 ?
Impeaching the President:
Past, Present, and Future
Alan Hirsch
City Lights Publishers; Open Media Series edition (November 6, 2018)
No Review
Alan Hirsch received his BA from Amherst College and JD from Yale Law School. He is the chair of the Justice and Law Studies program at Williams College. Alan has authored several books, including For The People: What the Constitution Really Says About Your Rights (Free Press) (coauthored with Akhil Amar), A Citizen's Guide to Impeachment (Basic Books), and The Duke of Wellington, Kidnapped! (Counterpoint). His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Times, and Newsday among many other places." – based on Amazon biography

"Donald J. Trump is only the third president in U.S. history to be impeached.

"Constitutional scholar Alan Hirsch offers clear and to-the-point guidance for all matters relating to removing a sitting president, including: the Founders' vision for checking presidential power; the impeachment stories of presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton; wrongdoing in the Trump administration; and the availability of the 25th Amendment and presidential self-pardon.

"Illustrated throughout with historical engravings, photographs, and other impeachment documentation, this concise, timely, and accessible analysis offers an invaluable perspective on how the Constitution provides stability during times of political upheaval."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (7 ratings)
ISBN 978-0872867628 ?
They Came for the Schools:
One Town's Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America's Classrooms
Mike Hixenbaugh
Mariner Books (May 14, 2024)
No Review
Mike Hixenbaugh, senior investigative reporter for NBC News, has been named a Pulitzer Prize finalist and won a Peabody Award for his reporting on the battle over race, gender, and sexuality in American classrooms. They Came for the Schools, his first book, is the winner of the prestigious Lukas Work-in-Progress Award. Hixenbaugh’s work at newspapers in Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, and Texas has uncovered deadly failures in the U.S. military, abuses in the child welfare system, and safety lapses at major hospitals. He lives in Maryland with his wife and four children."

"The urgent, revelatory story of how a school board win for the conservative right in one Texas suburb inspired a Christian nationalist campaign now threatening to undermine public education in America—from an NBC investigative reporter and co-creator of the Peabody Award–winning and Pulitzer Prize finalist Southlake podcast.

"Award-winning journalist Mike Hixenbaugh delivers the immersive and eye-opening story of Southlake, Texas, a district that seemed to offer everything parents would want for their children—small classes, dedicated teachers, financial resources, a track record of academic success, and school spirit in abundance. All this, until a series of racist incidents became public, a plan to promote inclusiveness was proposed in response—and a coordinated, well-funded conservative backlash erupted, lighting the fire of a national movement on the verge of changing the face of public schools across the country.

"They Came for the Schools pulls back the curtain on the powerful forces driving this crusade to ban books, rewrite curricula, limit rights for minority and LGBTQ students—and, most importantly, to win what Hixenbaugh’s deeply informed reporting convinces is the holy grail among those seeking to impose biblical values on American society: school privatization, one school board and one legal battle at a time.

"They Came for the Schools delivers an essential take on Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, as they demean public schools and teachers and boost the Christian right’s vision. Hixenbaugh brings to light fascinating connections between this political and cultural moment and past fundamentalist campaigns to censor classroom lessons. Finally, They Came for the Schools traces the rise of a new resistance movement led by a diverse coalition of student activists, fed-up educators, and parents who are beginning to win select battles of their own: a blueprint, they hope, for gaining inclusive and civil schools for all."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (114 ratings)
ISBN 978-0063307247 ?
Stolen Pride:
Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right
Arlie Russell Hochschild
The New Press (September 10, 2024)
No Review
Arlie Russell Hochschild is the author of many groundbreaking books, including The Second Shift, The Managed Heart, and The Time Bind as well as Strangers in Their Own Land, which became an instant bestseller and was a finalist for a National Book Award, and Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right (both from The New Press). Hochschild is professor emerita of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in Berkeley with her husband, the writer Adam Hochschild."

"In her first book since the widely acclaimed Strangers in Their Own Land, National Book Award finalist and bestselling author Arlie Russell Hochschild now ventures to Appalachia, uncovering the 'pride paradox' that has given the right's appeals such resonance.

"For all the attempts to understand the state of American politics and the blue/red divide, we've ignored what economic and cultural loss can do to pride. What happens, Arlie Russell Hochschild asks, when a proud people in a hard-hit region suffer the deep loss of pride and are confronted with a powerful political appeal that makes it feel 'stolen'?

"Hochschild's research drew her to Pikeville, Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia, within the whitest and second-poorest congressional district in the nation, where the city was reeling: coal jobs had left, crushing poverty persisted, and a deadly drug crisis struck the region. Although Pikeville was in the political center thirty years ago, by 2016, 80 percent of the district's population voted for Donald Trump. Her brilliant exploration of the town's response to a white nationalist march in 2017 — a rehearsal for the deadly Unite the Right march that would soon take place in Charlottesville, Virginia — takes us deep inside a torn and suffering community.

"Hochschild focuses on a group swept up in the shifting political landscape: blue-collar men. In small churches, hillside hollers, roadside diners, trailer parks, and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, Hochschild introduces us to unforgettable people, and offers an original lens through which to see them and the wider world. In Stolen Pride, Hochschild incisively explores our dangerous times, even as she also points a way forward."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (10 ratings)
ISBN 978-1620976463 ?
The True Believer:
Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
Eric Hoffer
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Reprint edition (August 6, 2019)
No Review
Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) was self-educated. He worked in restaurants, as a migrant fieldworker, and as a gold prospector. After Pearl Harbor, he worked as a longshoreman in San Francisco for twenty-five years. The author of more than ten books, including The Passionate State of Mind, The Ordeal of Change, and The Temper of Our Time, Eric Hoffer was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983."

"The famous bestseller with 'concise insight into what drives the mind of the fanatic and the dynamics of a mass movement' (Wall St. Journal) by the legendary San Francisco longshoreman.

"A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards. The True Believer—the first and most famous of his books—was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences.

"Called a 'brilliant and original inquiry' and 'a genuine contribution to our social thought' by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., this landmark in the field of social psychology is completely relevant and essential for understanding the world today as it delivers a visionary, highly provocative look into the mind of the fanatic and a penetrating study of how an individual becomes one.

"In times of crisis, the great works of philosophy help us make sense of the world. This book is part of the Harper Perennial Resistance Library, a special five-book series highlighting short classic works of independent thought that illuminate the nature of truth, humanity's dangerous attraction to authoritarianism, the influence of media and mass communication, and the philosophy of resistance—all critical in understanding today's politically charged world."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (2,270 ratings)
ISBN 978-0062930866 ?
The Supreme Court:
An Essential History
Peter Charles Hoffer, Williamjames Hull Hoffer & N. E. H. Hull
University Press of Kansas; 2nd Enlarged edition (August 28, 2018)
No Review
Peter Charles Hoffer is Distinguished Research Professor of History at the University of Georgia. Williamjames Hull Hoffer is professor of history at Seton Hall University. N. E. H. Hull is Distinguished Professor of Law (emerita) at Rutgers University Law School–Camden."

"For more than two centuries, the U.S. Supreme Court has provided a battleground for nearly every controversial issue in our nation’s history. Now a veteran team of talented historians—including the editors of the acclaimed Landmark Law Cases and American Society series—have updated the most readable, astute single-volume history of this venerated institution with a new chapter on the Roberts Court.

"The Supreme Court chronicles an institution that dramatically evolved from six men meeting in borrowed quarters to the most closely watched tribunal in the world. Underscoring the close connection between law and politics, the authors highlight essential issues, cases, and decisions within the context of the times in which the decisions were handed down. Deftly combining doctrine and judicial biography with case law, they demonstrate how the justices have shaped the law and how the law that the Court makes has shaped our nation, with an emphasis on how the Court responded—or failed to respond—to the plight of the underdog.

"Each chapter covers the Court’s years under a specific Chief Justice, focusing on cases that are the most reflective of the way the Court saw the law and the world and that had the most impact on the lives of ordinary Americans. Throughout the authors reveal how—in times of war, class strife, or moral revolution—the Court sometimes voiced the conscience of the nation and sometimes seemed to lose its moral compass. Their extensive quotes from the Court’s opinions and dissents illuminate its inner workings, as well as the personalities and beliefs of the justices and the often-contentious relationships among them.

"Fair-minded and sharply insightful, The Supreme Court portrays an institution defined by eloquent and pedestrian decisions and by justices ranging from brilliant and wise to slow-witted and expedient. An epic and essential story, it illuminates the Court’s role in our lives and its place in our history in a manner as engaging for general readers as it is rigorous for scholars."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (27 ratings)
ISBN 978-0700626823 ?
God, Guns, and Sedition:
Far-Right Terrorism in America (A Council on Foreign Relations Book)
Bruce Hoffman & Jacob Ware
Columbia University Press (January 2, 2024)
No Review
Bruce Hoffman is the Shelby Cullom and Kathryn W. Davis Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service; professor emeritus of terrorism studies at the University of St Andrews; and the George H. Gilmore Senior Fellow at the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center. His Columbia University Press books include Inside Terrorism (third edition, 2017). Jacob Ware is a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service and at DeSales University. He serves on the editorial boards for the academic journal Studies in Conflict & Terrorism and the Irregular Warfare Initiative at the Modern War Institute at West Point."

"Shocking acts of terrorism have erupted from violent American far-right extremists in recent years, including the 2015 mass murder at a historic Black church in Charleston and the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. These incidents, however, are neither novel nor unprecedented. They are the latest flashpoints in a process that has been unfolding for decades, in which vast conspiracy theories and radical ideologies such as white supremacism, racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, and hostility to government converge into a deadly threat to democracy.

"God, Guns, and Sedition offers the definitive account of the rise of far-right terrorism in the United States―and how to counter it. Leading experts Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware trace the historical trajectory and assess the present-day dangers of this violent extremist movement, along with the harm it poses to U.S. national security. They combine authoritative, nuanced analysis with gripping storytelling and portraits of the leaders behind this violence and their followers. Hoffman and Ware highlight key terrorist tactics, such as the use of cutting-edge communications technology; the embrace of leaderless resistance or lone-wolf strategies; infiltration and recruitment in the military and law enforcement; and the movement’s intricate relationship with mainstream politics. An unparalleled examination of one of today’s great perils, God, Guns, and Sedition ends with an array of essential practical recommendations to halt the growth of violent far-right extremism and address this global terrorist threat."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (41 ratings)
ISBN 978-0231211222 ?
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
Richard Hofstadter
Alfred A. Knopf (May 20, 1963)
No Review
Born in 1916, Richard Hofstadter was one of the leading American historians and public intellectuals of the 20th century. His works include The Age of Reform, Anti-intellectualism in American Life, Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915, The American Political Tradition, and others. He was the DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University. He died in 1970.

"Richard Hofstadter's famous Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, his tenth book, earned him the Pulitzer Prize in Non-Fiction (1964). He argues that, by the mid-twentieth century, anti-intellectualism was pervasive but not dominant in American culture, claiming that 'the greater part of the public...has an ingrained distrust of eggheads'."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (582 ratings)
ISBN 978-0394415352 ?
The Paranoid Style in American Politics
Richard Hofstadter
Sean Wilentz (Introduction)
Vintage; Reprint edition (June 10, 2008)
No Review
Born in 1916, Richard Hofstadter was one of the leading American historians and public intellectuals of the 20th century. His works include The Age of Reform, Anti-intellectualism in American Life, Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915, The American Political Tradition, and others. He was the DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University. He died in 1970.

"This timely reissue of Richard Hofstadter's classic work on the fringe groups that influence American electoral politics offers an invaluable perspective on contemporary domestic affairs.

"In The Paranoid Style in American Politics, acclaimed historian Richard Hofstadter examines the competing forces in American political discourse and how fringe groups can influence — and derail — the larger agendas of a political party. He investigates the politics of the irrational, shedding light on how the behavior of individuals can seem out of proportion with actual political issues, and how such behavior impacts larger groups.

"With such other classic essays as "Free Silver and the Mind of 'Coin' Harvey” and “What Happened to the Antitrust Movement?”, The Paranoid Style in American Politics remains both a seminal text of political history and a vital analysis of the ways in which political groups function in the United States."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (225 ratings)
ISBN 978-0307388445 ?
Our Unfinished March
The Violent Past and Imperiled Future of the Vote-A History, a Crisis, a Plan
Eric Holder & Sam Koppelman
One World (May 10, 2022)
No Review
Eric Holder is a civil rights leader who is chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. He served as the eighty-second attorney general of the United States, the first African American to hold that office. Now a senior counsel at Covington & Burling, he lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Dr. Sharon Malone, and they have three children. Sam Koppelman is a New York Times bestselling author who served as director of surrogate speechwriting on the Biden-Harris campaign. A graduate of Harvard College, he has spent half a decade at Fenway Strategies, telling the stories of people working to make the world a better place. Sam lives in New York, where he was born and raised, and is in a toxic relationship with the Knicks.

"A brutal, bloody, and at times hopeful history of the vote; a primer on the opponents fighting to take it away; and a playbook for how we can save our democracy before it’s too late—from the former U.S. Attorney General on the front lines of this fight

"Voting is our most important right as Americans—'the right that protects all the others,' as Lyndon Johnson famously said when he signed the Voting Rights Act—but it’s also the one most violently contested throughout U.S. history. Since the gutting of the Act in the landmark Shelby County v. Holder case in 2013, many states have passed laws restricting the vote. After the 2020 election, President Trump’s effort to overturn the vote has evolved into a slow-motion coup, with many Republicans launching an all-out assault on our democracy. The vote seems to be in unprecedented peril.

"But the peril is not at all unprecedented. America is a fragile democracy, Eric Holder argues, whose citizens have only had unfettered access to the ballot since the 1960s. He takes readers through three dramatic stories of how the vote was won: first by white men, through violence and insurrection; then by white women, through protests and mass imprisonments; and finally by African Americans, in the face of lynchings and terrorism. Next, he dives into how the vote has been stripped away since Shelby—a case in which Holder was one of the parties. He ends with visionary chapters on how we can reverse this tide of voter suppression and become a true democracy where every voice is heard and every vote is counted.

"Full of surprising history, intensive analysis, and actionable plans for the future, this is a powerful primer on our most urgent political struggle from one of the country's leading advocates."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (210 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593445747 ?
A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear:
The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears)
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
PublicAffairs (September 15, 2020)
No Review

"Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling is a freelance journalist specializing in narrative features and investigative reporting. He has been named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, won a George Polk Award, and been voted Journalist of the Year by the Maine Press association, among numerous other honors.

"His work has appeared in Foreign Policy, USA Today, Popular Science, Atavist Magazine, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Associated Press, and elsewhere.

"He lives in New England."

A tiny American town's plans for radical self-government overlooked one hairy detail: no one told the bears.

"Once upon a time, a group of libertarians got together and hatched the Free Town Project, a plan to take over an American town and completely eliminate its government. In 2004, they set their sights on Grafton, NH, a barely populated settlement with one paved road.

"When they descended on Grafton, public funding for pretty much everything shrank: the fire department, the library, the schoolhouse. State and federal laws became meek suggestions, scarcely heard in the town's thick wilderness.

"The anything-goes atmosphere soon caught the attention of Grafton's neighbors: the bears. Freedom-loving citizens ignored hunting laws and regulations on food disposal. They built a tent city in an effort to get off the grid. The bears smelled food and opportunity.

"A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is the sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying tale of what happens when a government disappears into the woods. Complete with gunplay, adventure, and backstabbing politicians, this is the ultimate story of a quintessential American experiment — to live free or die, perhaps from a bear."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (896 ratings)
ISBN 978-1541788510 ?
Untouchable:
How Powerful People Get Away with It
Elie Honig
Harper (January 31, 2023)
No Review
Elie Honig worked as a federal and state prosecutor for 14 years. He prosecuted and tried cases involving violent crime, human trafficking, public corruption, and organized crime, including successful prosecutions of over 100 members and associates of the mafia. Honig now is a CNN Legal Analyst, hosts podcasts and writes for Cafe, is a Rutgers University scholar, and is Special Counsel to the law firm Lowenstein Sandler." – Amazon biography

"CNN senior legal analyst and nationally bestselling author Elie Honig explores America’s two-tier justice system, explaining how the rich, the famous, and the powerful—including, most notoriously, Donald Trump—manipulate the legal system to escape justice and get away with vast misdeeds. How does he get away with it? That question, more than any other, vexes observers of and participants in the American criminal justice process. How do powerful people weaponize their wealth, political power, and fame to beat the system? And how can prosecutors fight back?

"In Untouchable, Elie Honig exposes how the rich and powerful use the system to their own benefit, revealing how notorious figures like Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, and Bill Cosby successfully eluded justice for decades. He demonstrates how the Trump children dodged a fraud indictment. He makes clear how countless CEOs and titans of Wall Street have been let off the hook, receiving financial penalties without suffering criminal consequences. This doesn’t happen by accident.

"Over the four years of his administration, Donald Trump’s corruption seemed plain for all to see. The former president obstructed justice, flouted his responsibility to the Constitution, lied to the American people, and set the United States on a dark path to disunity and violence. Yet he has never been held accountable for any of his misdeeds. Why not?

"Untouchable holds the answer. Honig shows how Trump and others use seemingly fair institutions and practices to build empires of corruption and get away with misdeeds for which ordinary people would be sentenced to years behind bars. It’s not just that money talks, Honig makes clear, but how it can corrupt otherwise reliable institutions and blind people to the real power dynamics behind the scenes. In this vital, incisive book, Honig explains how the system allows the powerful to become untouchable, takes us inside their heads, and offers solutions for making the system more honest and fairer, ensuring true justice for all—holding everyone, no matter their status, accountable for their criminal misdeeds."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (259 ratings)
ISBN 978-0063241503 ?
The Fascism This Time
and the Global Future of Democracy
Theo Horesh
Cosmopolis Press (August 3, 2020)
No Review
Theo Horesh is a human rights advocate and public intellectual, who has written hundreds of articles on genocide, climate change, fascism, and democracy. He is the founder of the Trident Philosophy Gang, an open circle of thinkers, and host of Conscious Business, a series of critical dialogues, chosen by Business Insider as one of 100 podcasts that will make you smarter. He is the author of four books on the psychosocial dynamics of globalization, including Convergence: The Globalization of Mind and his most recent, The Fascism This Time: and the Global Future of Democracy. And he is a political philosopher, currently completing his PhD, focused on cosmopolitan ethics, at the University of Leeds." – Amazon biography

"A new wave of fascism is inundating the world under the guise of rightwing populism, but the fascism this time has little to do with taking down elites—and it is every bit as dangerous as the last.

"Fascism can be identified by its toxic brew of racism, sexism, nationalism, and authoritarianism. It is organized around a cult of personality, and it mobilizes ressentiment in senseless acts of nihilism. Fascist movements are dangerous because they harness nationalist aggression against minorities, but their subtler danger lies in their turn against reality. They reject science and rationality because they are seen as a threat, and since the world cannot be turned off, fascists try to tear it down instead. Fascists seek to escape the burden of freedom, stemming from democracy and development, and return to a mythologized patriarchy. Yet, in a vast and complex world, where survival requires adaptation, and adaptation flexibility, their forced regression always ends in destruction.

"The Fascism This Time elucidates a psychosocial model of fascism which predicted that Trump’s election would lead to immigrant concentration camps, an accelerated assault on democratic institutions, a striking global increase in authoritarianism and crimes against humanity, and all the starvation of Yemen."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (210 ratings)
ISBN 978-0578732930 ?
The Deadly Rise of Anti-science
A Scientist's Warning
Peter J. Hotez
Johns Hopkins University Press (September 19, 2023)
No Review
Peter J. Hotez MD, PhD (HOUSTON, TX), is a professor of pediatrics and molecular virology and microbiology and the founding dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, where he is also the codirector of the Texas Children's Center for Vaccine Development. He is the author of Preventing the Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy in a Time of Anti-science and Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism: My Journey as a Vaccine Scientist, Pediatrician, and Autism Dad."

"Dr. Peter Hotez discusses how the antivaccine movement became a dangerous political campaign promoted by elected officials and amplified by news media, causing thousands of American deaths.

"During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, one renowned scientist, in his famous bowtie, appeared daily on major news networks such as MSNBC, NPR, the BBC, and others. Dr. Peter J. Hotez often went without sleep, working around the clock to develop a nonprofit COVID-19 vaccine and to keep the public informed. During that time, he was one of the most trusted voices on the pandemic and was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his selfless work. He also became one of the main targets of anti-science rhetoric that gained traction through conservative news media.

"In this eyewitness story of how the anti-vaccine movement grew into a dangerous and prominent anti-science element in American politics, Hotez describes the devastating impacts it has had on Americans' health and lives. As a scientist who has endured antagonism from anti-vaxxers and been at the forefront of both essential scientific discovery and advocacy, Hotez is uniquely qualified to tell this story. By weaving his personal experiences together with information on how the anti-vaccine movement became a tool of far-right political figures around the world, Hotez opens readers' eyes to the dangers of anti-science. He explains how anti-science became a major societal and lethal force: in the first years of the pandemic, more than 200,000 unvaccinated Americans needlessly died despite the widespread availability of COVID-19 vaccines. Even as he paints a picture of the world under a shadow of aggressive ignorance, Hotez demonstrates his innate optimism, offering solutions for how to combat science denial and save lives in the process."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (279 ratings)
ISBN 978-1421447223 ?
The Immoral Majority:
Why Evangelicals Chose Political Power over Christian Values
Ben Howe
Broadside Books (August 13, 2019)
No Review
Ben Howe is a writer, podcaster, and film-maker, as well as the founder of Howe Creative, a video production company. He has appeared as a commentator on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, and has written guest columns for The Atlantic, the Washington Examiner, The Washington Post, and the Daily Beast, among other publications. As the founder of Howe Creative, a video production company, Ben has spent nearly a decade creating compelling videos and commercials that have been viewed by millions both online and on television. His clients range from the Heritage Foundation to Senator Ted Cruz and his creative talent is among the most sought after in the industry."

"In 2016, writer and filmmaker Ben Howe found himself disillusioned with the religious movement he'd always called home. In the pursuit of electoral victory, many American evangelicals embraced moral relativism and toxic partisanship.

"Whatever happened to the Moral Majority, who headed to Washington in the '80s to plant the flag of Christian values? Where were the Christian leaders that emerged from that movement and led the charge against Bill Clinton for his deception and unfaithfulness? Was all that a sham? Or have they just lost sight of why they wanted to win in the first place? From the 1980s scandals till today, evangelicals have often been caricatured as a congregation of judgmental and prudish rubes taken in by thundering pastors consumed with greed and lust for power. Did the critics have a point?

"In The Immoral Majority, Howe—still a believer and still deeply conservative—analyzes and debunks the intellectual dishonesty and manipulative rhetoric which evangelical leaders use to convince Christians to toe the Republican Party line. He walks us through the history of the Christian Right, as well as the events of the last three decades which led to the current state of the conservative movement at large.

"As long as evangelicals prioritize power over persuasion, Howe argues, their pews will be empty and their national influence will dwindle. If evangelicals hope to avoid cultural irrelevance going forward, it will mean valuing the eternal over the ephemeral, humility over ego, and resisting the seduction of political power, no matter the cost. The Immoral Majority demonstrates how the Religious Right is choosing the profits of this world at the cost of its soul—and why it's not too late to change course."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (478 ratings)
ISBN 978-0062797117 ?
The Fourth Turning Is Here:
What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End
Neil Howe
Simon & Schuster (July 18, 2023)
No Review
Neil Howe is a historian, economist, and demographer who writes and speaks frequently on generational change, American history, and long-term fiscal policy. He coauthored seven books with William Strauss, including Generations, 13th Gen, The Fourth Turning, and Millennials Rising. In 1991, Howe and Strauss coined the term 'Millennial Generation.' Howe’s other books include On Borrowed Time (with Peter G. Peterson) and The Graying of the Great Powers (with Richard Jackson). He is managing director of demography for Hedgeye, an investment advisory firm. He is also a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and at the Global Aging Institute. He grew up in California and holds graduate degrees in history and economics from Yale University. He lives with his family in Great Falls, Virginia."

"The visionary behind the bestselling phenomenon The Fourth Turning looks once again to America’s past to predict our future in this startling and hopeful prophecy for how our present era of civil unrest will resolve over the next ten years—and what our lives will look like once it has.

"Twenty-five years ago, Neil Howe and the late William Strauss dazzled the world with a provocative new theory of American history. Looking back at the last 500 years, they’d uncovered a distinct pattern: modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting roughly eighty to one hundred years, the length of a long human life, with each cycle composed of four eras—or 'turnings'—that always arrive in the same order and each last about twenty years. The last of these eras—the fourth turning—was always the most perilous, a period of civic upheaval and national mobilization as traumatic and transformative as the New Deal and World War II, the Civil War, or the American Revolution.

"Now, right on schedule, our own fourth turning has arrived. And so Neil Howe has returned with an extraordinary new prediction. What we see all around us—the polarization, the growing threat of civil conflict and global war—will culminate by the early 2030s in a climax that poses great danger and yet also holds great promise, perhaps even bringing on America’s next golden age. Every generation alive today will play a vital role in determining how this crisis is resolved, for good or ill.

"Illuminating, sobering, yet ultimately empowering, The Fourth Turning Is Here takes you back into history and deep into the collective personality of each living generation to make sense of our current crisis, explore how all of us will be differently affected by the political, social, and economic challenges we’ll face in the decade to come, and reveal how our country, our communities, and our families can best prepare to meet these challenges head-on."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (500 ratings)
ISBN 978-1982173739 ?
United States of Distraction:
Media Manipulation in Post-Truth America (and What We Can Do About It)
Mickey Huff & Nolan Higdon
Ralph Nader (Foreword)
City Lights Publishers (August 20, 2019)
No Review
Mickey Huff is director of Project Censored and the president of the Media Freedom Foundation. He has edited or coedited ten volumes of in the Censored book series and contributed numerous chapters to these annuals since 2008. He has also co-authored essays on media and propaganda for other scholarly publications. He is professor of social science and history at Diablo Valley College, where he co-chairs the History Department; he is also a lecturer in the Communications Department at California State University, East Bay, and has taught Sociology of Media at Sonoma State University. Huff is executive producer and cohost of The Project Censored Show, the weekly syndicated program that originates from KPFA in Berkeley. He is a cofounding member of the Global Critical Media Literacy Project (gcml.org), sits on the advisory board for the Media Literacy and Digital Culture graduate program at Sacred Heart University, and serves on the editorial board for the journal Secrecy and Society. Huff works with the national outreach committee of Banned Books Week, the American Library Association, and the National Coalition Against Censorship, of which Project Censored is a member. He is the critical media literacy consultant for the educational Internet startup, Tribeworthy.com, He regularly gives interviews on critical media literacy, propaganda, censorship issues, and contemporary historiography. He is a musician and composer and lives with his family in Northern California. Dr. Nolan Higdon is professor of History and Communication at California State University, East Bay. His academic work primarily focuses on news media, propaganda, critical media literacy, and social justice pedagogies. He has been a guest commentator for news media outlets such as The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox. He is a board member for the Media Freedom Foundation, frequent contributor to Project Censored's annual Censored books series, a co-founder of the Global Critical Media Literacy Project, a program advisor for Sacred Heart University Media Literacy and Digital Culture Graduate Program, a steering committee member for the Union for Democratic Communications, and co-host of the Project Censored radio show." – Amazon biography

"The role of news media in a free society is to investigate, inform, and provide a crucial check on political power. But does it?

"It's no secret that the goal of corporate-owned media is to increase the profits of the few, not to empower the many. As a result, people are increasingly immersed in an information system structured to reinforce their social biases and market to their buying preferences. Journalism's essential role has been drastically compromised, and Donald Trump's repeated claims of 'fake news' and framing of the media as 'an enemy of the people' have made a bad scenario worse.

"Written in the spirit of resistance and hope, United States of Distraction offers a clear, concise appraisal of our current situation, and presents readers with action items for how to improve it."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (65 ratings)
ISBN 978-0872867673 ?
Confirmation Bias:
Inside Washington's War Over the Supreme Court, from Scalia's Death to Justice Kavanaugh
Carl Hulse
Harper (June 25, 2019)
No Review
Carl Hulse is chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times and a veteran of more than three decades of reporting in the capital. He has also served as the Washington editor of The Times as well as the chief congressional correspondent. Carl is a native of Illinois and a graduate of Illinois State University."

"The Chief Washington Correspondent for the New York Times presents a richly detailed, news-breaking, and conversation-changing look at the unprecedented political fight to fill the Supreme Court seat made vacant by Antonin Scalia’s death—using it to explain the paralyzing and all but irreversible dysfunction across all three branches in the nation’s capital.

"The embodiment of American conservative thought and jurisprudence, Antonin Scalia cast an expansive shadow over the Supreme Court for three decades. His unexpected death in February 2016 created a vacancy that precipitated a pitched political fight. That battle would not only change the tilt of the court, but the course of American history. It would help decide a presidential election, fundamentally alter longstanding protocols of the United States Senate, and transform the Supreme Court—which has long held itself as a neutral arbiter above politics—into another branch of the federal government riven by partisanship. In an unprecedented move, the Republican-controlled Senate, led by majority leader, Mitch McConnell, refused to give Democratic President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, a confirmation hearing. Not one Republican in the Senate would meet with him. Scalia’s seat would be held open until Donald Trump’s nominee, Neil M. Gorsuch, was confirmed in April 2017.

"Carl Hulse has spent more than thirty years covering the machinations of the beltway. In Confirmation Bias, he tells the story of this history-making battle to control the Supreme Court through exclusive interviews with McConnell, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, and other top officials, Trump campaign operatives, court activists, and legal scholars, as well as never-before-reported details and developments.

"Richly textured and deeply informative, Confirmation Bias provides much-needed context, revisiting the judicial wars of the past two decades to show how those conflicts have led to our current polarization. He examines the politicization of the federal bench and the implications for public confidence in the courts, and takes us behind the scenes to explore how many long-held democratic norms and entrenched, bipartisan procedures have been erased across all three branches of government."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (36 ratings)
ISBN 978-0062862914 ?
Making It Up as They Go Along:
Stories the Supreme Court Tells about the Constitution
Frank C. Huntington
Independently published (April 11, 2022)
No Review

"Frank C Huntington was born in New Haven in 1953. He grew up in Springfield, Delaware County, a suburb of Philadelphia (where his father taught history at Drexel University). He was a history major at Swarthmore College. Following in his father's footsteps, he obtained a Ph.D. in history from Brown University. The job market was tight, so he decided that getting yet another degree was the solution. He received a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He was a trial attorney in Boston, first in private practice and then for 20 years in the Boston Regional Office of the Securities and Exchange Commission. (Standard disclaimer: his books do not reflect the views of the SEC or the U.S. government.) He retired from the SEC in 2020.

"Frank met the wonderful Sarah Anne Betts in 1986. For reasons he still can't explain, she decided he was worth marrying. They raised a family in Winchester, a Boston suburb. They had two boys, Charlie and Jamie, the biological way. Later, they adopted two girls, Kayla from Russia and Karina from Kazakhstan. Frank feels truly blessed.

"Frank and Sarah live in Brooksby Village in Peabody, Mass. Besides writing, Frank enjoys long walks with Sarah, playing jazz piano, reading science fiction, and putting together huge jigsaw puzzles." – Amazon biography

"The Constitution has no fixed, built-in meaning. The justices of the Supreme Court have been supplying their own meanings for 230 years. The justices don't admit they're making it all up. Instead, they write opinions designed to fool people into believing the Court is simply doing what the Constitution requires. The stories the justices tell are an ideological smokescreen that conceals their political agendas and value judgments."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.0 (5 ratings)
ISBN 978-8447228002 ?
American Politics:
The Promise of Disharmony
Samuel P. Huntington
Belknap Press (February 4, 2004)
No Review

"Samuel P. Huntington (1927-2008) was Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University and the author of The Clash of Civilizations, The Soldier and the State, Political Order in Changing Societies, and American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony, among other books."

"This stunningly persuasive book examines the persistent, radical gap between the promise of American ideals and the performance of American politics. Samuel P. Huntington shows how Americans, throughout their history as a nation, have been united by the democratic creed of liberty, equality, and hostility to authority. At the same time he reveals how, inevitably, these ideals have been perennially frustrated through the institutions and hierarchies required to carry on the essential functions of governing a democratic society.

"From this antagonism between the ideals of democracy and the realities of power have risen four great political upheavals in American history. Every third generation, Huntington argues, Americans have tried to reconstruct their institutions to make them more truly reflect deeply rooted national ideals. Moving from the clenched fists and mass demonstrations of the 1960s, to the moral outrage of the Progressive and Jacksonian Eras, back to the creative ideological fervor of the American Revolution, he incisively analyzes the dissenters’ objectives. All, he pungently writes, sought to remove the fundamental disharmony between the reality of government in America and the ideals on which the American nation was founded.

"Huntington predicts that the tension between ideals and institutions is likely to increase in this country in the future. And he reminds us that the fate of liberty and democracy abroad is intrinsically linked to the strength of our power in world affairs. This brilliant and controversial analysis deserves to rank alongside the works of Tocqueville, Bryce, and Hofstadter and will become a classic commentary on the meaning of America."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (28 ratings)
ISBN 978-0674030213 ?
American Reboot:
An Idealist's Guide to Getting Big Things Done
Will Hurd
Simon & Schuster (March 29, 2022)
No Review
Will Hurd is a former member of Congress, cybersecurity executive, and undercover officer in the CIA. For two decades he’s been involved in the most pressing national security issues challenging the country whether it was in back-alleys of dangerous places, boardrooms of top international businesses or the halls of Congress. Will is a native of San Antonio and graduate of Texas A&M University. He has served as a fellow at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and is currently a managing director at Allen & Company, a board member for OpenAI, and a trustee of the German Marshall Fund." – from Amazon biography

"It’s getting harder to get big things done in America. The gears of our democracy have been mucked up by political nonsense. To meet the era-defining challenges of the 21st century, our country needs a reboot. In American Reboot, Hurd, called “the future of the GOP” by Politico, provides a clear-eyed path forward for America grounded by what Hurd calls pragmatic idealism—a concept forged from enduring American values to achieve what is actually achievable.

"Hurd takes on five seismic problems facing a country in crisis: the Republican Party’s failure to present a principled vision for the future; the lack of honest leadership in Washington, DC; income inequality that threatens the livelihood of millions of Americans; US economic and military dominance that is no longer guaranteed; and how technological change in the next thirty years will make the advancements of the last thirty years look trivial."

"Hurd draws on his remarkable experience to present an inspiring guide for America. He outlines how the Republican party can look like America by appealing to the middle, not the edges. He maps out how leaders should inspire rather than fearmonger. He forges a domestic policy based on the idea that prosperity should be a product of empowering people, not the government. He articulates a foreign policy where our enemies fear us and our friends love us. And lastly, he charts a forceful path forward for America’s technological future."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (162 ratings)
ISBN 978-1982160708 ?
White Trash:
The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America
Nancy Isenberg
Viking Press (January 1, 2016)
No Review
Nancy Isenberg is the author of Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr, which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize in Biography and won the Oklahoma Book Award for best book in Nonfiction. She is the coauthor, with Andrew Burstein, of Madison and Jefferson. She is the T. Harry Williams Professor of American History at LSU, and writes regularly for Salon.com. Isenberg is the winner of the 2016 Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award from the Before Columbus Foundation and was #4 on the 2016 Politico 50 list. She lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Charlottesville, Virginia."

"In her groundbreaking bestselling history of the class system in America, Nancy Isenberg upends history as we know it by taking on our comforting myths about equality and uncovering the crucial legacy of the ever-present, always embarrassing—if occasionally entertaining—poor white trash.

" 'When you turn an election into a three-ring circus, there’s always a chance that the dancing bear will win,' says Isenberg of the political climate surrounding Sarah Palin. And we recognize how right she is today. Yet the voters who boosted Trump all the way to the White House have been a permanent part of our American fabric, argues Isenberg.

"The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement to today's hillbillies. They were alternately known as 'waste people,' 'offals,' 'rubbish,' 'lazy lubbers,' and 'crackers.' By the 1850s, the downtrodden included so-called 'clay eaters' and 'sandhillers,' known for prematurely aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin, ragged clothing, and listless minds.

"Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular literature and scientific theories over four hundred years, Isenberg upends assumptions about America’s supposedly class-free society—where liberty and hard work were meant to ensure real social mobility. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics—a widely popular movement embraced by Theodore Roosevelt that targeted poor whites for sterilization. These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ's Great Society; they haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty. Marginalized as a class, white trash have always been at or near the center of major political debates over the character of the American identity.

"We acknowledge racial injustice as an ugly stain on our nation’s history. With Isenberg's landmark book, we will have to face the truth about the enduring, malevolent nature of class as well."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (5,497 ratings)
ISBN 978-0670785971 ?
Russian Roulette:
The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump
Michael Isikoff & David Corn
Hachette Book Group, March 2018
My Review
"Michael Isikoff is an investigative journalist who has worked for the Washington Post, Newsweek, and NBC News. He is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story and Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War (co-written with David Corn). He is a frequent guest on MSNBC, CNN, and other TV talk shows. Isikoff is currently the chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo! News. David Corn is a veteran Washington journalist and political commentator. He is the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine and an analyst for MSNBC. He is the author of three New York Times bestsellers, including Showdown: The Inside Story of How Obama Battled the GOP to Set Up the 2012 Election and Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War (co-written with Michael Isikoff). He is also the author of the biography Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades and the novel Deep Background." – Amazon biography

"RUSSIAN ROULETTE is a story of political skullduggery unprecedented in American history. It weaves together tales of international intrigue, cyber espionage, and superpower rivalry. After U.S.-Russia relations soured, as Vladimir Putin moved to reassert Russian strength on the global stage, Moscow trained its best hackers and trolls on U.S. political targets and exploited WikiLeaks to disseminate information that could affect the 2016 election."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (4,254 ratings)
ISBN 978-1-53872-875-8 SJ1 973.932 Isikoff
How To Lose the Information War:
Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict
Nina Jankowicz
I.B. Tauris (July 9, 2020)
No Review
"Nina Jankowicz is a Washington DC-based writer and analyst with a focus on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. She is currently a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars' Kennan Institute. Previously, she served as a Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellow, a role in which she provided strategic communications guidance to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. Her writing has been published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, Foreign Policy and others. Nina received her MA in Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies from Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, where she was a Title VIII and FLAS scholarship recipient, and her BA in Russian and Political Science from Bryn Mawr College, where she graduated magna cum laude. She has lived and worked in Russia and Ukraine, and speaks fluent Russian and proficient Polish and Ukrainian. Nina was a 2017 Foreign Policy Interrupted Fellow."

"Since the start of the Trump era, the United States and the Western world has (sic) finally begun to wake up to the threat of online warfare and the attacks from Russia. The question no one seems to be able to answer is: what can the West do about it?

"Central and Eastern European states, however, have been aware of the threat for years. Nina Jankowicz has advised these governments on the front lines of the information war. The lessons she learnt from that fight, and from her attempts to get US congress to act, make for essential reading.

"How to Lose the Information War takes the reader on a journey through five Western governments' responses to Russian information warfare tactics - all of which have failed. She journeys into the campaigns the Russian operatives run, and shows how we can better understand the motivations behind these attacks and how to beat them. Above all, this book shows what is at stake: the future of civil discourse and democracy, and the value of truth itself."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (71 ratings)
ISBN 978-1838607685 ?
White Identity Politics
Ashley Jardina
Cambridge University Press (March 28, 2019)
No Review
"Ashley Jardina is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Duke University, North Carolina. She studies the nature of racial attitudes and group identities and their influence on public opinion and political behavior. Her research has been featured in The New York Times, Vox, and the Washington Post's 'Monkey Cage'."

"Amidst discontent over America's growing diversity, many white Americans now view the political world through the lens of a racial identity. Whiteness was once thought to be invisible because of whites' dominant position and ability to claim the mainstream, but today a large portion of whites actively identify with their racial group and support policies and candidates that they view as protecting whites' power and status. In White Identity Politics, Ashley Jardina offers a landmark analysis of emerging patterns of white identity and collective political behavior, drawing on sweeping data. Where past research on whites' racial attitudes emphasized out-group hostility, Jardina brings into focus the significance of in-group identity and favoritism. White Identity Politics shows that disaffected whites are not just found among the working class; they make up a broad proportion of the American public — with profound implications for political behavior and the future of racial conflict in America."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (135 ratings)
ISBN 978-1108475525 ?
Kill Switch:
The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy
Adam Jentleson
‎ Liveright (August 16, 2022)
No Review
"Adam Jentleson is the executive director of Battle Born Collective and a former deputy chief of staff to Senator Harry Reid. A columnist for GQ and frequent political commentator on MSNBC, he lives in Takoma Park, Maryland."

"An insider’s account of how politicians representing a radical white minority of Americans have used “the world’s greatest deliberative body” to hijack our democracy.

"Our democracy is under assault from homegrown authoritarians, with most observers blaming Donald Trump and the Republican Party that submitted to him. Yet as Adam Jentleson shows, the problem not only goes back to the nineteenth century, but is less about the presidency than it is about our nation’s most venerated institution: the United States Senate. A revelatory history of minority rule in America as expressed through the Senate filibuster, Kill Switch shows that white conservatives have long relied on the filibuster―which is not featured in the Constitution, and which, as Jentleson demonstrates, the Framers would have opposed―to shut down attempts to create a multiracial democracy. Featuring a new epilogue on filibuster battles under the Biden administration, Kill Switch will remain an essential warning about the costs of empowering this nation’s right-wing minority."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (974 ratings)
ISBN 978-1324091981 ?
Perspective and Guidance for a Time of Deep Discord:
Why We See Such Extreme Social and Political Polarization—and What We Can Do About It
Charles M. Johnston MD
ICD Press (April 24, 2021)
No Review
"Charles M. Johnston, MD is a psychiatrist and futurist. He is best know as the originator of Creative Systems Theory, a comprehensive framework for understanding purpose, change, and interrelationship in human systems. For twenty-five years, Dr. Johnston directed the Institute for Creative Development, a Seattle-based think tank and center for advanced leadership training. He has written eleven books and numerous articles on the future and how we can best prepare to meet it."

"Perspective and Guidance for a Time of Deep Discord confronts the very real dangers that come with today’s extreme social and political polarization. And it examines what will be needed to effectively address what we see. From the book’s back cover:

“ 'Social and political polarization has become so extreme that conversation about the simplest of issues is today often close to impossible. And polarized thinking—from both the Right and the Left—is not just putting civil conversation in jeopardy, it is getting in the way of addressing essential questions that our future well-being will depend on.'

“ 'In Perspective and Guidance for a Time of Deep Discord, one of our time's most innovative social thinkers argues that what we see is a product not just of what we think but how we think. He describes what the greater maturity of understanding needed to get beyond warring ideological purities requires of us. And he looks closely at what such understanding looks like when applied to critical concerns where divisiveness too often prevails: war and peace, climate change, health care, immigration, abortion, bigotry, the relationship of science and faith, and conflicting views on the nature of progress."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (15 ratings)
ISBN 978-1734243116 ?
That Librarian:
The Fight Against Book Banning in America
Amanda Jones
Bloomsbury Publishing (August 27, 2024)
No Review
"Amanda Jones has been an educator for 23 years, at the same middle school she attended as a child. She has served as President of the Louisiana Association of School Librarians and won numerous awards for her work in school libraries, including School Library Journal Librarian of the Year. A sought-after keynote speaker, Amanda is a frequent volunteer for state and national library associations, as well as a co-founder of the Livingston Parish Library Alliance and founding member of Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship. She lives in Livingston Parish, Louisiana."

"Part memoir, part manifesto, the inspiring story of a Louisiana librarian advocating for inclusivity on the front lines of our vicious culture wars.

“One of the things small town librarian Amanda Jones values most about books is how they can affirm a young person's sense of self. So in 2022, when she caught wind of a local public hearing that would discuss 'book content,' she knew what was at stake. Schools and libraries nationwide have been bombarded by demands for books with LGTBQ+ references, discussions of racism, and more to be purged from the shelves. Amanda would be damned if her community were to ban stories representing minority groups. She spoke out that night at the meeting. Days later, she woke up to a nightmare that is still ongoing.

“Amanda Jones has been called a groomer, a pedo, and a porn-pusher; she has faced death threats and attacks from strangers and friends alike. Her decision to support a collection of books with diverse perspectives made her a target for extremists using book banning campaigns-funded by dark money organizations and advanced by hard right politicians-in a crusade to make America more white, straight, and 'Christian.' But Amanda Jones wouldn't give up without a fight: she sued her harassers for defamation and urged others to join her in the resistance.

"Mapping the book banning crisis occurring all across the nation, That Librarian draws the battle lines in the war against equity and inclusion, calling book lovers everywhere to rise in defense of our readers."

Rating by Amazon customers: 3.9 (8 ratings)
ISBN 978-1639733538 ?
The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy:
and the Path to a Shared American Future
Robert P. Jones
Simon & Schuster (September 5, 2023)
No Review
"Robert P. Jones is the president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and a leading scholar and commentator on religion and politics. Jones writes regularly on politics, culture, and religion for The Atlantic, TIME, and Religion News Service. He is frequently featured in major national media, such as MSNBC, CNN, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and others. He holds a PhD in religion from Emory University and a MDiv from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, which won a 2021 American Book Award, and The End of White Christian America, which won the 2019 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. He writes a regular Substack newsletter at RobertPJones.substack.com." – Amazon biography

"Taking the story of white supremacy in America back to 1493, and examining contemporary communities in Mississippi, Minnesota, and Oklahoma for models of racial repair, The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy helps chart a new course toward a genuinely pluralistic democracy.

"Beginning with contemporary efforts to reckon with the legacy of white supremacy in America, Jones returns to the fateful year when a little-known church doctrine emerged that shaped the way five centuries of European Christians would understand the “discovered” world and the people who populated it. Along the way, he shows us the connections between Emmett Till and the Spanish conquistador Hernando De Soto in the Mississippi Delta, between the lynching of three Black circus workers in Duluth and the mass execution of thirty-eight Dakota men in Mankato, and between the murder of 300 African Americans during the burning of Black Wall Street in Tulsa and the Trail of Tears.

"From this vantage point, Jones shows how the enslavement of Africans was not America’s original sin but, rather, the continuation of acts of genocide and dispossession flowing from the first European contact with Native Americans. These deeds were justified by people who embraced the 15th century Doctrine of Discovery: the belief that God had designated all territory not inhabited or controlled by Christians as their new promised land.

"This reframing of American origins explains how the founders of the United States could build the philosophical framework for a democratic society on a foundation of mass racial violence—and why this paradox survives today in the form of white Christian nationalism. Through stories of people navigating these contradictions in three communities, Jones illuminates the possibility of a new American future in which we finally fulfill the promise of a pluralistic democracy."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (94 ratings)
ISBN 978-1668009512 ?
White Too Long:
The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity
Robert P. Jones
Simon & Schuster; Illustrated edition (July 28, 2020)
No Review
"Robert P. Jones is the CEO and founder of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and a leading scholar and commentator on religion and politics. Jones writes a column on politics, culture, and religion for The Atlantic online. He is frequently featured in major national media, such as CNN, MSNBC, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and others. He holds a PhD in religion from Emory University and a MDiv from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of The End of White Christian America, which won the 2019 Grawemeyer Award in Religion." – Amazon biography

"As the nation grapples with demographic changes and the legacy of racism in America, Christianity’s role as a cornerstone of white supremacy has been largely overlooked. But white Christians—from evangelicals in the South to mainline Protestants in the Midwest and Catholics in the Northeast—have not just been complacent or complicit; rather, as the dominant cultural power, they have constructed and sustained a project of protecting white supremacy and opposing black equality that has framed the entire American story.

"With his family’s 1815 Bible in one hand and contemporary public opinion surveys by Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) in the other, Robert P. Jones delivers a groundbreaking analysis of the repressed history of the symbiotic relationship between Christianity and white supremacy. White Too Long demonstrates how deeply racist attitudes have become embedded in the DNA of white Christian identity over time and calls for an honest reckoning with a complicated, painful, and even shameful past. Jones challenges white Christians to acknowledge that public apologies are not enough—accepting responsibility for the past requires work toward repair in the present.

"White Too Long is not an appeal to altruism. Drawing on lessons gleaned from case studies of communities beginning to face these challenges, Jones argues that contemporary white Christians must confront these unsettling truths because this is the only way to salvage the integrity of their faith and their own identities. More broadly, it is no exaggeration to say that not just the future of white Christianity but the outcome of the American experiment is at stake."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (1,357 ratings)
ISBN 978-1982122867 ?
The Ghost at the Feast:
America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941
Robert Kagan
Knopf (January 10, 2023)
No Review
"Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a columnist for The Washington Post. He is the author of The Return of History and the End of Dreams, Dangerous Nation, Of Paradise and Power, and A Twilight Struggle. He served in the U.S. State Department from 1984 to 1988. He lives in Virginia with his wife.

"At the dawn of the twentieth century, the United States was one of the world’s richest, most populous, most technologically advanced nations. It was also a nation divided along numerous fault lines, with conflicting aspirations and concerns pulling it in different directions. And it was a nation unsure about the role it wanted to play in the world, if any. Americans were the beneficiaries of a global order they had no responsibility for maintaining. Many preferred to avoid being drawn into what seemed an ever more competitive, conflictual, and militarized international environment. However, many also were eager to see the United States taking a share of international responsibility, working with others to preserve peace and advance civilization. The story of American foreign policy in the first four decades of the twentieth century is about the effort to do both—'to adjust the nation to its new position without sacrificing the principles developed in the past,' as one contemporary put it.

"This would prove a difficult task. The collapse of British naval power, combined with the rise of Germany and Japan, suddenly placed the United States in a pivotal position. American military power helped defeat Germany in the First World War, and the peace that followed was significantly shaped by a U.S. president. But Americans recoiled from their deep involvement in world affairs, and for the next two decades, they sat by as fascism and tyranny spread unchecked, ultimately causing the liberal world order to fall apart. America’s resulting intervention in the Second World War marked the beginning of a new era, for the United States and for the world.

"Brilliant and insightful, The Ghost at the Feast shows both the perils of American withdrawal from the world and the price of international responsibility."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (172 ratings)
ISBN 978-0307262943 ?
Rebellion:
How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart—Again
Robert Kagan
Knopf (April 30, 2024)
No Review
"Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a columnist for The Washington Post. He is the author of The Ghost at the Feast, The Return of History and the End of Dreams, Dangerous Nation, Of Paradise and Power, and A Twilight Struggle. He served in the U.S. State Department from 1984 to 1988. He lives in Virginia.

"A chilling and clear-eyed warning about the threats to our democracy posed by the increasing radicalization of the Republican Party, from a leading historian and intellectual.

"The 2024 election could be the last free election held in a unified America. So warns Robert Kagan in this brilliant and terrifying analysis of the perilous state of democracy in the United States today. If Donald Trump loses the upcoming election, as he did in 2020, but refuses to accept the result, as he also did in the last election, he is likely to call on his millions of followers to repudiate the election results. It will be a short step from there to Republican-dominated states rejecting the legitimacy of the federal government and effectively seceding. The United States at that point will cease to be united, with grave consequences for both Americans and the world.

"In Rebellion, Kagan dives deeper than the op-eds and think pieces to explore the historical forces that have brought us to this moment—in particular the long history of opposition to liberalism, and to government, that has shaped America’s character from the time of the Revolution to today. Trump’s unique capacity to tap into that tradition of dissent and circumvent the American system has brought us to the edge of dissolution—not for the first time in our history but possibly the last. This is an elegant and deeply informed synthesis of history, contemporary politics, and ideas that sheds light on this crucial moment."

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593535783 ?
The Most Dangerous Branch:
Inside the Supreme Court in the Age of Trump
David A. Kaplan
Crown (September 4, 2018)
No Review
"David A. Kaplan was a senior editor and legal affairs correspondent at Newsweek for 20 years. While there, he wrote several dozen cover stories on the Court and other topics. Later he was a contributing editor at Fortune, where he wrote long-form profiles of Charlie Rose, Howard Schultz, David Geffen, and Ralph Nader, among others. He is the author of the national bestseller The Silicon Boys, an account of the 2000 presidential election; The Accidental President (on which the HBO feature film Recount was based); and Mine’s Bigger, about the largest sailboat in history, which won the Loeb Award for Best Business Book of 2008. These days, he teaches journalism and ethics at NYU and CUNY."

"In the bestselling tradition of The Nine and The Brethren, The Most Dangerous Branch takes us inside the secret world of the Supreme Court. David A. Kaplan, the former legal affairs editor of Newsweek, shows how the justices subvert the role of the other branches of government—and how we’ve come to accept it at our peril.

"With the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Court has never before been more central in American life. It is the nine justices who too often now decide the controversial issues of our time—from abortion and same-sex marriage, to gun control, campaign finance and voting rights. The Court is so crucial that many voters in 2016 made their choice based on whom they thought their presidential candidate would name to the Court. Donald Trump picked Neil Gorsuch—the key decision of his new administration. Brett Kavanaugh—replacing Kennedy—will be even more important, holding the swing vote over so much social policy. Is that really how democracy is supposed to work?

"Based on exclusive interviews with the justices and dozens of their law clerks, Kaplan provides fresh details about life behind the scenes at the Court—Clarence Thomas’s simmering rage, Antonin Scalia’s death, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s celebrity, Breyer Bingo, the petty feuding between Gorsuch and the chief justice, and what John Roberts thinks of his critics.

"Kaplan presents a sweeping narrative of the justices’ aggrandizement of power over the decades—from Roe v. Wade to Bush v. Gore to Citizens United, to rulings during the 2017-18 term. But the arrogance of the Court isn’t partisan: Conservative and liberal justices alike are guilty of overreach. Challenging conventional wisdom about the Court’s transcendent power, The Most Dangerous Branch is sure to rile both sides of the political aisle."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (146 ratings)
ISBN 978-1524759902 ?
Reform the Kakistocracy:
Rule by the Least Able or Least Principled Citizens
William L Kovacs
Newman Springs (April 11, 2019)
No Review

"William L Kovacs has been involved in the nation’s policy-making process for four decades. He held positions as senior vice president, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, chief counsel on Capitol Hill providing legislative counsel on two landmark laws in one Congress, chairman of a state environmental board, and partner in DC law firms. He has testified before Congress thirty-nine times, participated in several hundred federal rule-makings, and delivered major policy presentations in over forty states.

"His first book, Reform the Kakistocracy, won the 2021 Independent Press Award in the category of Social/Political change; the 2020 Bronze Award from the Nonfiction Authors’ Association; and has received 5-Stars from Readers Favorite. Reform the Kakistocracy sets out how the federal government transformed itself from one of limited powers to one of immense power without any constitutional changes. These changes in institutional power fundamentally affect the relationship of citizens to their government. Government is now the master and citizens the servants of government. The book sets out many clear and thought-provoking ideas for reforming government to make it work for citizens.

"His second book, The Left’s Little Red Book on Forming a New Green Republic, a parody, structured in quote format, to tell the story of how the radical Left uses concern for the environment to attack capitalism and promote socialism. It paints a vivid picture of life in the Left’s New Green Republic.

"Kakistocracy, a term that describes what our government has become, a government controlled by 'leaders' who are the least able or least principled citizens. These leaders are labeled 'kakistocrats.' In Reform the Kakistocracy, Kovacs describes how the kakistocracy transformed our federal government from one of limited powers to one of immense power without any constitutional changes. This decades-long transformation revised the functions and powers of Congress, the executive, and the courts. These revisions change how each branch of government fulfills its institutional role as a check on the powers of the other branches. They also fundamentally affect the relationship of citizens to their government.

"The result of the transformation is decades of policy failures, harmful wealth inequality, a health care system costing two times more than in other industrialized nations, and the imposition of such massive amounts of debt that citizens will eventually live in involuntary servitude to the federal government. As part of the discussion, Kovacs takes on the real-world conflict faced by the kakistocrats — who should be the beneficiary of their loyalty? Of course, it is the Constitution but what does that mean when applied to day-to-day decisions? Kakistocrats deal with laws and regulations, sometimes very vague, deal-making, favors, supporters, opponents, citizens, political parties, interest groups, contributors and other branches of government. How does a kakistocrat balance all these competing factors to be faithful to the Constitution?

"Unlike many books on government reform, Reform the Kakistocracy does not let the reader dangle with fuzzy answers. It presents a clear, thought-provoking, roadmap of governance principles and proposals for restructuring the kakistocracy to achieve a sustainable government that can be managed by citizens. Some may call the roadmap controversial, aggressive, naive or completely unworkable in this political climate, but the roadmap puts serious, creative, ideas into the marketplace for discussion."

Rating by Amazon customers: 3.8 (9 ratings)
ISBN 978-1640965140 ?
The Third Reconstruction:
America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century
Peniel E. Joseph
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (October 4, 2022)
No Review
"Peniel E. Joseph is the Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values, Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, and Associate Dean for Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of award-winning books on African American history, including  The Sword and the Shield and Stokely: A Life. He lives in Austin, Texas." – Amazon biography

"One of our preeminent historians of race and democracy argues that the period since 2008 has marked nothing less than America’s Third Reconstruction

"In The Third Reconstruction, distinguished historian Peniel E. Joseph offers a powerful and personal new interpretation of recent history. The racial reckoning that unfolded in 2020, he argues, marked the climax of a Third Reconstruction: a new struggle for citizenship and dignity for Black Americans, just as momentous as the movements that arose after the Civil War and during the civil rights era. Joseph draws revealing connections and insights across centuries as he traces this Third Reconstruction from the election of Barack Obama to the rise of Black Lives Matter to the failed assault on the Capitol.

"America’s first and second Reconstructions fell tragically short of their grand aims. Our Third Reconstruction offers a new chance to achieve Black dignity and citizenship at last—an opportunity to choose hope over fear."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (63 ratings)
ISBN 978-1541600744 ?
Rule and Ruin:
The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party
Geoffrey Kabaservice
Oxford University Press; Reprint edition (November 1, 2013)
No Review
"Geoffrey Kabaservice is the author of the National Book Award-nominated The Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment. He has written for numerous national publications and has been an assistant professor of history at Yale University. He lives outside Washington, DC.

"The chaotic events leading up to Mitt Romney's defeat in the 2012 election indicated how far the Republican Party had rocketed rightward away from the center of public opinion. Republicans in Congress threatened to shut down the government and force a U.S. debt default. Tea Party activists mounted primary challenges against Republican officeholders who appeared to exhibit too much pragmatism or independence. Moderation and compromise were dirty words in the Republican presidential debates. The GOP, it seemed, had suddenly become a party of ideological purity.

"Except this development is not new at all. In Rule and Ruin, Geoffrey Kabaservice reveals that the moderate Republicans' downfall began not with the rise of the Tea Party but about the time of President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address. Even in the 1960s, when left-wing radicalism and right-wing backlash commanded headlines, Republican moderates and progressives formed a powerful movement, supporting pro-civil rights politicians like Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton, battling big-government liberals and conservative extremists alike. But the Republican civil war ended with the overthrow of the moderate ideas, heroes, and causes that had comprised the core of the GOP since its formation. In hindsight, it is today's conservatives who are 'Republicans in Name Only.'

"Writing with passionate sympathy for a bygone tradition of moderation, Kabaservice recaptures a time when fiscal restraint was matched with social engagement; when a cohort of leading Republicans opposed the Vietnam war; when George Romney—father of Mitt Romney—conducted a nationwide tour of American poverty, from Appalachia to Watts, calling on society to 'listen to the voices from the ghetto.' Rule and Ruin is an epic, deeply researched history that reorients our understanding of our political past and present.

"Today, following the Republicans' loss of the popular vote in five of the last six presidential contests, moderates remain marginalized in the GOP and progressives are all but nonexistent. In this insightful and elegantly argued book, Kabaservice contends that their decline has left Republicans less capable of governing responsibly, with dire consequences for all Americans. He has added a new afterword that considers the fallout from the 2012 elections."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (87 ratings)
ISBN 978-0199975518 ?
Radical American Partisanship:
Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy
Nathan P. Kalmoe & Lilliana Mason
University of Chicago Press (May 6, 2022)
No Review
"Nathan P. Kalmoe is associate professor of political communication in Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communication and Department of Political Science. He is the author of With Ballots & Bullets: Partisanship & Violence in the American Civil War and co-author of Neither Liberal nor Conservative: Ideological Innocence in the Mass Public.
Lilliana Mason is associate research professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University’s SNF Agora Institute and Department of Political Science. She is author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity." – Amazon biography

"Political violence is rising in the United States, with Republicans and Democrats divided along racial and ethnic lines that spurred massive bloodshed and democratic collapse earlier in the nation’s history. The January 6, 2021 insurrection and the partisan responses that ensued. (sic)

"For over four years, through a series of surveys and experiments, Nathan P. Kalmoe and Lilliana Mason have been studying radicalism among ordinary American partisans. In this groundbreaking book, they draw on new evidence—as well as insights from history, psychology, and political science—to put our present partisan fractiousness in context and to explain broad patterns of political and social change. Early chapters reveal the scope of the problem, who radical partisans are, and trends over time, while later chapters identify the conditions that partisans say justify violence and test how elections, political violence, and messages from leaders enflame or pacify radical views. Kalmoe and Mason find that ordinary partisanship is far more dangerous than pundits and scholars have recognized. However, these findings are not a forecast of inevitable doom; the current climate also brings opportunities to confront democratic threats head-on and to create a more inclusive politics. Timely and thought-provoking, Radical American Partisanship is vital reading for understanding our current political landscape."

Rating by Amazon customers: 3.9 (15 ratings)
ISBN 978-0226820262 ?
Unable:
The Law, Politics, and Limits of Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment
Brian C. Kalt
Oxford University Press (October 14, 2019)
No Review
"Brian C. Kalt is a professor of law and the Harold Norris Faculty Scholar at Michigan State University College of Law." – Amazon biography

"Since the election of President Donald Trump, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution-covering presidential incapacity-has been a frequent topic of public discussion. Meanwhile, Section 4 has become a mainstay in television dramas, which usually represents it inaccurately.

"The country needs this complicated but essential topic explained. Unable: The Law, Politics, and Limits of Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment is designed to educate and inform the public about Section 4 in an evenhanded and accessible way. This book is not about President Trump; it offers no opinions on his fitness for office. By the end of the book, though, it will be clear how Section 4 applies to him, as well as to any other president."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (16 ratings)
ISBN 978-0190083199 ?
Saints and Soldiers:
Inside Internet-Age Terrorism, From Syria to the Capitol Siege
by Rita Katz
Columbia University Press (October 11, 2022)
No Review

"Rita Katz is the founder and executive director of the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks and analyzes extremist online activity. Her decades of experience include assisting in a wide range of governmental terrorism investigations and developing counterterrorism strategies used across the tech sector. Katz is the author of Terrorist Hunter: The Extraordinary Story of a Woman Who Went Undercover to Infiltrate the Radical Islamic Groups Operating in America (2003)." – Amazon biography

"More than a decade ago, counterterrorism expert Rita Katz began browsing white supremacist and neo-Nazi forums. The hateful rhetoric and constant threats of violence immediately reminded her of the jihadist militants she spent her days monitoring, but law enforcement and policy makers barely paid attention to the Far Right. Now, years of attacks committed by extremists radicalized online―including mass murders at a synagogue in Pittsburgh and mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, as well as the Capitol siege―have brought home the danger. How has the internet shaped today’s threats, and what do the online origins of these movements reveal about how to stop them?

"In Saints and Soldiers, Katz reveals a new generation of terrorist movements that don’t just use the Internet, but exist almost entirely on it. She provides a vivid view from the trenches, spanning edgy video game chat groups to mainstream social media platforms to what ISIS and Far-Right mass-shooters in El Paso, Orlando and elsewhere unwittingly reveal between the lines of their manifestos. Katz shows how the online cultures of these movements―far more than their ideologies and leaders―create today’s terrorists and shape how they commit “real world” violence. From ISIS to QAnon, Saints and Soldiers pinpoints the approaches needed for a new era in which arrests and military campaigns alone cannot stop these never-before-seen threats."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (16 ratings)
ISBN 978-0231203500 ?
Republican Jesus:
How the Right Has Rewritten the Gospels
by Tony Keddie
University of California Press (October 6, 2020)
No Review

"Originally from Levittown, Pennsylvania, Tony Keddie received his B.A. in Religion from Temple University in Philadelphia. He then went on to receive a M.A.R. (Master of Arts in Religion) in Second Temple Judaism from Yale Divinity School and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Ancient Mediterranean Religions from The University of Texas at Austin. Tony is currently the Assistant Professor of Early Christian History and Literature in the department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He is a specialist in the social and political history of Judaism and Christianity in the Hellenistic and Roman periods as well as the politics of biblical interpretation, especially in contemporary North America. He teaches courses and advises students in the areas of biblical studies, ancient Judaism, ancient Christianity, and theory and method for the study of religion.

"Tony Keddie is Assistant Professor of Early Christian History and Literature at the University of British Columbia and author of Class and Power in Roman Palestine and Revelations of Ideology.

"Tony has received prestigious awards and fellowships for his research from organizations including the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, and the Society of Biblical Literature. He is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, the American Academy of Religion, and ASOR. In addition to teaching and writing, Tony has also been involved in the archaeological excavations of an ancient synagogue in Ostia, Italy." – Amazon biography

"Jesus loves borders, guns, unborn babies, and economic prosperity and hates homosexuality, taxes, welfare, and universal healthcare—or so say many Republican politicians, pundits, and preachers. Through outrageous misreadings of the New Testament gospels that started almost a century ago, conservative influencers have conjured a version of Jesus who speaks to their fears, desires, and resentments.

"In Republican Jesus, Tony Keddie explains not only where this right-wing Christ came from and what he stands for but also why this version of Jesus is a fraud. By restoring Republicans’ cherry-picked gospel texts to their original literary and historical contexts, Keddie dismantles the biblical basis for Republican positions on hot-button issues like Big Government, taxation, abortion, immigration, and climate change. At the same time, he introduces readers to an ancient Jesus whose life experiences and ethics were totally unlike those of modern Americans, conservatives and liberals alike."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (117 ratings)
ISBN 978-0520356238 ?
Gerrymandering the States:
Partisanship, Race, and the Transformation of American Federalism
Alex Keena, Michael Latner, Anthony J. McGann & Charles Anthony Smith
Cambridge University Press (July 22, 2021)
No Review

"Alex Keena is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Virginia Commonwealth University. Michael Latner is Professor of Political Science at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and Senior Fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists' Center for Science and Democracy in Washington, DC. Anthony J. McGann is Professor of Government and Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Charles Anthony Smith is Professor in Political Science and Law at the University of California, Irvine."

"State legislatures are tasked with drawing state and federal districts and administering election law, among many other responsibilities. Yet state legislatures are themselves gerrymandered. This book examines how, why, and with what consequences, drawing on an original dataset of ninety-five state legislative maps from before and after 2011 redistricting. Identifying the institutional, political, and geographic determinants of gerrymandering, the authors find that Republican gerrymandering increased dramatically after the 2011 redistricting and bias was most extreme in states with racial segregation where Republicans drew the maps. This bias has had long-term consequences. For instance, states with the most extreme Republican gerrymandering were more likely to pass laws that restricted voting rights and undermined public health, and they were less likely to respond to COVID-19. The authors examine the implications for American democracy and for the balance of power between federal and state government; they also offer empirically grounded recommendations for reform."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (8 ratings)
ISBN 978-1316518120 ?
The Making of a Democratic Economy:
How to Build Prosperity for the Many, Not the Few
Marjorie Kelly & Ted Howard
Naomi Klein (Foreword)
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (July 23, 2019)
No Review

"Marjorie Kelly is the executive vice president and senior fellow at the Democracy Collaborative. She is the author of The Divine Right of Capital and Owning Our Future. Ted Howard is the cofounder and the president of the Democracy Collaborative. The Collaborative works to carry out a vision of a new economic system where shared ownership and control creates more equitable and inclusive outcomes, fosters ecological sustainability, and promotes flourishing democratic and community life."

"Seven principles for a just and sustainable system, accompanied by true stories of 'the people creating the institutions of the next economy' (Kat Taylor, cofounder, Beneficial State Bank).

"The extractive economy we live with now—designed by the 1 percent for the 1 percent—enables the financial elite to squeeze out maximum gain for themselves, heedless of damage to people or planet. But in this compelling book, Marjorie Kelly and Ted Howard show that there is a new economy emerging, focused on helping everyone thrive while respecting planetary boundaries.

"At a time when competing political visions are at stake the world over, this book urges a move beyond tinkering at the margins to address the systemic crisis of our economy. Kelly and Howard outline seven principles of what they call a Democratic Economy: community, inclusion, place (keeping wealth local), good work (putting labor before capital), democratized ownership, ethical finance, and sustainability. Each principle is paired with a place putting it into practice: Pine Ridge, Preston, Portland, Cleveland, and more.

"Included are stories not just of activists and grassroots leaders but of the unexpected accomplices of the Democratic Economy. Seeds of a future beyond corporate capitalism and state socialism are being planted in hospital procurement departments, pension fund offices, and even company boardrooms. The future remains uncertain—but Kelly and Howard help us understand how to nurture and grow those seeds into an equitable, ecologically sustainable economy that benefits all of us, not just the billionaires.

" 'As champions of worker and community ownership, Kelly and Howard remind us that economic democracy is essential to political democracy and a viable human future.' —David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (40 ratings)
ISBN 978-1523099924 ?
The Racket:
A Rogue Reporter vs The American Empire
Matt Kennard
Chris Hedges (Foreword)
Bloomsbury Academic; 2nd edition (June 13, 2024)
No Review

"Matt Kennard is co-founder, and chief investigator, at Declassified UK, a news outlet investigating British foreign policy. He was a fellow and then director at the Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ) in London, UK. He has worked as a staff writer for the Financial Times in Washington, DC, New York, and London. He is the author of two acclaimed books: Irregular Army (2012) and The Racket (2015)."

"While working for the Financial Times, investigative journalist Matt Kennard had unbridled access to the crème de la crème of the global elite. From slanging matches with Henry Kissinger to afternoon coffees with the man who captured Che Guevara, Kennard spent four years gathering extraordinarily honest testimony from the horse's mouth on how the global economic system works away from the convenient myths. It left him with only one conclusion: the world as we know it is run by an exclusive class of American racketeers who operate with virtually unlimited weapons and money, and a reach much too close to home.

"Owing to the very nature of the Financial Times, however, Kennard was not able to publish these findings as part of his day job. Enter The Racket, now in a fully updated second edition. This tell-all book, reported from all corners of the world, will transform everything you thought you knew about how the world works-and in whose interests. Kennard reports not only from across the United States, but from the United Kingdom, the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. In doing so he provides startlingly clear and concrete evidence of unchecked, high-level, interrelated systems of exploitation all over the world. At the same time, through encounters with high-profile opponents of the racket such as Thom Yorke, Damon Albarn, and Gael García Bernal, Kennard offers a glimpse of a developing resistance, which needs to win.

"Now more relevant than ever, this 2nd edition contains a new preface by the author and a new foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (11 ratings)
ISBN 978-1350422711 ?
Hiding in Plain Sight:
The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America
by Sarah Kendzior
Flatiron Books (April 7, 2020)
My Review
"Sarah Kendzior is best known for her reporting on St. Louis and the 2016 election, her academic research on authoritarian states, and her New York Times bestselling debut The View from Flyover Country. She is a co-host of the podcast Gaslit Nation and was named one of Foreign Policy's "100 people you should be following on Twitter to make sense of global events." Her reporting has been featured in Politico, The Atlantic, Fast Company, The New York Times, Globe and Mail, and more. She lives in St. Louis." – Amazon biography

"The story of Donald Trump's rise to power is the story of a buried American history — buried because people in power liked it that way. It was visible without being seen, influential without being named, ubiquitous without being overt.

"Sarah Kendzior's Hiding in Plain Sight pulls back the veil on a history spanning decades, a history of an American autocrat in the making. In doing so, she reveals the inherent fragility of American democracy — how our continual loss of freedom, the rise of consolidated corruption, and the secrets behind a burgeoning autocratic United States have been hiding in plain sight for decades.

"In Kendzior's signature and celebrated style, she expertly outlines Trump's meteoric rise from the 1980s until today, interlinking key moments of his life with the degradation of the American political system and the continual erosion of our civil liberties by foreign powers. Kendzior also offers a never-before-seen look at her lifelong tendency to be in the wrong place at the wrong time — living in New York through 9/11 and in St. Louis during the Ferguson uprising, and researching media and authoritarianism when Trump emerged using the same tactics as the post-Soviet dictatorships she had long studied.

"It is a terrible feeling to sense a threat coming, but it is worse when we let apathy, doubt, and fear prevent us from preparing ourselves. Hiding in Plain Sight confronts the injustice we have too long ignored because the truth is the only way forward."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (2,657 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250210715 ?
They Knew:
How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent
Sarah Kendzior
Flatiron Books (September 13, 2022)
No Review
"Sarah Kendzior is the New York Times bestselling author of Hiding in Plain Sight and The View from Flyover Country. She is known for her reporting on St. Louis, her coverage of the 2016 election, and her academic research on authoritarian states. She is the co-host of the acclaimed podcast Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and was named by Foreign Policy as one of the “100 people you should be following on Twitter to make sense of global events.” Her reporting has been featured in many publications, including Politico, Slate, The Atlantic, Fast Company, The Chicago Tribune, TeenVogue, The Globe and Mail, and The New York Times. She lives in St. Louis." – Amazon biography

"In They Knew, New York Times bestselling author Sarah Kendzior explores the United States’ “culture of conspiracy,” putting forth a timely and unflinching argument: uncritical faith in broken institutions is as dangerous as false narratives peddled by propagandists. Conspiracy theories are on the rise because officials refuse to enforce accountability for real conspiracies.

"They Knew discusses conspiracy culture in a rapidly declining United States struggling with corruption, climate change, and other crises. As the actions of the powerful remain shrouded in mystery―like the Jeffrey Epstein operation―it is unsurprising that people turn to conspiracy theories to fill the informational void. They Knew exposes the tactics these powerful actors use to placate an inquisitive public.

"In Kendzior’s signature whip smart prose and eviscerating arguments, They Knew unearths decades of buried American history, providing an essential and critical look at how to rebuild our democracy by confronting the political lies and crimes that have shaped us."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (221 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250210722 ?
The Right To Vote:
The Contested History Of Democracy In The United States
Alexander Keyssar
Basic Books (August 22, 2000)
No Review
Alexander Keyssar, a historian at Duke University, is the author of this book.

"Most Americans take for granted their right to vote, whether they choose to exercise it or not. But the history of suffrage in the U.S. is, in fact,the story of a struggle to achieve this right by our society's marginalized groups. In The Right to Vote, Duke historian Alexander Keyssar explores the evolution of suffrage over the course of the nation's history. Examining the many features of the history of the right to vote in the U.S. — class, ethnicity, race, gender, religion, and age — the book explores the conditions under which American democracy has expanded and contracted over the years. Keyssar presents convincing evidence that the history of the right to vote has not been one of a steady history of expansion and increasing inclusion, noting that voting rights contracted substantially in the U.S. between 1850 and 1920. Keyssar also presents a controversial thesis: that the primary factor promoting the expansion of the suffrage has been war and the primary factors promoting contraction or delaying expansion have been class tension and class conflict."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (98 ratings)
ISBN 978-0465029686 ?
The Right To Vote:
The Contested History Of Democracy In The United States
Alexander Keyssar
Basic Books; Revised edition (June 30, 2009)
No Review
Alexander Keyssar is the Matthew W. Stirling, Jr., Professor of History and Social Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. His 1986 book Out of Work was awarded three scholarly prizes, and his book The Right to Vote was named the best book in U.S. history by both the American Historical Association and the Historical Society; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

"Originally published in 2000, The Right to Vote was widely hailed as a magisterial account of the evolution of suffrage from the American Revolution to the end of the twentieth century. In this revised and updated edition, Keyssar carries the story forward, from the disputed presidential contest of 2000 through the 2008 campaign and the election of Barack Obama. The Right to Vote is a sweeping reinterpretation of American political history as well as a meditation on the meaning of democracy in contemporary American life."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (98 ratings)
ISBN 978-0465005024 ?
Devil in the Grove:
Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America
Gilbert King
Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (February 19, 2013)
No Review
"Gilbert King has written about U.S. Supreme Court history for the New York Times and the Washington Post, and is a featured contributor to Smithsonian magazine's history blog, Past Imperfect. He is the author of The Execution of Willie Francis: Race, Murder, and the Search for Justice in the American South. He lives in New York City with his wife and two daughters." – Amazon biography

"In 1949, Florida's orange industry was booming, and citrus barons got rich on the backs of cheap Jim Crow labor. To maintain order and profits, they turned to Willis V. McCall, a violent sheriff who ruled Lake County with murderous resolve. When a white seventeen-year-old Groveland girl cried rape, McCall was fast on the trail of four young blacks who dared to envision a future for themselves beyond the citrus groves. By day's end, the Ku Klux Klan had rolled into town, burning the homes of blacks to the ground and chasing hundreds into the swamps, hell-bent on lynching the young men who came to be known as 'the Groveland Boys.'

"And so began the chain of events that would bring Thurgood Marshall, the man known as 'Mr. Civil Rights,' and the most important American lawyer of the twentieth century, into the deadly fray. Associates thought it was suicidal for him to wade into the 'Florida Terror' at a time when he was irreplaceable to the burgeoning civil rights movement, but the lawyer would not shrink from the fight—not after the Klan had murdered one of Marshall's NAACP associates involved with the case and Marshall had endured continual threats that he would be next.

"Drawing on a wealth of never-before-published material, including the FBI's unredacted Groveland case files, as well as unprecedented access to the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund files, King shines new light on this remarkable civil rights crusader, setting his rich and driving narrative against the heroic backdrop of a case that U.S. Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson decried as 'one of the best examples of one of the worst menaces to American justice.' "

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (3,291 ratings)
ISBN 978-0061792267 ?
The Liberty Paradox:
Living with the Responsibilities of Freedom
David Kinley
Johns Hopkins University Press (February 20, 2024)
No Review
"David Kinley is the inaugural Chair of Human Rights Law at the University of Sydney, a founding member of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, and an Expert Member of Doughty Street Chambers in London. He is the author of Necessary Evil: How to Fix Finance by Saving Human Rights and the coauthor of The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

"How do we balance freedom with the responsibilities we owe each other as members of society?

"Are we free to do whatever we want? This idea challenges us throughout our daily lives, from how to tackle pandemic restrictions and vaccine mandates to how to respond to technological innovations and climate change warnings. In The Liberty Paradox, David Kinley argues that we must rehabilitate the notion of liberty by rescuing it from the myopic demands of freedom without limit and reinstating the essential ingredient of social responsibility.

"Combining political, philosophical, and personal reflections as a global human rights lawyer, Kinley examines the implications of this liberty reset for how we negotiate freedom's boundaries in the realms of wealth, work, health, happiness, security, voice, love, and death. With chapters dedicated to each of these life-defining domains and written in a style both engaging and insightful, The Liberty Paradox explores how we try―and often fail―to balance personal desires and public interests. Kinley concludes that preserving liberty and protecting it from radical individualism requires new ways of respecting each other and rebuilding trust in the institutions and people that govern us."

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 978-1421447957 ?
The Despot's Accomplice:
How the West is Aiding and Abetting the Decline of Democracy
by Brian Klaas
Oxford University Press (April, 2017)
No Review
"Brian Klaas is a Fellow in Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics, where he focuses on democratization and political violence. He has advised several national governments and major international NGOs, including International Crisis Group, the Carter Center, and One Earth Future. Klaas received his doctorate from the University of Oxford. The author has written op-eds for The New York Times, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and Minneapolis Star Tribune. Starting September 2016, he now has a column in the Washington Post." – Amazon biography

"For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the world is steadily becoming less democratic. The true culprits are dictators and counterfeit democrats. But, argues Klaas, the West is also an accomplice, inadvertently assaulting pro-democracy forces abroad as governments in Washington, London and Brussels chase pyrrhic short-term economic and security victories. Friendly fire from Western democracies against democracy abroad is too high a price to pay for a myopic foreign policy that is ultimately making the world less prosperous, stable and democratic.

"The Despot's Accomplice draws on years of extensive interviews on the frontlines of the global struggle for democracy, from a poetry-reading, politician-kidnapping general in Madagascar to Islamist torture victims in Tunisia, Belarusian opposition activists tailed by the KGB, West African rebels, and tea-sipping members of the Thai junta. Cumulatively, their stories weave together a tale of a broken system at the root of democracy's global retreat."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (287 ratings)
ISBN 978-1510735859 ?
The Despot's Apprentice:
The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America
by Brian Klaas
David Talbot (Foreword)
Hot Books (November 14, 2017)
No Review
"Brian Klaas is the author of The Despot's Accomplice and a Fellow in Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics, where he focuses on authoritarianism and democracy. Klaas received his doctorate from the University of Oxford. He has advised NATO, the European Union, national governments, and major international NGOs. He previously served as a US campaign adviser. Klaas is a columnist for DemocracyPost at the Washington Post and is a regular contributor to USA Today, Foreign Affairs, Newsweek, the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Hill. He is also a regular guest on MSNBC, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, BBC News, Sky News, and National Public Radio. He is an American currently living in London, UK. David Talbot is the New York Times bestselling author of Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years and The Devil’s Chessboard. He is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Salon and has written for the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and Time. He lives in San Francisco." – Amazon biography

"Donald Trump isn't a despot. But he is increasingly acting like The Despot's Apprentice, an understudy in authoritarian tactics that threaten to erode American democracy, including:

  • Attacking the press
  • Threatening rule of law by firing those who investigate his alleged wrongdoings
  • Using nepotism to staff the White House
  • and countless other techniques

"Donald Trump is borrowing tactics from the world's dictators and despots. Trump's fascination with the military, his obsession with his own cult of personality, and his deliberate campaign to blur the line between fact and falsehood are nothing new to the world of despots. But they are new to the United States. With each authoritarian tactic or tweet, Trump poses a unique threat to democratic government in the world’s most powerful democracy.

"At the same time, Trump's apprenticeship has serious consequences beyond the United States. His bizarre adoration and idolization of despotic strongmen—from Russia's Putin, to Turkey's Erdogan, or to the Philippines' Duterte—has transformed American foreign policy into a powerful cheerleader for some of the world’s worst regimes.

"In The Despot’s Apprentice, an ex-US campaign advisor who has sat with the world's dictators explains Donald Trump's increasingly authoritarian tactics and how Trump uniquely threatens American democracy... and how to save it from him."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (287 ratings)
ISBN 978-1510735859 ?
Corruptible:
Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us
by Brian Klaas
Scribner (November 9, 2021)
No Review
"Brian Klaas grew up in Minnesota, earned his DPhil at Oxford, and is now a professor of global politics at University College London. He is also a weekly columnist for The Washington Post, host of the award-winning Power Corrupts podcast, and frequent guest on national television. Klaas has conducted field research across the globe, interviewing despots, CEOs, torture victims, dissidents, cult leaders, criminals, and everyday power abusers. He has also advised major politicians and organizations including NATO, the European Union, and Amnesty International." – Amazon biography

"Does power corrupt, or are corrupt people drawn to power? Are entrepreneurs who embezzle and cops who kill the result of poorly designed systems or are they just bad people? Are tyrants made or born? If you were suddenly thrust into a position of power, would you be able to resist the temptation to line your pockets or seek revenge against your enemies?

"To answer these questions, Corruptible draws on over 500 interviews with some of the world’s top leaders—from the noblest to the dirtiest—including presidents and philanthropists as well as rebels, cultists, and dictators. Some of the fascinating insights include: how facial appearance determines who we pick as leaders, why narcissists make more money, why some people don’t want power at all and others are drawn to it out of a psychopathic impulse, and why being the “beta” (second in command) may actually be the optimal place for health and well-being.

"Corruptible also features a wealth of counterintuitive examples from history and social science: you’ll meet the worst bioterrorist in American history, hit the slopes with a ski instructor who once ruled Iraq, and learn why the inability of chimpanzees to play baseball is central to the development of human hierarchies.

"Based on deep, unprecedented research from around the world, Corruptible will challenge your most basic assumptions about becoming a leader and what might happen to your head when you get there. It also provides a roadmap to avoiding classic temptations, suggesting a series of reforms that would facilitate better people finding a path to power—and ensuring that power purifies rather than corrupts."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (599 ratings)
ISBN 978-1982154097 ?
Why We're Polarized
Ezra Klein
Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster; Illustrated edition (January 28, 2020)
No Review
"Ezra Klein is a columnist and podcast host at the New York Times. He is the author of Why We’re Polarized, an instant New York Times bestseller, named one of Barack Obama’s top books of 2022. He lives in Brooklyn, New York."

" 'The American political system—which includes everyone from voters to journalists to the president—is full of rational actors making rational decisions given the incentives they face,' writes political analyst Ezra Klein. 'We are a collection of functional parts whose efforts combine into a dysfunctional whole.'

" 'A thoughtful, clear and persuasive analysis' (The New York Times Book Review), Why We’re Polarized reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America’s descent into division and dysfunction. Neither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump’s rise to the Democratic Party’s leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture.

"America is polarized, first and foremost, by identity. Everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics. Over the past fifty years in America, our partisan identities have merged with our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities. These merged identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together.

"Klein shows how and why American politics polarized around identity in the 20th century, and what that polarization did to the way we see the world and one another. And he traces the feedback loops between polarized political identities and polarized political institutions that are driving our system toward crisis."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (2,740 ratings)
ISBN 978-1476700328 ?
A Savage Order:
How the World's Deadliest Countries Can Forge a Path to Security
Rachel Kleinfeld
Pantheon (November 6, 2018)
No Review
"Rachel Kleinfeld is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and was the founding CEO of the Truman National Security Project. From 2011 to 2014 she served on the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board and regularly advises officials in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other allied governments. Kleinfeld is the author of two previous books and has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and other national television, radio, and print media. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico." – Amazon biography

"The most violent places in the world today are not at war. More people have died in Mexico in recent years than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. These parts of the world are instead buckling under a maelstrom of gangs, organized crime, political conflict, corruption, and state brutality. Such devastating violence can feel hopeless, yet some places—from Colombia to the Republic of Georgia—have been able to recover.

"In this powerfully argued and urgent book, Rachel Kleinfeld examines why some democracies, including our own, are crippled by extreme violence and how they can regain security. Drawing on fifteen years of study and firsthand field research—interviewing generals, former guerrillas, activists, politicians, mobsters, and law enforcement in countries around the world—Kleinfeld tells the stories of societies that successfully fought seemingly ingrained violence and offers penetrating conclusions about what must be done to build governments that are able to protect the lives of their citizens.

"Taking on existing literature and popular theories about war, crime, and foreign intervention, A Savage Order is a blistering yet inspiring investigation into what makes some countries peaceful and others war zones, and a blueprint for what we can do to help."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (41 ratings)
ISBN 978-1101871997 ?
Jesus and John Wayne:
How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Liveright (June 23, 2020)
No Review
"Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a professor of history at Calvin University and the author of A New Gospel for Women. She has written for The Washington Post, Christianity Today, Christian Century, and Religion & Politics, among other publications. She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan." – Amazon biography

“How did a libertine who lacks even the most basic knowledge of the Christian faith win 81 percent of the white evangelical vote in 2016? And why have white evangelicals become a presidential reprobate's staunchest supporters? These are among the questions acclaimed historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez asks in Jesus and John Wayne, which delves beyond facile headlines to explain how white evangelicals have brought us to our fractured political moment. Challenging the commonly held assumption that the ‘moral majority’ backed Donald Trump for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Donald Trump in fact represents the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals' most deeply held values.

Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping account of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, showing how American evangelicals have worked for decades to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism, or in the words of one modern chaplain, with ‘a spiritual badass.’ As Du Mez explains, the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the role of culture in modern American evangelicalism. Many of today's evangelicals may not be theologically astute, but they know their VeggieTales, they've read John Eldredge's Wild at Heart, and they learned about purity before they learned about sex—and they have a silver ring to prove it. Evangelical books, films, music, clothing, and merchandise shape the beliefs of millions. And evangelical popular culture is teeming with muscular heroes—mythical warriors and rugged soldiers, men like Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, and the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of ‘Christian America.’ Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done.

“Trump, in other words, is hardly the first flashy celebrity to capture evangelicals' hearts and minds, nor is he the first strongman to promise evangelicals protection and power. Indeed, the values and viewpoints at the heart of white evangelicalism today—patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community—are likely to persist long after Trump leaves office.

“A much-needed reexamination, Jesus and John Wayne explains why evangelicals have rallied behind the least-Christian president in American history and how they have transformed their faith in the process, with enduring consequences for all of us.”

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (4,471 ratings)
ISBN 978-1631495731 ?
Putin's Playbook:
Russia's Secret Plan to Defeat America
Rebekah Koffler
Regnery Gateway (July 27, 2021)
No Review
"Rebekah Koffler is a Russian-born U.S. intelligence expert. Working with the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency’s National Clandestine Service, she has led 'red' teams during wargames and briefed the Pentagon, the White House, and NATO on Russian affairs. U.S. military commanders have called her a 'national asset,' and she received the National Intelligence Professional Award. Now an independent consultant, Rebekah has been prominently featured across Fox News, The Hill, The Daily Caller, The Washington Times, and in numerous other publications. She lives near Washington, D.C., with her husband, the journalist Keith Koffler, and their children." – Amazon biography

"The 'Russian collusion' hoax not only poisoned American politics but also sowed confusion about the real Russian threat to the United States. President Vladimir Putin wasn’t colluding with the Trump campaign, but as a former U.S. intelligence specialist makes clear in this eye-opening book, the judo-loving ex–KGB agent most certainly has a plan to defeat the United States.

"Born and raised in the Soviet Union, Rebekah Koffler came to America as a young woman. After 9/11, she joined the Defense Intelligence Agency, devoting her career to protecting her new country. Now she reveals in chilling detail Putin’s long-range plan— his “playbook”—to weaken and subdue the United States, preparing for the war that he believes is inevitable.

"With the insight of a native, Koffler explains how Russians, formed by centuries of wartorn history, understand the world and their national destiny. The collapse of the Soviet empire, which Putin experienced as a vulnerable KGB agent in East Germany, was a catastrophic humiliation. Seeing himself as the modern “Czar Vladimir” of a unique Slavic nation at war with the West, he is determined to restore Russia to its place as a great power.

"Koffler’s analysis is enriched by her deeply personal account of her life in the Soviet Union. Devoted to her adopted homeland but concerned about the complacency of her fellow citizens, she appreciates American freedoms as only a survivor of totalitarianism can. An opportunity to view ourselves and the world through the eyes of our adversary, Putin’s Playbook is a rare and compelling testimony that we ignore at our peril."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (660 ratings)
ISBN 978-1684510030 ?
Burning Down the House:
How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greed
Andrew Koppelman
St. Martin's Press (October 4, 2022)
No Review
"Andrew Koppelman is John Paul Stevens Professor of Law, Professor (by courtesy) of Political Science, and Philosophy Department Affiliated Faculty at Northwestern University. He received the Walder Award for Research Excellence from Northwestern, the Hart-Dworkin award in legal philosophy from the Association of American Law Schools, and the Edward S. Corwin Prize from the American Political Science Association. His scholarship focuses on issues at the intersection of law and political philosophy. He has written more than 100 scholarly articles and eight books, most recently Burning Down the House: How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greed, forthcoming from St. Martin’s Press." – Amazon biography

"In 2010 in South Fulton, Tennessee, each household paid the local fire department a yearly fee of $75.00. That year, Gene Cranick's house accidentally caught fire. But the fire department refused to come because Cranick had forgotten to pay his yearly fee, leaving his home in ashes. Observers across the political spectrum agreed―some with horror and some with enthusiasm―that this revealed the true face of libertarianism. But libertarianism did not always require callous indifference to the misfortunes of others.

"Modern libertarianism began with Friedrich Hayek’s admirable corrective to the Depression-era vogue for central economic planning. It resisted oppressive state power. It showed how capitalism could improve life for everyone. Yet today, it's a toxic blend of anarchism, disdain for the weak, and rationalization for environmental catastrophe. Libertarians today accept new, radical arguments―which crumble under scrutiny―that justify dishonest business practices and Covid deniers who refuse to wear masks in the name of 'freedom.'

"Andrew Koppelman’s book traces libertarianism's evolution from Hayek’s moderate pro-market ideas to the romantic fabulism of Murray Rothbard, Robert Nozick, and Ayn Rand, and Charles Koch’s promotion of climate change denial. Burning Down the House is the definitive history of an ideological movement that has reshaped American politics."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.1 (13 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250280138 ?
The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008
Paul Krugman
W. W. Norton (December 1, 2008)
No Review
"Paul Krugman is the recipient of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics. He writes a twice-weekly op-ed column for the New York Times and a blog named for his 2007 book, The Conscience of a Liberal. He teaches economics at Princeton University."

"In 1999, in The Return of Depression Economics, Paul Krugman surveyed the economic crises that had swept across Asia and Latin America, and pointed out that those crises were a warning for all of us: like diseases that have become resistant to antibiotics, the economic maladies that caused the Great Depression were making a comeback. In the years that followed, as Wall Street boomed and financial wheeler-dealers made vast profits, the international crises of the 1990s faded from memory. But now depression economics has come to America: when the great housing bubble of the mid-2000s burst, the U.S. financial system proved as vulnerable as those of developing countries caught up in earlier crises and a replay of the 1930s seems all too possible.

"In this new, greatly updated edition of The Return of Depression Economics, Krugman shows how the failure of regulation to keep pace with an increasingly out-of-control financial system set the United States, and the world as a whole, up for the greatest financial crisis since the 1930s. He also lays out the steps that must be taken to contain the crisis, and turn around a world economy sliding into a deep recession. Brilliantly crafted in Krugman's trademark style--lucid, lively, and supremely informed--this new edition of The Return of Depression Economics will become an instant cornerstone of the debate over how to respond to the crisis."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (512 ratings)
ISBN 978-0393071016 ?
One Nation Under God:
How Corporate America Invented Christian America
Kevin M. Kruse
Basic Books; Illustrated edition (April 14, 2015)
No Review
"Kevin M. Kruse is a professor of history at Princeton University and the author or coeditor of five books, including Fault Lines and the award-winning White Flight. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey."

"The provocative and authoritative history of the origins of Christian America in the New Deal era

"We're often told that the United States is, was, and always has been a Christian nation. But in One Nation Under God, historian Kevin M. Kruse reveals that the belief that America is fundamentally and formally Christian originated in the 1930s.

"To fight the 'slavery' of FDR's New Deal, businessmen enlisted religious activists in a campaign for 'freedom under God' that culminated in the election of their ally Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. The new president revolutionized the role of religion in American politics. He inaugurated new traditions like the National Prayer Breakfast, as Congress added the phrase 'under God' to the Pledge of Allegiance and made "'In God We Trust' the country's first official motto. Church membership soon soared to an all-time high of 69 percent. Americans across the religious and political spectrum agreed that their country was 'one nation under God.'

"Provocative and authoritative, One Nation Under God reveals how an unholy alliance of money, religion, and politics created a false origin story that continues to define and divide American politics to this day."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (713 ratings)
ISBN 978-0465049493 ?
Fascism Comes To America:
A Century of Obsession in Politics and Culture
Bruce Kuklick
University of Chicago Press (November 22, 2022)
No Review
"Bruce Kuklick is the Nichols Professor of American History, Emeritus, at the University of Pennsylvania. He is most recently the author of Death in the Congo: Murdering Patrice Lumumba, written with Emmanuel Gerard, and The Fighting Sullivans."

"From the time Mussolini took power in Italy in 1922, Americans have been obsessed with and brooded over the meaning of fascism and how it might migrate to the United States. Fascism Comes to America examines how we have viewed fascism overseas and its implications for our own country. Bruce Kuklick explores the rhetoric of politicians, who have used the language of fascism to smear opponents, and he looks at the discussions of pundits, the analyses of academics, and the displays of fascism in popular culture, including fiction, radio, TV, theater, and film. Kuklick argues that fascism has little informational meaning in the United States, but instead, it is used to denigrate or insult. For example, every political position has been besmirched as fascist. As a result, the term does not describe a phenomenon so much as it denounces what one does not like. Finally, in displaying fascism for most Americans, entertainment—and most importantly film—has been crucial in conveying to citizens what fascism is about. Fascism Comes to America has been enhanced by many illustrations that exhibit how fascism was absorbed into the US public consciousness."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (1 rating)
ISBN 978-0226821467 ?
Gerrymandering:
A Guide to Congressional Redistricting, Dark Money, and the U.S. Supreme Court
Franklin L. Kury
Hamilton Books (May 18, 2018)
No Review
"Franklin L. Kury served six years in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and eight in the Pennsylvania Senate. He practiced law with Reed Smith, a major law firm, and then worked as a lobbyist with Malady and Wooten in Harrisburg, before retiring. This is his third book on legislatures and politics."

"In the spring of 2018 the U.S. Supreme Court will render a decision in the Wisconsin gerrymandering case that could have a revolutionary impact on American politics and how legislative representation is chosen. Gerrymandering: A Guide to Congressional Redistricting, Dark Money and the Supreme Court is a unique explanation to understand and act on the Court’s decision, whatever it may be. After describing the importance of legislative representation, the book describes the anatomy of a redistricting in Pennsylvania. That is followed by a review of legislative redistricting in American history and the Supreme Court’s role throughout. The book relates what has happened to the efforts to bring changes to redistricting through the legislatures, including the unseen but omnipresent use of dark money to oppose reforms. The penultimate chapter analyzes the Wisconsin case now pending in the Supreme Court and concludes that anyone relying on the Court’s decision is relying on a firm maybe. Following the text is a Citizen’s Toolbox with which readers throughout the country can evaluate the redistricting situation in their states. The Toolbox is replete with useful information [on] gerrymandering. There are numerous books that tell how bad gerrymandering is, but my book is different, much different. Unlike the others, this book analyzes gerrymandering as developed through the force of history, the hardball politics of state legislatures and scantily disclosed campaign expenditures to maintain it, and the daunting legal challenge for those who want the Supreme Court to adopt a new national standard for determining when gerrymandering is unconstitutional as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The daunting challenge is to show the Court that a mathematical formula, such as the efficiency gap formula, is a valid method to measure violations of the 14th amendment’s guarantee that every citizen be given equal protection of the law."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (6 ratings)
ISBN 978-0761870258 ?
On Treason:
A Citizen's Guide to the Law
Carlton F. W. Larson
Ecco (September 29, 2020)
No Review
"Carlton F. W. Larson is a Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, where he teaches American constitutional law and English and American legal history. A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, Larson is one of the nation’s leading authorities on the law of treason. His scholarship has been cited by numerous federal and state courts, and has been highlighted in the New York Times and many other publications. He is a frequent commentator for the national media on constitutional law issues and is the author of the book The Trials of Allegiance: Treason, Juries, and the American Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2019)." – Amazon biography

"Treason—the only crime specifically defined in the United States Constitution—is routinely described by judges as more heinous than murder. Today, the term is regularly tossed around by politicians and pundits on both sides of the aisle. But, as accusations of treason flood the news cycle, it is not always clear what the crime truly is, or when it should be prosecuted.

"Carlton F. W. Larson, a scholar of constitutional law and legal history, takes us on a journey to understand the many subtleties of the Constitution’s definition of treason. With examples ranging from the medieval English Parliament to the accusations against Edward Snowden and Donald Trump, Larson brings to life not only the most notorious accused traitors, such as Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr, and World War II’s “Tokyo Rose,” but also lesser-known figures, such as Hipolito Salazar, the only person ever executed by the federal government for treason, and Walter Allen, a labor union leader convicted of treason against the state of West Virginia in the early 1920s.

"Grounded in over two decades of research, On Treason is an indispensable guide for anyone who wants to understand the role of treason law in our constitutional democracy. With this brisk, clear look at the law’s history and meaning, Larson explains who is actually guilty and when—and readers won’t need a law degree to understand why."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.1 (22 ratings)
ISBN 978-0062996169 ?
Fight for Liberty:
Defending Democracy in the Age of Trump
Mark Lasswell (Editor)
Jon Meacham (Introduction)
PublicAffairs (October 16, 2018)
No Review
"Mark Lasswell, a Renew Democracy Initiative board member, is an op-ed editor at the Washington Post and the former editorial features editor, overseeing op-eds, at the Wall Street Journal." – Amazon biography

"Liberal democracy is in crisis around the world, besieged by authoritarianism, nationalism, and other illiberal forces. Far-right parties are gaining traction in Europe, Vladimir Putin tightens his grip on Russia and undermines democracy abroad, and America struggles with poisonous threats from the right and left.

"But the defenders of democracy are strong too. Taking their cues from the 1788 Federalist Papers, the Renew Democracy Initiative is a collective of pro-democracy advocates from across the political spectrum, including Anne Applebaum, Garry Kasparov, Max Boot, Bret Stephens, Ted Koppel, and Natan Sharansky. This book is their foundational document, a collection of essays that analyze the multi-pronged threats to liberal democracy in the U.S. and abroad, and offer solutions based on fundamental democratic principles such as freedom of speech, a free press, and the rule of law."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (30 ratings)
ISBN 978-1541724167 ?
Rebirth of a Nation:
The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920
Jackson Lears
Harper; 1st edition (June 9, 2009)
Part of: American History (4 books)
No Review
"Jackson Lears is Board of Governors Professor of History at Rutgers University and the editor of Raritan: A Quarterly Review. The author of Fables of Abundance (winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for history), Something for Nothing, and No Place of Grace, Lears writes for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Republic. He lives in western New Jersey."

"An illuminating and authoritative history of America in the years between the Civil War and World War I, Jackson Lears’s Rebirth of a Nation was named one of the best books of 2009 by The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (146 ratings)
ISBN 978-0060747497 ?
Profile of a Nation:
Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul
Bandy X. Lee, M.D., M.Div.
World Mental Health Coalition, Inc. (October 1, 2020)
No Review
"Dr. Bandy X. Lee, M.D., M.Div., is Assistant Clinical Professor in Law and Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine. She earned her degrees at Yale, interned at Bellevue, was Chief Resident at Mass General, and was a Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School. She was also a Fellow of the National Institute of Mental Health. She worked in several maximum-security prisons, cofounded Yale's Violence and Health Study Group, and leads a violence prevention collaborators group for the World Health Organization. She's written more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters, edited several academic books, and is author of the textbook Violence." – Amazon biography

"Dr. Bandy Lee’s previous New York Times bestseller, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, opened the door to understanding the importance of mental health in this president and has been published in many countries and languages. This new book goes beyond explaining Donald Trump but the followers who elevated him and the nation that tolerated him as president.

"Why does Donald Trump speak and act as he does? Why does he need to deny the obvious seriousness of a pandemic? Why must he provoke violence? Why do many in the country still support and follow him? What caused his ascendancy in the first place?

"Dr. Lee’s epic new book is 'the missing piece' that answers these questions with accessible language. She was the first to call out Donald Trump’s psychological dangers in a major way at the start of this presidency. Now, she presents her analysis at the end of its term, as a nation grapples with why, after almost 200,000 coronavirus deaths and economic devastation, he is still a candidate for reelection, whether he will allow for a peaceful transition of power if he loses, and what citizens can do at this critical time.

"With 20 years of experience treating violent offenders and advising on violence prevention programming for prisons, communities, and governments, Dr. Lee is uniquely well positioned with a considerable track record of accuracy. She has also blown the whistle on the American Psychiatric Association’s misguided use of the now-infamous 'Goldwater rule' to silence mental health professionals under the Trump presidency. The muzzling of intellectuals and journalists, she has warned, is a first sign of tyranny.

"Melding the techniques of CIA profiling with established methods of public health, this report represents an attempt to meet mental health professionals’ responsibility to society. At this critical time all seriously concerned Americans need to be aware of Dr. Lee’s conclusions and recommendations."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (111 ratings)
ISBN 978-1735553740 ?
America for Americans:
A History of Xenophobia in the United States
Erika Lee
Basic Books; Illustrated edition (November 26, 2019)
No Review
"Erika Lee is the inaugural Bae Family Professor of History and Radcliffe Alumni Professor at Harvard University. The past president of the Organization of American Historians, she is the author of The Making of Asian America and other award-winning books."

"This definitive history of American xenophobia is 'essential reading for anyone who wants to build a more inclusive society' (Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times-bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist

"The United States is known as a nation of immigrants. But it is also a nation of xenophobia. In America for Americans, Erika Lee shows that an irrational fear, hatred, and hostility toward immigrants has been a defining feature of our nation from the colonial era to the Trump era. Benjamin Franklin ridiculed Germans for their 'strange and foreign ways.' Americans' anxiety over Irish Catholics turned xenophobia into a national political movement. Chinese immigrants were excluded, Japanese incarcerated, and Mexicans deported.

"Today, Americans fear Muslims, Latinos, and the so-called browning of America. Forcing us to confront this history, Lee explains how xenophobia works, why it has endured, and how it threatens America. Now updated with an afterword reflecting on how the coronavirus pandemic turbocharged xenophobia, America for Americans is an urgent spur to action for any concerned citizen."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (278 ratings)
ISBN 978-1541672604 ?
The Women of the Far Right:
Social Media Influencers and Online Radicalization
Eviane Leidig
Columbia University Press (September 19, 2023)
No Review
"Eviane Leidig is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at Tilburg University. She is affiliated with the Center for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo, the Global Network on Extremism and Technology in London, and the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in The Hague. She has been featured by The Independent, Al Jazeera, BBC, Australia Broadcasting Corporation, and Bellingcat, among others."

"On mainstream social media platforms, far-right women make extremism relatable. They share Instagram stories about organic foods that help pregnant women propagate the 'pure' white race and post behind-the-scenes selfies at antivaccination rallies. These social media personalities model a feminine lifestyle, at once promoting their personal brands and radicalizing their followers. Amid discussions of issues like dating, marriage, and family life, they call on women to become housewives to counteract the corrosive effects of feminism and champion the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which motivated massacres in Christchurch, El Paso, and Buffalo.

"Eviane Leidig offers an in-depth look into the world of far-right women influencers, exploring the digital lives they cultivate as they seek new recruits for white nationalism. Going beyond stereotypes of the typical male white supremacist, she uncovers how young, attractive women are playing key roles as propagandists, organizers, fundraisers, and entrepreneurs. Leidig argues that far-right women are marketing themselves as authentic and accessible in order to reach new followers and spread a hateful ideology. This insidious―and highly gendered―strategy takes advantage of the structure of social media platforms, where far-right women influencers’ content is shared with and promoted to mainstream audiences. Providing much-needed expertise on gender and the far right, this timely and accessible book also details online and offline approaches to countering extremism."

Rating by Amazon customers: 3.0 (5 ratings)
ISBN 978-0231210164 ?
Ours Was the Shining Future:
The Story of the American Dream
David Leonhardt
Random House (October 24, 2023)
No Review
"David Leonhardt is a senior writer for The New York Times and the author of Ours Was the Shining Future: The Rise and Fall of the American Dream, being published by Random House in October 2023. David writes The Morning, The Times’s flagship daily newsletter. He has worked at The Times since 1999 and has previously been an Op-Ed columnist, Washington bureau chief, co-host of The Argument podcast, founding editor of The Upshot section and a staff writer for The Times Magazine. He also led a strategy group that helped Times leadership shape the newsroom’s digital future. David has received the Gerald Loeb Award for magazine writing and the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Ours Was the Shining Future is his first book.

"The clear-eyed, definitive history of the modern American economy and the decline of the American Dream, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist behind The New York Times's “The Morning” newsletter.

"Two decades into the twenty-first century, the stagnation of living standards has become the defining trend of American life. Life expectancy has declined, economic inequality has soared, and, after some progress, the Black-white wage gap is once again as large as it was in the 1950s. How did this happen in the world’s most powerful country? And what happened to the “American dream”—the promise of a happier, healthier, more prosperous future—which was once such an inextricable part of our national identity?

"Drawing on decades of writing about the economy for The New York Times, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer David Leonhardt examines the past century of American history, from the Great Depression to today’s Great Stagnation, in search of an answer.

"To make sense of the rise and subsequent fall of the American dream, Leonhardt tells the story of the modern American economy as an ongoing battle between two competing forms of capitalism: one that envisions prosperity for most, and one that serves the individual and favors the wealthy. In vivid prose, Ours Was the Shining Future traces how democratic capitalism flourished to make the American dream possible, until the latter decades of the twentieth century when, bit by bit, the dream was corrupted to serve only the privileged few.

"Ours Was the Shining Future is a sweeping narrative full of innovation and grit, human drama and hope. Featuring the trailblazing figures who helped shape the American dream—Frances Perkins, Paul Hoffman, Cesar Chavez, Robert Kennedy, A. Philip Randolph, Grace Hopper, and more—this engaging history reveals the power of grassroots democratic movements from across the political spectrum. And though the American dream feels lost to us now, Leonhardt shows how Americans—if they commit themselves to transforming the economy, as they did in the past—have the power to revive the dream once more."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (158 ratings)
ISBN 978-0812993202 ?
Arresting Citizenship:
The Democratic Consequences of American Crime Control
Amy E. Lerman & Vesla M. Weaver
University of Chicago Press (June 3, 2014)
Part of: Chicago Studies in American Politics (55 books)
No Review
"Amy E. Lerman is professor of public policy and political science at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also associate dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy and codirector of The People Lab at the University of California, Berkeley.

Vesla M. Weaver is assistant professor in the Department of African American Studies and the Department of Political Science at Yale University. She is coauthor of Creating a New Racial Order." – Amazon biography

"The numbers are staggering: One-third of America’s adult population has passed through the criminal justice system and now has a criminal record. Many more were never convicted, but are nonetheless subject to surveillance by the state. Never before has the American government maintained so vast a network of institutions dedicated solely to the control and confinement of its citizens.

"A provocative assessment of the contemporary carceral state for American democracy, Arresting Citizenship argues that the broad reach of the criminal justice system has fundamentally recast the relation between citizen and state, resulting in a sizable―and growing―group of second-class citizens. From police stops to court cases and incarceration, at each stage of the criminal justice system individuals belonging to this disempowered group come to experience a state-within-a-state that reflects few of the country’s core democratic values. Through scores of interviews, along with analyses of survey data, Amy E. Lerman and Vesla M. Weaver show how this contact with police, courts, and prisons decreases faith in the capacity of American political institutions to respond to citizens’ concerns and diminishes the sense of full and equal citizenship―even for those who have not been found guilty of any crime. The effects of this increasingly frequent contact with the criminal justice system are wide-ranging―and pernicious―and Lerman and Weaver go on to offer concrete proposals for reforms to reincorporate this large group of citizens as active participants in American civic and political life."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (16 ratings)
ISBN 978-0226137667 ?
Men in Black:
How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America
Mark R. Levin
Regnery Publishing (February 7, 2005)
No Review
"Mark R. Levin is a nationally syndicated talk radio host and president of Landmark Legal Foundation. He has also worked as an attorney in the private sector and as a top adviser and administrator to several members of President Reagan's cabinet. He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling book Liberty and Tyranny, as well as New York Times bestselling books Rescuing Sprite and Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America. Mark holds a B.A. from Temple University and a J.D. from Temple University School of Law." – Amazon biography

"The Supreme Court has broken through the firewalls constructed by the framers to limit judicial power.

'America’s founding fathers had a clear and profound vision for what they wanted our federal government to be,' says constitutional scholar Mark R. Levin in his explosive book Men in Black. 'But today, our out-of-control Supreme Court imperiously strikes down laws and imposes new ones to suit its own liberal whims—robbing us of our basic freedoms and the values on which our country was founded.'

"In Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America, Levin exposes countless examples of outrageous Supreme Court abuses, from promoting racism in college admissions, expelling God and religion from the public square, forcing states to confer benefits on illegal aliens, and endorsing economic socialism to upholding partial-birth abortion, restraining political speech, and anointing terrorists with rights.

"Levin writes: 'Barely one hundred justices have served on the United States Supreme Court. They’re unelected, they’re virtually unaccountable, they’re largely unknown to most Americans, and they serve for life…in many ways the justices are more powerful than members of Congress and the president.… As few as five justices can and do dictate economic, cultural, criminal, and security policy for the entire nation.'

"In Men in Black, you will learn:

  • How the Supreme Court protects virtual child pornography and flag burning as forms of free speech but denies teenagers the right to hear an invocation mentioning God at a high school graduation ceremony because it might be 'coercive.'
  • How a former Klansman and virulently anti-Catholic Supreme Court justice inserted the words “wall of separation” between church and state in a 1947 Supreme Court decision—a phrase repeated today by those who claim to stand for civil liberty.
  • How Justice Harry Blackmun, a one-time conservative appointee and the author of Roe v. Wade, was influenced by fan mail much like an entertainer or politician, which helped him to evolve into an ardent activist for gay rights and against the death penalty.
  • How the Supreme Court has dictated that illegal aliens have a constitutional right to attend public schools, and that other immigrants qualify for welfare benefits, tuition assistance, and even civil service jobs."
Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (1,210 ratings)
ISBN 978-0895260505 ?
How Deomcracies Die
Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt
Crown (January 16, 2018)
No Review
"Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are Professors of Government at Harvard University. Levitsky’s research focuses on Latin America and the developing world. He is the author of Competitive Authoritarianism and is the recipient of numerous teaching awards. Ziblatt studies Europe from the nineteenth century to the present. He is the author, most recently, of Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy. Both Levitsky and Ziblatt have written for Vox and The New York Times, among other publications."

"Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one.

"Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die—and how ours can be saved."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (5,565 ratings)
ISBN 978-1524762933 ?
Tyranny of the Minority:
Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point
Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt
Crown (September 12, 2023)
No Review
"Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are Professors of Government at Harvard University and the authors of the New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, which won the Goldsmith Book Prize, was shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize, and was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post, Time, and Foreign Affairs."

"America is undergoing a massive experiment: It is moving, in fits and starts, toward a multiracial democracy, something few societies have ever done. But the prospect of change has sparked an authoritarian backlash that threatens the very foundations of our political system. Why is democracy under assault here, and not in other wealthy, diversifying nations? And what can we do to save it?

"With the clarity and brilliance that made their first book, How Democracies Die, a global bestseller, Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt offer a coherent framework for understanding these volatile times. They draw on a wealth of examples—from 1930s France to present-day Thailand—to explain why and how political parties turn against democracy. They then show how our Constitution makes us uniquely vulnerable to attacks from within: It is a pernicious enabler of minority rule, allowing partisan minorities to consistently thwart and even rule over popular majorities. Most modern democracies—from Germany and Sweden to Argentina and New Zealand—have eliminated outdated institutions like elite upper chambers, indirect elections, and lifetime tenure for judges. The United States lags dangerously behind.

"In this revelatory book, Levitsky and Ziblatt issue an urgent call to reform our politics. It’s a daunting task, but we have remade our country before—most notably, after the Civil War and during the Progressive Era. And now we are at a crossroads: America will either become a multiracial democracy or cease to be a democracy at all."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (1,001 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593443071 ?
The Fifth Risk
Michael Lewis
W. W. Norton & Company, October 2018
My Review
"Michael Lewis, the best-selling author of The Undoing Project, Liar's Poker, Flash Boys, Moneyball, The Blind Side, Home Game and The Big Short, among other works, lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife, Tabitha Soren, and their three children." – Amazon biography

"Michael Lewis's brilliant narrative takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its own leaders. In Agriculture the funding of vital programs like food stamps and school lunches is being slashed. The Commerce Department may not have enough staff to conduct the 2020 Census properly. Over at Energy, where international nuclear risk is managed, it's not clear there will be enough inspectors to track and locate black market uranium before terrorists do."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (14,615 ratings)
ISBN 978-1-324-00264-2 SJ1 320.973 Lewis
The Case for Impeachment
Allan J. Lichtman
Dey Street, 2017
My Review
"Allan J. Lichtman is Distinguished Professor of History at American University in Washington, D.C. He specializes in American political history and the presidency. Dr. Lichtman has authored or co-authored nine books and hundreds of scholarly and popular articles." – Amazon biography

"In the fall of 2016, Distinguished Professor of History at American University Allan J. Lichtman made headlines when he predicted that Donald J. Trump would defeat the heavily favored Democrat, Hillary Clinton, to win the presidential election. Now, in clear, nonpartisan terms, Lichtman lays out the reasons Congress could remove Trump from the Oval Office: his ties to Russia before and after the election, the complicated financial conflicts of interest at home and abroad, and his abuse of executive authority.

"The Case for Impeachment also offers a fascinating look at presidential impeachments throughout American history, including the often-overlooked story of Andrew Johnson's impeachment, details about Richard Nixon's resignation, and Bill Clinton's hearings. Lichtman shows how Trump exhibits many of the flaws (and more) that have doomed past presidents. As the Nixon Administration dismissed the reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as 'character assassination' and 'a vicious abuse of the journalistic process,' Trump has attacked the 'dishonest media,' claiming, 'the press should be ashamed of themselves.' "

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (480 ratings)
ISBN 978-0-06-269682-3 SJ3 342.7306 Lichtman
Hell To Pay:
How the Suppression of Wages Is Destroying America
Michael Lind
Portfolio (May 2, 2023)
No Review

"Michael Lind is the author of more than a dozen books about U.S. political and economic history, politics and foreign policy. He has explained and defended the tradition of American democratic nationalism in The Next American Nation (1995), Hamilton's Republic (1997), What Lincoln Believed (2005), The American Way of Strategy (2006), and Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States (2012). His most recent book is The New Class War: How to Save Democracy from The Managerial Elite (2020).

"Lind's works of fiction and poetry include The Alamo (1997), named by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as one of the best books of the year, and Bluebonnet Girl (2003), illustrated by Kate Kiesler, an Oppenheimer Toy Portfolio Gold Book Award winner.

"Educated at the University of Texas and Yale University, Lind is a columnist for Tablet and a contributor to American Affairs, American Compass, and Project Syndicate. He has been an editor or staff writer at Harper's Magazine, The New Yorker, The New Republic, the National Interest, co-founder of New America, and Assistant to the Director of the U.S. State Department's Center for Foreign Affairs. He has taught at Harvard, Johns Hopkins and the University of Texas.

"A fifth generation Texan, Michael Lind lives in his home town of Austin, Texas, where he is Professor of Practice at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs of the University of Texas at Austin."

"From one of America’s leading thinkers, a provocative diagnosis of the cause of America’s decline—and a searing indictment of those who caused it

"For nearly half a century, Americans have been bombarded by neoliberal propaganda promoting the lie that wages are objectively determined by impersonal labor markets. This falsehood has been repeated by academics, journalists, business leaders, and politicians so often that even many on the liberal left and the populist right believe it.

"In Hell to Pay, Michael Lind, author of The New Class War, debunks this lie. With brutal clarity, he tells the story of how bipartisan political and business interests united to smash the bargaining power of American workers and reduce wages. And with devastating insight he demonstrates that their success has indirectly caused or worsened nearly every symptom of American decline, from the increase in political polarization to the declining birth rate.

"Calling for a revolution in the way we think about work and wages, Lind argues that the American republic will collapse if worker power is not restored. Fortunately, Hell to Pay doesn’t just sound the alarm but also offers a plan for breaking the power of the neoliberal elite and reforming America’s disastrous low-wage/high-welfare model—before it’s too late."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (8 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593421253 ?
Dog Whistle Politics:
How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class
Ian Haney López
Oxford University Press (January, 2014)
No Review
"Ian Haney López is the John H. Boalt Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. An incisive voice on white identity since the publication of his path-breaking book White by Law (1996), he remains at the forefront of conversations about race in modern America. A past visiting professor at Yale and Harvard law schools, in 2011 he was awarded the Alphonse Fletcher Fellowship, given to scholars whose work promotes the integration goals of Brown v. Board of Education." – Amazon biography

"Campaigning for president in 1980, Ronald Reagan told stories of Cadillac-driving 'welfare queens' and 'strapping young bucks' buying T-bone steaks with food stamps. In trumpeting these tales of welfare run amok, Reagan never needed to mention race, because he was blowing a dog whistle: sending a message about racial minorities inaudible on one level, but clearly heard on another. In doing so, he tapped into a long political tradition that started with George Wallace and Richard Nixon, and is more relevant than ever in the age of the Tea Party and the first black president.

"In Dog Whistle Politics, Ian Haney López offers a sweeping account of how politicians and plutocrats deploy veiled racial appeals to persuade white voters to support policies that favor the extremely rich yet threaten their own interests. Dog whistle appeals generate middle-class enthusiasm for political candidates who promise to crack down on crime, curb undocumented immigration, and protect the heartland against Islamic infiltration, but ultimately vote to slash taxes for the rich, give corporations regulatory control over industry and financial markets, and aggressively curtail social services. White voters, convinced by powerful interests that minorities are their true enemies, fail to see the connection between the political agendas they support and the surging wealth inequality that takes an increasing toll on their lives. The tactic continues at full force, with the Republican Party using racial provocations to drum up enthusiasm for weakening unions and public pensions, defunding public schools, and opposing health care reform.

"Rejecting any simple story of malevolent and obvious racism, Haney López links as never before the two central themes that dominate American politics today: the decline of the middle class and the Republican Party's increasing reliance on white voters. Dog Whistle Politics will generate a lively and much-needed debate about how racial politics has destabilized the American middle class — white and nonwhite members alike."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (557 ratings)
ISBN 978-0199964277 ?
Dog Whistle Politics:
Strategic Racism, Fake Populism, and the Dividing of America
Ian Haney López
Oxford University Press; 2nd edition (November 1, 2023)
No Review
"Ian Haney López is the John H. Boalt Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. An incisive voice on race and identity since the publication of his path-breaking book White by Law (1996), he remains at the forefront of conversations about racial politics in modern America. He has been a visiting professor at both Yale and Harvard Law Schools." – Amazon biography

"Initially published in 2013, Ian Haney-López's Dog Whistle Politics offered a sweeping account of how politicians and plutocrats deploy veiled racial appeals to persuade white voters to support policies that favor the extremely rich yet threaten their own interests. As he showed, such appeals generate middle-class enthusiasm for political candidates who promise to crack down on crime, curb undocumented immigration, and protect against Islamic infiltration, but ultimately vote in favor of corporations and the rich. Rejecting any simple story of malevolent and obvious racism, Haney-López linked the two central themes that dominate American politics today: the decline of the middle class and the Republican Party's increasing reliance on white voters.

"The book proved to be remarkably prescient. Donald Trump's 2016 campaign was built almost entirely around dog whistle politics, and he won the presidency because of it. This new edition of Dog Whistle Politics updates the book by a substantial new chapter on Trump that examines his appeal and places his campaign in the historical context that the first edition of Dog Whistle Politics so perceptively uncovered."

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 978-0190841805 ?
Dog Whistle Politics:
How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class
Leo Lowenthal & Norbert Guterman
Alberto Toscano (Introduction)
Max Horkheimer (Foreword)
Herbert Marcuse (Foreword)
Verso; Reissue edition (April 6, 2021)
No Review
"Leo Lowenthal (1900 - 1993) was a German sociologist associated with the Frankfurt School. He joined the newly founded Institute for Social Research in 1926 and quickly became its leading expert on the sociology of literature and mass culture as well as the managing editor of the journal it launched in 1932, the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung. When the Nazis came to power, he fled to the USA. After seven years as research director of the Voice of America, he joined the Berkeley Speech Department in 1956 and shortly thereafter the Department of Sociology. Norbert Guterman (1900-1984) was a scholar, and translator of scholarly and literary works from French, Polish and Latin into English. Born in Warsaw, Guterman attended the University of Warsaw, where he studied psychology. He moved to Paris to study at the Sorbonne, where he continued his studies in psychology, receiving degrees in 1922 and 1923. In the 1930s, Guterman worked closely with French Marxist theorist Henri Lefebvre in popularizing the Marxist notions of alienation and mystification. He published translations of Marx's early works, which were often the first publications of these works in any language. Guterman, who was Jewish, moved to the United States in 1933, where he took on translation work for the Monthly Review, eventually becoming an editor." – Amazon biography

"How authoritarian and racist discourse functions.

"A classic book that analyzes and defines media appeals specific to American pro-fascist and anti-Semite agitators of the 1940s, such as the application of psychosocial manipulation for political ends. The book details psychological deceits that idealogues or authoritarians commonly used. The techniques are grouped under the headings 'Discontent', 'The Opponent', 'The Movement' and 'The Leader'. The authors demonstrate repetitive patterns commonly utilized, such as turning unfocused social discontent towards a targeted enemy. The agitator positions himself as a unifying presence: he is the ideal, the only leader capable of freeing his audience from the perceived enemy. Yet, as the authors demonstrate, he is a shallow person who creates social or racial disharmony, thereby reinforcing that his leadership is needed. The authors believed fascist tendencies in America were at an early stage in the 1940s, but warned a time might come when Americans could and would be 'susceptible to ... [the] psychological manipulation' of a rabble rouser. A book once again relevant in the Trump era, as made clear by Alberto Toscano's new introduction."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (8 ratings)
ISBN 978-1788736961 ?
American Whitelash:
A Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress
Wesley Lowery
Mariner Books (June 27, 2023)
No Review
"Wesley Lowery is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author and on-air correspondent. He currently works as a contributing editor at The Marshall Project and a Journalist-in-Residence at the CUNY Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. In nearly a decade as a national correspondent, Lowery has specialized in issues of race, justice and law enforcement. He led the Washington Post team that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2016 for the creation and analysis of a real-time database to track fatal police shootings in the United States. His project, 'Murder with Impunity,' an unprecedented look at unsolved homicides in major American cities, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2019. His first book, They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement, was a New York Times bestseller and awarded the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose by the Los Angeles Times Book Prize." – Amazon biography

"Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Wesley Lowery confronts the sickness at the heart of American society: the cyclical pattern of violence that has marred every moment of racial progress in this country, and whose bloodshed began anew following Obama’s 2008 election.

"In 2008, Barack Obama’s historic victory was heralded as a turning point for the country. And so it would be—just not in the way that most Americans hoped. The election of the nation’s first Black president fanned long-burning embers of white supremacy, igniting a new and frightening phase in a historical American cycle of racial progress and white backlash.

"In American Whitelash, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and best-selling author Wesley Lowery charts the return of this blood-stained trend, showing how the forces of white power retaliated against Obama’s victory—and both profited from, and helped to propel, the rise of Donald Trump. Interweaving deep historical analysis with gripping firsthand reporting on both victims and perpetrators of violence, Lowery uncovers how this vicious cycle is carrying us into ever more perilous territory, how the federal government has failed to intervene, and how we still might find a route of escape."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (218 ratings)
ISBN 978-0358393269 ?
The Canceling of the American Mind:
Cancel Culture Undermines Trust and Threatens Us All―But There Is a Solution
Greg Lukianoff & Rikki Schlott
Simon & Schuster (October 17, 2023)
No Review
"Greg Lukianoff is the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and one of the country’s most passionate defenders of free expression. He has written on free-speech issues in the nation’s top newspapers, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, and was executive producer of the documentaries Can We Take a Joke? and Mighty Ira. Lukianoff earned his undergraduate degree from American University and his law degree from Stanford. He worked for the ACLU of Northern California, the Organization for Aid to Refugees, and the EnvironMentors Project before joining FIRE in 2001. Rikki Schlott is a New York City-based journalist and political commentator. She is a research fellow at FIRE, host of the Lost Debate podcast, a columnist at the New York Post, and a regular contributor to numerous publications and television programs. Her commentary focuses on free speech, campus culture, civil liberties, and youth issues from a Generation Z perspective."

"A timely deep dive into cancel culture, an account of its dangers to all Americans, and the much-needed antidote from the team that brought you Coddling of the American Mind.

"Cancel culture is a new phenomenon, and The Canceling of the American Mind is the first book to codify it and survey its effects. From the team that brought you the bestselling Coddling of the American Mind comes hard data and research on what cancel culture is and how it works, along with hundreds of new examples showing the left and the right both working to silence their enemies.

"The Canceling of the American Mind will change how you view cancel culture. Rather than a moral panic, we should consider it a dysfunctional part of how Americans battle for power, status, and dominance. Cancel culture is just one symptom of a much larger problem: the use of cheap rhetorical tactics to “win” arguments without actually winning arguments. After all, why bother refuting your opponents when you can just take away their platform or career?

"The good news is that we can beat back this threat to democracy through better citizenship. The Canceling of the American Mind offers concrete steps toward reclaiming a free speech culture, with materials specifically tailored for parents, teachers, business leaders, and everyone who uses social media. We can all show intellectual humility and promote the essential American principles of individuality, resilience, and open mindedness."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (70 ratings)
ISBN 978-1668019146 ?
Democracy in the Disinformation Age
Regina Luttrell, Lu Xiao & Jon Glass (Editors)
Routledge (May 24, 2021)
No Review
"Regina Luttrell is Associate Dean of Research and Creative Activities and Assistant Professor of public relations at Syracuse University within the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications where she researches, publishes and discusses public relations, social media for strategic communication, Gen Z and the Millennial generation, and the intersection of social media within society. Dr. Luttrell’s research has been published in several books in academic journals. Lu Xiao is an Associate Professor within the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University. She obtained a Ph.D. degree from the College of Information Sciences & Technology, Pennsylvania State University. Broadly speaking, Dr. Xiao is interested in how people reason in social media, the major factors that affect the process and outcome of these reasoning activities, and the main effects imposed on people by the activities. Jon Glass is a Professor of Practice for Magazine, News and Digital Journalism at Syracuse University within the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications where he focuses on current news industry issues, social media and digital storytelling. He is executive producer of TheNewsHouse.com, an award-winning, student-produced news, sports and entertainment website for the SU community. Prior to joining the Newhouse School in 2007, Jon was the online content director for PalmBeachPost.com, where he spent 11 years in the newsroom and online departments."

"In this book established researchers draw on a range of theoretical and empirical perspectives to examine social media’s impact on American politics. Chapters critically examine activism in the digital age, fake news, online influence, messaging tactics, news transparency and authentication, consumers’ digital habits and ultimately the societal impacts that continue to be created by combining social media and politics. Through this book readers will better understand and approach with questions such as:

  • How exactly and why did social media become a powerful factor in politics?
  • What responsibilities do social networks have in the proliferation of factually wrong and hate-filled messages? Or should individuals be held accountable?
  • What are the state-of-the-art of computational techniques for measuring and determining social media's impact on society?
  • What role does online activism play in today’s political arena?
  • What does the potent combination of social media and politics truly mean for the future of democracy?

"The insights and debates found herein provide a stronger understanding of the core issues and steer us toward improved curriculum and research aimed at a better democracy. Democracy in the Disinformation Age: Influence and Activism in American Politics will appeal to both undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as academics with an interest in areas including political science, media studies, mass communication, PR, and journalism."

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 978-0367442927 ?
Democracy in Chains:
The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America
Nancy MacLean
‎ Viking; Later Printing edition (June 13, 2017)
My Review
"Nancy MacLean is the award-winning author of Behind the Mask of Chivalry (a New York Times 'noteworthy' book of the year) and Freedom is Not Enough, which was called by the Chicago Tribune 'contemporary history at its best.' The William Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University, she lives in Durham, North Carolina."

"Behind today’s headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Democracy in Chains names its true architect—the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan—and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower the majority.

"In a brilliant and engrossing narrative, Nancy MacLean shows how Buchanan forged his ideas about government in a last gasp attempt to preserve the white elite’s power in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. In response to the widening of American democracy, he developed a brilliant, if diabolical, plan to undermine the ability of the majority to use its numbers to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the rest of us.

"Corporate donors and their right-wing foundations were only too eager to support Buchanan’s work in teaching others how to divide America into 'makers' and 'takers.' And when a multibillionaire on a messianic mission to rewrite the social contract of the modern world, Charles Koch, discovered Buchanan, he created a vast, relentless, and multi-armed machine to carry out Buchanan’s strategy.

"Without Buchanan's ideas and Koch's money, the libertarian right would not have succeeded in its stealth takeover of the Republican Party as a delivery mechanism. Now, with Mike Pence as Vice President, the cause has a longtime loyalist in the White House, not to mention a phalanx of Republicans in the House, the Senate, a majority of state governments, and the courts, all carrying out the plan. That plan includes harsher laws to undermine unions, privatizing everything from schools to health care and Social Security, and keeping as many of us as possible from voting. Based on ten years of unique research, Democracy in Chains tells a chilling story of right-wing academics and big money run amok. This revelatory work of scholarship is also a call to arms to protect the achievements of twentieth-century American self-government."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (2,463 ratings)
ISBN 978-0358393269 ?
Bag Man:
The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover-up, and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House
Rachel Maddow & Michael Yarvitz
Crown (December 8, 2020)
No Review
"Rachel Maddow is host of the Emmy Award–winning Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, as well as the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power; Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth; and Bag Man: The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover-Up, and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House. Maddow received a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Stanford University and earned her doctorate in political science at Oxford University. She lives in New York City and Massachusetts with her partner, artist Susan Mikula." Michael Yarvitz is an Emmy and Peabody award-winning television producer and journalist. He was the executive producer and co-writer of the podcast series Bag Man.

"The knockdown, drag-out, untold story of the other scandal that rocked Nixon’s White House, and reset the rules for crooked presidents to come—with new reporting that expands on Rachel Maddow’s Peabody Award–nominated podcast.

"Is it possible for a sitting vice president to direct a vast criminal enterprise within the halls of the White House? To have one of the most brazen corruption scandals in American history play out while nobody’s paying attention? And for that scandal to be all but forgotten decades later?

"The year was 1973, and Spiro T. Agnew, the former governor of Maryland, was Richard Nixon’s second-in-command. Long on firebrand rhetoric and short on political experience, Agnew had carried out a bribery and extortion ring in office for years, when—at the height of Watergate—three young federal prosecutors discovered his crimes and launched a mission to take him down before it was too late, before Nixon’s impending downfall elevated Agnew to the presidency. The self-described 'counterpuncher' vice president did everything he could to bury their investigation: dismissing it as a 'witch hunt,' riling up his partisan base, making the press the enemy, and, with a crumbling circle of loyalists, scheming to obstruct justice in order to survive.

"In this blockbuster account, Rachel Maddow and Michael Yarvitz detail the investigation that exposed Agnew’s crimes, the attempts at a cover-up—which involved future president George H. W. Bush—and the backroom bargain that forced Agnew’s resignation but also spared him years in federal prison. Based on the award-winning hit podcast, Bag Man expands and deepens the story of Spiro Agnew’s scandal and its lasting influence on our politics, our media, and our understanding of what it takes to confront a criminal in the White House."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (8,310 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593136683 ?
Prequel:
An American Fight Against Fascism
Rachel Maddow
Crown (October 17, 2023)
No Review
"Rachel Maddow is host of the Emmy Award–winning Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, as well as the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Drift and Blowout, and the New York Times bestselling co-author of Bag Man. Maddow received a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Stanford University and earned her doctorate in political science at Oxford University. She lives in New York City and Massachusetts with her partner, artist Susan Mikula." – Amazon biography

"Rachel Maddow traces the fight to preserve American democracy back to World War II, when a handful of committed public servants and brave private citizens thwarted far-right plotters trying to steer our nation toward an alliance with the Nazis.

"Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it. It was a sophisticated and shockingly well-funded campaign to undermine democratic institutions, promote antisemitism, and destroy citizens’ confidence in their elected leaders, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the U.S. government and installing authoritarian rule.

"That effort worked—tongue and groove—alongside an ultra-right paramilitary movement that stockpiled bombs and weapons and trained for mass murder and violent insurrection.

"At the same time, a handful of extraordinary activists and journalists were tracking the scheme, exposing it even as it was unfolding. In 1941 the U.S. Department of Justice finally made a frontal attack, identifying the key plotters, finding their backers, and prosecuting dozens in federal court.

"None of it went as planned.

"While the scheme has been remembered in history—if at all—as the work of fringe players, in reality it involved a large number of some of the country’s most influential elected officials. Their interference in law enforcement efforts against the plot is a dark story of the rule of law bending and then breaking under the weight of political intimidation.

"That failure of the legal system had consequences. The tentacles of that unslain beast have reached forward into our history for decades. But the heroic efforts of the activists, journalists, prosecutors, and regular citizens who sought to expose the insurrectionists also make for a deeply resonant, deeply relevant tale in our own disquieting times."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (1,159 ratings)
ISBN 979-0593444511 ?
We The People Are The Problem:
How Americans Betrayed America
Peter Magistrale
Independently published (August 13, 2020)
No Review
"Peter Magistrale is a CPA, former candidate for the NYS Senate, and former collegiate baseball player. As a freshman in college, Peter experienced a transformation after reading Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Seeing that he was a prisoner of ignorance he developed an insatiable desire for knowledge and self improvement. This desire ultimately led him to run for the NYS Senate in 2016. While campaigning, he came face to face with America's greatest enemies: ignorant Americans who have no sense of civic duty. We The People Are The Problem addresses how this civic virus can be overcome." – Amazon biography

"The American who shows a distaste for civic responsibility and whose great aim in life is comfort and ease is a greater threat to America than any terrorist. The American who mindlessly chants, “USA! USA! USA!” when a politician wraps themselves in the flag permits the highest of crimes. The American who votes for the politicians who steal, lie, and cheat should share a cell with the criminals they ignorantly empower. We treat politics like a high school prom, sporting event, or beauty contest, and then we wonder why we have atrocious leaders. Is the answer not yet clear? We have incompetent citizens. It is these incompetent citizens, of all political parties, that are destroying America. Until we become more enlightened citizens, our leaders will reflect our debasement, our laws will reflect our ignorance, and our future will reflect our cowardice. The battle for the hearts and minds of Americans is the battle that will determine the destruction of the United States or a rebirth of human achievement not seen since the European Renaissance. Our renaissance will need Americans just like you to commit to seeking the truth, commit to lifelong self-improvement, and take actions that reflect a sense of civic responsibility. It will require us to destroy our political allegiances and pledge loyalty only to reason, truth, and excellence. We must focus on our renaissance, our rebirth, and on becoming exceptional citizens."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (167 ratings)
ISBN 979-8656102612 ?
Misfire:
Inside the Downfall of the NRA
Tim Mak
Dutton (November 2, 2021)
No Review
"Tim Mak is National Public Radio's Washington Investigative Correspondent, and was one of NPR's lead reporters on the Mueller investigation and the first Trump impeachment. While reporting for the Daily Beast in 2017, he broke the story of Russian agent Maria Butina and her connection with the NRA. He can often be heard on NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and the NPR Politics Podcast."

"The NRA once compelled respect—even fear—from Republicans and Democrats alike. Once a grassroots club dedicated to gun safety, the NRA ballooned into a powerful lobbyist organization that maintained an iron hold on gun legislation in America. This influential nonprofit raised millions in small fees from members across the country, which funded hidden, lavish lifestyles of designer suits, private jets and yachts, martini lunches and Champagne dinners—while the group manipulated legislators and flirted with a Russian spy.

"Yet in 2012, the NRA’s grip on Washington began to loosen in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary. Facing nationwide outrage, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre gave a speech claiming the solution was not fewer guns, but more guns, in schools. The group’s rhetoric only escalated from there, a misstep that sparked a backlash and invited the scrutiny of the government.

"Unveiled here for the first time ever are surprising, revelatory details spotlighting decades of poor leadership and mismanagement by LaPierre; the NRA’s long association with marketing firm Ackerman-McQueen; NRA executives’ 2015 trip to Moscow, a by-invitation affair packed with meetings with Russian government officials, diplomats, and oligarchs seeking influence in American politics; as well as the power struggle between LaPierre and former NRA president Oliver North that fractured the organization.

"Misfire is the result of a four-year investigation by journalist Tim Mak, who scoured thousands of pages of never-before-publicized documents and cultivated dozens of confidential sources inside the NRA's orbit to paint a vivid picture of the gun group's rampant corruption and slow decline, marking a sea change in the battle over gun rights and control in America."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (210 ratings)
ISBN 978-1524746452 ?
Titans of the Twentieth Century:
How They Made History and the History They Made
Michael Mandelbaum
Oxford University Press (September 3, 2024)
No Review

"Michael Mandelbaum is the Christian A. Herter Professor of American Foreign Policy at The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. and is the director of the American Foreign Policy Program there. He has also held teaching posts at Harvard and Columbia Universities, and at the United States Naval Academy. He serves on the board of advisors of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Washington-based organization sponsoring research and public discussion on American policy toward the Middle East. A graduate of Yale College, Professor Mandelbaum earned his Master's degree at King's College, Cambridge University and his doctorate at Harvard University.

"Professor Mandelbaum is the author or co-author of numerous articles and of 13 (sic) books: That Used To Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back (2011) with co-author Thomas L. Friedman; The Frugal Superpower: America's Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era (2010); Democracy's Good Name: The Rise and Risks of the World's Most Popular Form of Government (2007); The Case For Goliath: How America Acts As The World's Government in the Twenty-first Century (2006); The Meaning of Sports: Why Americans Watch Baseball, Football and Basketball and What They See When They Do (2004); The Ideas That Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy and Free Markets in the Twenty-First Century (2002); The Dawn of Peace in Europe (1996); The Fate of Nations: The Search for National Security in the 19th and 20th Centuries (1988); The Global Rivals (co-author, 1988); Reagan and Gorbachev (co-author, 1987); The Nuclear Future (1983);"

"An engaging and novel historical portrait of eight of the most influential political figures of the twentieth century: Woodrow Wilson, Lenin, Hitler, Churchill, FDR, Gandhi, David Ben-Gurion, and Mao.

"The Titans of the Twentieth Century addresses an age-old question: what is the impact of individuals on history? The first half of the twentieth century offered political leaders enormous scope for changing the world. This book consists of essays about eight who, for better and for worse, did just that.

  • Woodrow Wilson had a vision for a cooperative world order that failed after the First World War but gained in influence after the Second.
  • Vladimir Ilich Lenin founded the totalitarian communist political system that controlled a large part of the planet for much of the twentieth century.V
  • Adolf Hitler started history's worst war and presided over history's worst atrocity, the Holocaust.
  • Winston Churchill provided inspiring leadership to Great Britain, which made it possible to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II.
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt steered the United States through the Great Depression and the Second World War.
  • Mohandas Gandhi led the movement, and developed the philosophy of non-violence, that ended British rule in South Asia, paving the way for the end of empires throughout Asia and Africa.
  • David Ben-Gurion led the miraculous restoration of Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land.
  • Mao Zedong, imposed totalitarian communist rule on China and became history's most egregious mass murderer.

"Individually, each chapter offers fresh and often surprising portraits of the twentieth century's titans. Collectively, the essays present a vivid and revealing portrait of a turbulent half-century that shaped the world of today."

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 979-8656102612 ?
The Broken Branch:
How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track
Thomas E. Mann & Norman J. Ornstein
Oxford University Press; Reprint edition (August, 2008)
No Review
"Thomas E. Mann is the W. Averell Harriman Chair and Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. The author of numerous books on American government, and a contributor to major magazines and newspapers like Washington Post and New York Times, he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland. Norman J. Ornstein is a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. An election analyst for CBS News, he writes a weekly column called "Congress Inside Out" for Roll Call. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Affairs, and he appears regularly on television programs like The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Nightline, and Charlie Rose. Like Mann, he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland. – Amazon biography

"The Broken Branch offers both a brilliant diagnosis of the cause of Congressional decline and a much-needed blueprint for change, from two experts who understand politics and revere our institutions, but believe that Congress has become deeply dysfunctional. Mann and Ornstein, two of the nation's most renowned and judicious scholars of government and politics, bring to light the historical roots of Congress's current maladies, examining 40 years of uninterrupted Democratic control of the House and the stunning midterm election victory of 1994 that propelled Republicans into the majority in both House and Senate. The byproduct of that long and grueling but ultimately successful Republican campaign, the authors reveal, was a weakened institution bitterly divided between the parties. They highlight the dramatic shift in Congress from a highly decentralized, committee-based institution into a much more regimented one in which party increasingly trumps committee. The resultant changes in the policy process—the demise of regular order, the decline of deliberation, and the weakening of our system of checks and balances—have all compromised the role of Congress in the American Constitutional system. From tax cuts to the war against Saddam Hussein to a Medicare prescription drug benefit, the Legislative process has been bent to serve immediate presidential interests and have often resulted in poorly crafted and stealthily passed laws. Strong majority leadership in Congress, the authors conclude, led not to a vigorous exertion of congressional authority but to a general passivity in the face of executive power"

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (52 ratings)
ISBN 978-0195368710 ?
It's Even Worse Than It Looks:
How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism
Thomas E. Mann & Norman J. Ornstein
Basic Books (May, 2012)
No Review
"Thomas E. Mann is the W. Averell Harriman Chair and senior fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. He is a former executive director of the American Political Science Association. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland. Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of a weekly column for Roll Call called “Congress Inside Out.” He lives in Washington, D.C. Both are fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. They are coauthors of The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track. – Amazon biography

"Acrimony and hyperpartisanship have seeped into every part of the political process. Congress is deadlocked and its approval ratings are at record lows. America’s two main political parties have given up their traditions of compromise, endangering our very system of constitutional democracy. And one of these parties has taken on the role of insurgent outlier; the Republicans have become ideologically extreme, scornful of compromise, and ardently opposed to the established social and economic policy regime. In It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein identify two overriding problems that have led Congress—and the United States—to the brink of institutional collapse. The first is the serious mismatch between our political parties, which have become as vehemently adversarial as parliamentary parties, and a governing system that, unlike a parliamentary democracy, makes it extremely difficult for majorities to act. Second, while both parties participate in tribal warfare, both sides are not equally culpable. The political system faces what the authors call 'asymmetric polarization,' with the Republican Party implacably refusing to allow anything that might help the Democrats politically, no matter the cost. With dysfunction rooted in long-term political trends, a coarsened political culture and a new partisan media, the authors conclude that there is no 'silver bullet' reform that can solve everything. But they offer a panoply of useful ideas and reforms, endorsing some solutions, like greater public participation and institutional restructuring of the House and Senate, while debunking others, like independent or third-party candidates. Above all, they call on the media as well as the public at large to focus on the true causes of dysfunction rather than just throwing the bums out every election cycle. Until voters learn to act strategically to reward problem solving and punish obstruction, American democracy will remain in serious danger."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (800 ratings)
ISBN 978-0465031337 ?
The Next Civil War:
Dispatches from the American Future
Stephen Marche
Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster (January 4, 2022)
No Review
"Stephen Marche is a novelist and culture writer who has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Esquire, and many other outlets. His books include three novels, The Hunger of the Wolf, Raymond and Hannah, and Shining at the Bottom of the Sea, as well as The Unmade Bed and How Shakespeare Changed Everything. He lives in Toronto with his wife and children." – Amazon biography

"On a small two-lane bridge in a rural county that loathes the federal government, the US Army uses lethal force to end a standoff with hard-right anti-government patriots. Inside an ordinary diner, a disaffected young man with a handgun takes aim at the American president stepping in for an impromptu photo-op, and a bullet splits the hyper-partisan country into violently opposed mourners and revelers. In New York City, a Category 2 hurricane plunges entire neighborhoods underwater and creates millions of refugees overnight—a blow that comes on the heels of a financial crash and years of catastrophic droughts—and tips America over the edge into ruin.

"These nightmarish scenarios are just three of the five possibilities most likely to spark devastating chaos in the United States that are brought to life in The Next Civil War, a chilling and deeply researched work of speculative nonfiction. Drawing upon sophisticated predictive models and nearly two hundred interviews with experts—civil war scholars, military leaders, law enforcement officials, secret service agents, agricultural specialists, environmentalists, war historians, and political scientists—journalist Stephen Marche predicts the terrifying future collapse that so many of us do not want to see unfolding in front of our eyes. Marche has spoken with soldiers and counterinsurgency experts about what it would take to control the population of the United States, and the battle plans for the next civil war have already been drawn up. Not by novelists, but by colonels.

"No matter your political leaning, most of us can sense that America is barreling toward catastrophe—of one kind or another. Relevant and revelatory, The Next Civil War plainly breaks down the looming threats to America and is a must-read for anyone concerned about the future of its people, its land, and its government."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.1 (671 ratings)
ISBN 978-1982123215 ?
Troll Nation:
How The Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set On Rat-F*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself
Amanda Marcotte
David Talbot (Fwd.)
Hot Books (April, 2018)
No Review
"Amanda Marcotte is a politics writer for Salon. Before this, she spent a decade as a freelance journalist, writing regularly for Slate, Rolling Stone, [T]he Daily Beast, USA Today, Talking Points Memo, and the Los Angeles Times. Marcotte’s expertise is in covering the American right, a beat she was drawn to after growing up in a conservative Texas household with Fox News- and Rush Limbaugh-loving parents. She got her start covering reproductive rights, which further familiarized her with the organizing and rhetorical strategies of the Christian right. Since then, she’s expanded her reporting on right wing politics, covering everything from climate change denialism to the activities of the gun lobby." – Amazon biography

"The election of Donald Trump in 2016, like most of his campaign, came as a shock to many Americans. How could a man so lacking in capacity, so void of any intellectual heft, become the president of the United States? How did Trump, a man with no detectable personal qualities outside of resentment and the will to dominate, appeal to millions of Americans and win the highest office in the land? The American right has spent decades turning away from reasoned discourse toward a rhetoric of pure resentment—it’s this shift that laid the groundwork for Trump’s ascendency.

"In Troll Nation, journalist Amanda Marcotte outlines how Trump was the inevitable result of American conservatism’s degradation into an ideology of blind resentment. For years now, the purpose of right wing media, particularly Fox News, has not been to argue for traditional conservative ideals, such as small government or even family values, so much as to stoke bitterness and paranoia in its audience. Traditionalist white people have lost control over the culture, and they know it, and the only option they feel they have left is to rage at a broad swath of supposed enemies — journalists, activists, feminists, city dwellers, college professors — that they blame for stealing “their” country from them.

"Conservative pundits, politicians, and activists have abandoned any hope of winning the argument through reasoned discourse, and instead have adopted a series of bad faith claims, conspiracy theories, and culture war hysterics. Decades of these antics created a conservative voting base that was ready to elect a mindless bully like Donald Trump."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.0 (150 ratings)
ISBN 978-1510737457 ?
The Meritocracy Trap:
How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite
Daniel Markovits
Penguin Press; Illustrated edition (September 10, 2019)
No Review
"Daniel Markovits is Guido Calabresi Professor of Law at Yale Law School and founding director of the Center for the Study of Private Law." – Amazon biography

"A revolutionary new argument from eminent Yale Law professor Daniel Markovits attacking the false promise of meritocracy

"It is an axiom of American life that advantage should be earned through ability and effort. Even as the country divides itself at every turn, the meritocratic ideal – that social and economic rewards should follow achievement rather than breeding – reigns supreme. Both Democrats and Republicans insistently repeat meritocratic notions. Meritocracy cuts to the heart of who we are. It sustains the American dream.

"But what if, both up and down the social ladder, meritocracy is a sham? Today, meritocracy has become exactly what it was conceived to resist: a mechanism for the concentration and dynastic transmission of wealth and privilege across generations. Upward mobility has become a fantasy, and the embattled middle classes are now more likely to sink into the working poor than to rise into the professional elite. At the same time, meritocracy now ensnares even those who manage to claw their way to the top, requiring rich adults to work with crushing intensity, exploiting their expensive educations in order to extract a return. All this is not the result of deviations or retreats from meritocracy but rather stems directly from meritocracy’s successes.

"This is the radical argument that Daniel Markovits prosecutes with rare force. Markovits is well placed to expose the sham of meritocracy. Having spent his life at elite universities, he knows from the inside the corrosive system we are trapped within. Markovits also knows that, if we understand that meritocratic inequality produces near-universal harm, we can cure it. When The Meritocracy Trap reveals the inner workings of the meritocratic machine, it also illuminates the first steps outward, towards a new world that might once again afford dignity and prosperity to the American people."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (520 ratings)
ISBN 978-0735221994 ?
American Blindspot:
Race, Class, Religion, and the Trump Presidency
Gerardo Martí
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (January 17, 2020)
No Review
"Gerardo Martí is L. Richardson King Professor of Sociology at Davidson College. Active in several research collaborations, he publishes broadly on religion and social change. His book The Deconstructed Church: Understanding Emerging Christianity was awarded the 2015 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion." – Amazon biography

"American Blindspot: Race, Class, Religion, and the Trump Presidency is a careful exploration of the forces that led to the election of the 45th president of the United States. Author Gerardo Martí synthesizes the latest scholarship and historical research to examine the roles that race, class, and religion have played in politics—both historically and today. This book goes beyond the initial claims that the American working class was the force behind Donald Trump’s election or policies and instead offers a nuanced perspective on how race, religion, and class have shaped our national views, Trump’s election, and his policies."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.1 (21 ratings)
ISBN 978-1538116081 ?
This Will Not Pass:
Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future
Jonathan Martin & Alexander Burns
Simon & Schuster (May 3, 2022)
No Review
"Jonathan Martin is a national political correspondent for The New York Times and a political analyst for CNN. He joined the Times in 2013 after working as a senior political writer for POLITICO. His work has been featured in The New Republic, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. A native of Arlington, Virginia, Martin is a graduate of Hampden-Sydney College. Alexander Burns is a national political correspondent for The New York Times and a political analyst for CNN. He joined the Times in 2015 after working as a reporter and editor at POLITICO. Born and raised in New York City, Burns is a graduate of Harvard College, where he edited the Harvard Political Review." – Amazon biography

"This is the authoritative account of an eighteen-month crisis in American democracy that will be seared into the country’s political memory for decades to come. With stunning, in-the-room detail, New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns show how both our political parties confronted a series of national traumas, including the coronavirus pandemic, the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and the political brinksmanship of President Biden’s first year in the White House.

"From Donald Trump’s assault on the 2020 election and his ongoing campaign of vengeance against his fellow Republicans, to the behind-the-scenes story of Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate and his bitter struggles to unite the Democratic Party, this book exposes the degree to which the two-party system has been strained to the point of disintegration. More than at any time in recent history, the long-established traditions and institutions of American politics are under siege as a set of aging political leaders struggle to hold together a changing country.

"Martin and Burns break news on most every page, drawing on hundreds of interviews and never-before-seen documents and recordings from the highest levels of government. The book asks the vitally important (and disturbing) question: can American democracy, as we know it, ever work again?"

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (2,876 ratings)
ISBN 978-1982172480 ?
Exurbia Now:
The Battleground of American Democracy
David Masciotra
Melville House; Reprint edition (April 2, 2024)
No Review
"David Masciotra is the author of six books, including I Am Somebody: Why Jesse Jackson Matters and Mellencamp: American Troubadour. A journalist, political analyst, and arts critic, he has written for the New Republic, Salon, Progressive, Washington Monthly, No Depression, CounterPunch, CrimeReads, and many other publications about politics, literature, and music. He and his wife live in Indiana, where he teaches at Indiana University Northwest."

"The suburbs have become too liberal and diverse for many white American conservatives, so 'exurbia”—areas outside the cities and their suburbs—are becoming the staging ground for the radical right extremist insurgency . . .

"Beyond a fanatical devotion to former president Donald Trump, one of the curious things that united the rank and file of the January 6 insurrectionist mob was that many of them were residents of one of America’s fastest growing residential areas: Exurbia.

"Home to the likes of Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ohio’s Jim Jordan, big box retailers, chain restaurants, monster trucks, and megachurches, exurbia is becoming America’s greatest political battleground, more important to American politics than urban or rural America.

"In this brilliant work of political and cultural inquiry, veteran political journalist David Masciotra provides a definitive account of what exurbia is, how it came to be, and how it's transforming American life. Zooming in outside the greater metropolitan area of Chicago—where Masciotra grew up—he shows how exurbia has become a safe space to fly the MAGA flag and romanticize the mores of the pre-civil rights, pre-feminist, pre-gay rights 1950s.

"But, as Masciotra also shows, reactionary white flight is not the whole story of small-town America. The story often lost is the power and persistence of small-town liberals—people who believe in equality, celebrate diversity, and enroll in movements for justice. Exurbia, as it turns out, is ground zero for the fight over a democracy mightily beleaguered, yet still full of promise, and still worth fighting for.

"Combining interviews, research, and anecdote—and anchored in personal experience—Exurbia Now delivers a powerful ballad on the state of small-town America, and provides a sense of the fight for democracy, on the ground, in the heartland."

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 978-1685890896 ?
Uncivil Agreement:
How Politics Became Our Identity
Lilliana Mason
University of Chicago Press; Illustrated edition (April 16, 2018)
No Review
"Lilliana Mason is associate research professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University’s SNF Agora Institute and Department of Political Science. She is author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity." – Amazon biography

"Political polarization in America is at an all-time high, and the conflict has moved beyond disagreements about matters of policy. For the first time in more than twenty years, research has shown that members of both parties hold strongly unfavorable views of their opponents. This is polarization rooted in social identity, and it is growing. The campaign and election of Donald Trump laid bare this fact of the American electorate, its successful rhetoric of 'us versus them' tapping into a powerful current of anger and resentment.

"With Uncivil Agreement, Lilliana Mason looks at the growing social gulf across racial, religious, and cultural lines, which have recently come to divide neatly between the two major political parties. She argues that group identifications have changed the way we think and feel about ourselves and our opponents. Even when Democrats and Republicans can agree on policy outcomes, they tend to view one other with distrust and to work for party victory over all else. Although the polarizing effects of social divisions have simplified our electoral choices and increased political engagement, they have not been a force that is, on balance, helpful for American democracy. Bringing together theory from political science and social psychology, Uncivil Agreement clearly describes this increasingly 'social' type of polarization in American politics and will add much to our understanding of contemporary politics."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (211 ratings)
ISBN 978-0226524542 ?
How To Stop Fascism:
History, Ideology, Resistance
Paul Mason
Penguin (May 30, 2023)
No Review
"A Britisher, Paul Mason was a TV journalist at BBC Newsnight, and later at Channel 4 News, reporting on struggles against exploitation and injustice across the world. He quit TV news "so that I could oppose Brexit and support Labour openly." Today he writes for The New European, Frankfurter Rundschau and Social Europe – and speaks to forums across the world about the need for a state-led fight for social, economic and climate justice." – from His own About page

"How can we stop the spread of fascism? The author of PostCapitalism offers a guide to resisting the far right.

"The far right is on the rise across the world. From Modi's India to Bolsonaro's Brazil and Erdogan's Turkey, fascism is not a horror that we have left in the past; it is a recurring nightmare that is happening again—and we need to find a better way to fight it.

"In How to Stop Fascism, Paul Mason offers a radical, hopeful blueprint for resisting and defeating the new far right. The book is both a chilling portrait of contemporary fascism, and a compelling history of the fascist phenomenon: its psychological roots, political theories, and genocidal logic. Fascism, Mason powerfully argues, is a symptom of capitalist failure, one that has haunted us throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. History shows us the conditions that breed fascism, and how it can be successfully overcome. But it is up to us in the present to challenge it, and time is running out.

"From the ashes of Covid-19, we have an opportunity to create a fairer, more equal society. To do so, we must ask ourselves: what kind of world do we want to live in? And what are we going to do about it?"

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (72 ratings)
ISBN 978-0141996400 ?
Fortress America:
How We Embraced Fear and Abandoned Democracy
Elaine Tyler May
Basic Books; Revised Edition (December 12, 2017)
No Review

"Elaine Tyler May is Regents Professor of American Studies and History. She is a historian of the United States in the twentieth century whose work centers on the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, domestic culture and politics; Her scholarship explores the ways in which issues normally considered part of private life, such as consumerism, security, and leisure pursuits, reflect, express, and influence American political, cultural, and social values.

"Her books and articles examine changing expectations for marriage in the early 20th century, family and sexuality in the cold war era, the history of women, the history of childlessness, reproduction, and birth control in America, and the legacy of the cold war at home, which explores the ongoing quest for national and personal security in terms of Americans' sense of danger from within as well as outside the country."

"An award-winning historian argues that America's obsession with security imperils our democracy in this 'compelling' portrait of cultural anxiety (Mary L. Dudziak, author of War Time).

"For the last sixty years, fear has seeped into every area of American life: Americans own more guns than citizens of any other country, sequester themselves in gated communities, and retreat from public spaces. And yet, crime rates have plummeted, making life in America safer than ever. Why, then, are Americans so afraid-and where does this fear lead to?

"In this remarkable work of social history, Elaine Tyler May demonstrates how our obsession with security has made citizens fear each other and distrust the government, making America less safe and less democratic. Fortress America charts the rise of a muscular national culture, undercutting the common good. Instead of a thriving democracy of engaged citizens, we have become a paranoid, bunkered, militarized, and divided vigilante nation."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (38 ratings)
ISBN 978-0465055920 ?
Dark Money:
The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
Jane Mayer
Doubleday (January 19, 2016)
My Review
"Jane Mayer is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of three bestselling and critically acclaimed narrative nonfiction books. She co-authored Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984–1988 with Doyle McManus, and Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas with Jill Abramson, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her book The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, for which she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, was named one of The New York Times’s Top 10 Books of the Year and won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the Goldsmith Book Prize, the Edward Weintal Prize, the Ridenhour Prize, the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. It was also a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. For her reporting at The New Yorker, Mayer has been awarded the John Chancellor Award, the George Polk Award, the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting, and the I. F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence presented by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard. Mayer lives in Washington, D.C."

"Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers?

"The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against 'big government' led to the ascendancy of a broad-based conservative movement. But as Jane Mayer shows in this powerful, meticulously reported history, a network of exceedingly wealthy people with extreme libertarian views bankrolled a systematic, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system. The network has brought together some of the richest people on the planet. Their core beliefs—that taxes are a form of tyranny; that government oversight of business is an assault on freedom—are sincerely held. But these beliefs also advance their personal and corporate interests: Many of their companies have run afoul of federal pollution, worker safety, securities, and tax laws.

"The chief figures in the network are Charles and David Koch, whose father made his fortune in part by building oil refineries in Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany. The patriarch later was a founding member of the John Birch Society, whose politics were so radical it believed Dwight Eisenhower was a communist. The brothers were schooled in a political philosophy that asserted the only role of government is to provide security and to enforce property rights. When libertarian ideas proved decidedly unpopular with voters, the Koch brothers and their allies chose another path. If they pooled their vast resources, they could fund an interlocking array of organizations that could work in tandem to influence and ultimately control academic institutions, think tanks, the courts, statehouses, Congress, and, they hoped, the presidency. Richard Mellon Scaife, the mercurial heir to banking and oil fortunes, had the brilliant insight that most of their political activities could be written off as tax-deductible 'philanthropy.'

"These organizations were given innocuous names such as Americans for Prosperity. Funding sources were hidden whenever possible. This process reached its apotheosis with the allegedly populist Tea Party movement, abetted mightily by the Citizens United decision—a case conceived of by legal advocates funded by the network. The political operatives the network employs are disciplined, smart, and at times ruthless. Mayer documents instances in which people affiliated with these groups hired private detectives to impugn whistle-blowers, journalists, and even government investigators. And their efforts have been remarkably successful. Libertarian views on taxes and regulation, once far outside the mainstream and still rejected by most Americans, are ascendant in the majority of state governments, the Supreme Court, and Congress. Meaningful environmental, labor, finance, and tax reforms have been stymied.

"Jane Mayer spent five years conducting hundreds of interviews-including with several sources within the network-and scoured public records, private papers, and court proceedings in reporting this book. In a taut and utterly convincing narrative, she traces the byzantine trail of the billions of dollars spent by the network and provides vivid portraits of the colorful figures behind the new American oligarchy. Dark Money is a book that must be read by anyone who cares about the future of American democracy."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (6,690 ratings)
ISBN 978-0385535595 ?
They Thought They Were Free:
The Germans, 1933–45
Milton Mayer
Richard J. Evans (Afterword)
University of Chicago Press; Enlarged edition (November 28, 2017)
No Review
"Milton Mayer (1908–1986) was the author of What Can a Man Do? and coauthor of The Revolution in Education. He wrote for The Progressive, Harper’s, and other outlets."

" 'When this book was first published it received some attention from the critics but none at all from the public. Nazism was finished in the bunker in Berlin and its death warrant signed on the bench at Nuremberg.' That’s Milton Mayer, writing in a foreword to the 1966 edition of They Thought They Were Free. He’s right about the critics: the book was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1956. General readers may have been slower to take notice, but over time they did—what we’ve seen over decades is that any time people, across the political spectrum, start to feel that freedom is threatened, the book experiences a ripple of word-of-mouth interest. And that interest has never been more prominent or potent than what we’ve seen in the past year.

"They Thought They Were Free is an eloquent and provocative examination of the development of fascism in Germany. Mayer’s book is a study of ten Germans and their lives from 1933-45, based on interviews he conducted after the war when he lived in Germany. Mayer had a position as a research professor at the University of Frankfurt and lived in a nearby small Hessian town which he disguised with the name “Kronenberg.” “These ten men were not men of distinction,” Mayer noted, but they had been members of the Nazi Party; Mayer wanted to discover what had made them Nazis. His discussions with them of Nazism, the rise of the Reich, and mass complicity with evil became the backbone of this book, an indictment of the ordinary German that is all the more powerful for its refusal to let the rest of us pretend that our moment, our society, our country are fundamentally immune.

"A new foreword (sic) to this edition by eminent historian of the Reich Richard J. Evans puts the book in historical and contemporary context. We live in an age of fervid politics and hyperbolic rhetoric. They Thought They Were Free cuts through that, revealing instead the slow, quiet accretions of change, complicity, and abdication of moral authority that quietly mark the rise of evil."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (556 ratings)
ISBN 978-0226525839 ?
United States of Fear:
How America Fell Victim to a Mass Delusional Psychosis
Mark McDonald M.D.
Bombardier Books (November 8, 2021)
No Review
"Born and raised in Los Angeles, Mark McDonald graduated from UC Berkeley before attending medical school at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Trained in both adult and child and adolescent psychiatry at UCLA, he now works primarily with children in private practice in west Los Angeles. Dr. McDonald has lived and worked in Europe, Asia, and Central America. His opinions on topics such as the need to re-open America’s schools, and the pandemic of fear in the United States today, have been widely published in local and national news, including the Wall Street Journal and The Federalist." – Amazon biography

"Psychiatrist Mark McDonald diagnoses our country as suffering from a mass delusional psychosis, driven by a pandemic of fear in response to COVID-19.

"As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, LA-based psychiatrist Mark McDonald grew increasingly concerned by the negative mental health effects he witnessed among his patients—and Americans nationwide. These negative effects—stress, anxiety, depression, addiction, domestic violence, suicidal ideation—were all directly traceable to the climate of fear being stoked by public health authorities and irresponsibly amplified by national media. These fears in turn drove a hysterical overreaction from government in the form of draconian lockdowns and mask and vaccine mandates of questionable value. But the fear did not abate and quickly took on a life of its own, becoming an unstoppable force in all our lives. At last McDonald began to speak out, explaining that America is actually suffering from two pandemics: a viral one and a psychological one, a 'pandemic of fear' that is in many ways more dangerous and damaging than the virus itself. Rooted in the natural anxieties of women on behalf of their children and families, inflamed and amplified by sensationalistic media, and driven over the top by hamfisted authoritarian measures from those in power, McDonald diagnoses the country at large as suffering from a mass delusional psychosis. This is not a metaphor. The malady itself is very real. Whether we can regain our collective sanity as a society remains to be seen."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (810 ratings)
ISBN 978-1637583197 ?
Gerrymandering in America:
The House of Representatives, the Supreme Court, and the Future of Popular Sovereignty
Anthony J. McGann, Charles Anthony Smith, Michael Latner & Alex Keena
Cambridge University Press (April 4, 2016)
No Review
"Anthony J. McGann is a Professor in the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde. His research examines the theory and practice of democratic institutions with a focus on electoral systems and the behavior of political parties. He has published The Logic of Democracy and The Radical Right in Western Europe (with Herbert Kitschelt). His articles have been featured in the American Journal of Political Science, the British Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Theoretical Politics, Public Choice, Comparative Political Studies, International Studies Quarterly, Electoral Studies, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Party Politics, and Legislative Studies Quarterly, among others. Charles Anthony Smith is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Irvine. His books include The Rise and Fall of War Crimes Trials: From Charles I to Bush II (Cambridge, 2012) and Understanding the Political World, 12th edition (with James Danziger). He has published articles in the American Journal of Political Science, Law and Society Review, Political Research Quarterly, Justice System Journal, International Political Science Review, Judicature, the Journal of Human Rights, the Election Law Journal, Studies in Law, Politics and Society, Human Rights Review, the Journal of International Relations and Development, among other journals. Michael Latner is Associate Professor of Political Science at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where he teaches and studies political participation, representation, and civic technology. He is Director of the Master's in Public Policy program and Faculty Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Technology and Public Policy's Digital Democracy Initiative. His professional memberships include Cal Poly's Geographic Information Systems User Group, Western Political Science Association, American Political Science Association, and International Political Science Association. Professor Latner has served as a political consultant on more than a dozen candidate and initiative campaigns across California, and as a civic technology and social media consultant for governments, associations, and businesses. Alex Keena is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of California, Irvine whose research focuses on American political institutions and electoral politics. His dissertation explores how political representation in Congress is affected by the size of legislative districts and the long-term growth of the electorate."

"This book considers the political and constitutional consequences of Vieth v. Jubelirer (2004), where the Supreme Court held that partisan gerrymandering challenges could no longer be adjudicated by the courts. Through a rigorous scientific analysis of US House district maps, the authors argue that partisan bias increased dramatically in the 2010 redistricting round after the Vieth decision, both at the national and state level. From a constitutional perspective, unrestrained partisan gerrymandering poses a critical threat to a central pillar of American democracy, popular sovereignty. State legislatures now effectively determine the political composition of the US House. The book answers the Court's challenge to find a new standard for gerrymandering that is both constitutionally grounded and legally manageable. It argues that the scientifically rigorous partisan symmetry measure is an appropriate legal standard for partisan gerrymandering, as it logically implies the constitutional right to individual equality and can be practically applied."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.0 (14 ratings)
ISBN 978-1107143258 ?
A Fierce Discontent:
The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920
Michael McGerr
Free Press (September 15, 2003)
No Review
"Michael McGerr is a professor of history and associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University. A much-honored teacher and the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, he is in regular demand as a speaker on various topics in American history, politics, and culture."

"A chronicle of the Progressive movement discusses such events as the drive to check the growth of large corporations, the effort to redefine the social class structure, the careers of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and the rise in radicalism. 35,000 first printing."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (16 ratings)
ISBN 978-0684859750 ?
The Sum of Us:
What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together
Heather McGhee
One World (February 16, 2021)
No Review
"Heather McGhee is an expert in economic and social policy. The former president of the inequality-focused think tank Demos, McGhee has drafted legislation, testified before Congress, and contributed regularly to news shows including NBC’s Meet the Press. She now chairs the board of Color of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice organization. McGhee holds a BA in American studies from Yale University and a JD from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law."

"Heather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy—and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. From the financial crisis of 2008 to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a root problem: racism in our politics and policymaking. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. But how did this happen? And is there a way out?

"McGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Maine to Mississippi to California, tallying what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm—the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others. Along the way, she meets white people who confide in her about losing their homes, their dreams, and their shot at better jobs to the toxic mix of American racism and greed. This is the story of how public goods in this country—from parks and pools to functioning schools—have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world’s advanced economies, has thwarted universal healthcare.

"But in unlikely places of worship and work, McGhee finds proof of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend: the benefits we gain when people come together across race to accomplish what we simply can’t do on our own. The Sum of Us is not only a brilliant analysis of how we arrived here but also a heartfelt message, delivered with startling empathy, from a black woman to a multiracial America. It leaves us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (4,840 ratings)
ISBN 978-0525509561 ?
On Disinformation:
How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy
Lee McIntyre
The MIT Press (August 22, 2023)
No Review

"Lee McIntyre is a philosopher from the Boston area who writes fiction and nonfiction aimed at the general public. Though trained as a scholar, his writing seeks to engage a wide audience in philosophical topics that are relevant to current events. He has also edited several anthologies for philosophy teachers and scholars.

"His most recent book is How To Talk To A Science Denier (MIT Press, 2021). He is also the author of The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience (MIT Press, 2019), Post-Truth (MIT Press, 2018), Respecting Truth: Willful Ignorance in the Internet Age (Routledge, 2015), Dark Ages: The Case for a Science of Human Behavior (MIT Press, 2006), and Laws and Explanation in the Social Sciences (Westview, 1996).

"McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and an Instructor in Ethics at Harvard Extension School. He has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) and has taught previously at Colgate, Tufts, Simmons, and Boston University. A black belt martial artist, he lives with two German Shepherds and the rest of his family just outside Boston."

"A powerful, pocket-sized citizen’s guide on how to fight back against the disinformation campaigns that are imperiling American democracy, from the bestselling author of Post-Truth and How to Talk to a Science Denier.

"The effort to destroy facts and make America ungovernable didn’t come out of nowhere. It is the culmination of seventy years of strategic denialism. In On Disinformation, Lee McIntyre shows how the war on facts began, and how ordinary citizens can fight back against the scourge of disinformation that is now threatening the very fabric of our society. Drawing on his twenty years of experience as a scholar of science denial, McIntyre explains how autocrats wield disinformation to manipulate a populace and deny obvious realities, why the best way to combat disinformation is to disrupt its spread, and most importantly, how we can win the war on truth.

"McIntyre takes readers through the history of strategic denialism to show how we arrived at this precarious political moment and identifies the creators, amplifiers, and believers of disinformation. Along the way, he also demonstrates how today’s 'reality denial' follows the same flawed blueprint of the 'five steps of science denial' used by climate deniers and anti-vaxxers; shows how Trump has emulated disinformation tactics created by Russian and Soviet intelligence dating back to the 1920s; provides interviews with leading experts on information warfare, counterterrorism, and political extremism; and spells out the need for algorithmic transparency from Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. On Disinformation lays out ten everyday practical steps that we can take as ordinary citizens—from resisting polarization to pressuring our Congresspeople to regulate social media—as well as the important steps our government (if we elect the right leaders) must take.

"Compact, easy-to-read (and then pass on to a friend), and never more urgent, On Disinformation does nothing less than empower us with the tools and knowledge needed to save our republic from autocracy before it is too late."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (31 ratings)
ISBN 978-0262546300 ?
We the Fallen People:
The Founders and the Future of American Democracy
Robert Tracy McKenzie
IVP Academic (September 21, 2021)
No Review

"Robert Tracy McKenzie (Ph.D., Vanderbilt University) is professor and chair of the department of history at Wheaton College, where he teaches courses in U.S. history, the Civil War and historiography. McKenzie is the author of two award-winning monographs: One South or Many? Plantation Belt and Upcountry in Civil-War Era Tennessee (Cambridge, 1994) and Lincolnites and Rebels: A Divided Town in the American Civil War (Oxford, 2009)."

"The success and survival of American democracy have never been guaranteed. Political polarization, presidential eccentricities, the trustworthiness of government, and the prejudices of the voting majority have waxed and waned ever since the time of the Founders, and there are no fail-safe solutions to secure the benefits of a democratic future.

"What we must do, argues the historian Robert Tracy McKenzie, is take an unflinching look at the very nature of democracy―its strengths and weaknesses, what it can promise, and where it overreaches. And this means we must take an unflinching look at ourselves.

"We the Fallen People presents a close look at the ideas of human nature to be found in the history of American democratic thought, from the nation's Founders through the Jacksonian Era and Alexis de Tocqueville. McKenzie, following C. S. Lewis, claims there are only two reasons to believe in majority rule: because we have confidence in human nature―or because we don't. The Founders subscribed to the biblical principle that humans are fallen and their virtue is always doubtful, and they wrote the US Constitution to frame a republic intended to handle our weaknesses. But by the presidency of Andrew Jackson, contrary ideas about humanity's inherent goodness were already taking deep root among Americans, bearing fruit in such perils as we now face for the future of democracy.

"Focusing on the careful reasoning of the Founders, the seismic shifts of the Jacksonian Era, and the often misunderstood but still piercing analysis of Tocqueville's Democracy in America, McKenzie guides us in a conversation with the past that can help us see the present―and ourselves―with new insight."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (81 ratings)
ISBN 978-0830852963 ?
Attack from Within:
How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America
Barbara McQuade
Seven Stories Press (February 27, 2024)
No Review

"Barbara McQuade is a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, where she teaches criminal law and national security law. She is also a legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC.

"From 2010 to 2017, Ms. McQuade served as the U.S Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. She was appointed by President Barack Obama, and was the first woman to serve in her position. Ms. McQuade also served as vice chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee and co-chaired its Terrorism and National Security Subcommittee.

"Before her appointment as U.S. Attorney, Ms. McQuade served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Detroit for 12 years, including service as Deputy Chief of the National Security Unit. In that role, she prosecuted cases involving terrorism financing, foreign agents, threats, and export violations.

"Ms. McQuade serves on a number of non-profit boards, and served on the Biden-Harris Transition Team in 2020-2021. She has been recognized by The Detroit News with the Michiganian of the Year Award, the Detroit Free Press with the Neal Shine Award for Exemplary Regional Leadership, Crain's Detroit Business as a Newsmaker of the Year and one of Detroit's Most Influential Women, and the Detroit Branch NAACP and Arab American Civil Rights League with their Tribute to Justice Award.

"Ms. McQuade is a graduate of the University of Michigan and its law school. She and her husband live in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and have four children."

"MSNBC's legal expert breaks down the ways disinformation has become a tool to drive voters to extremes, disempower our legal structures, and consolidate power in the hands of the few.

"American society is more polarized than ever before. We are strategically being pushed apart by disinformation—the deliberate spreading of lies disguised as truth—and it comes at us from all sides: opportunists on the far right, Russian misinformed social media influencers, among others. It's endangering our democracy and causing havoc in our electoral system, schools, hospitals, workplaces, and in our Capitol. Advances in technology including rapid developments in artificial intelligence threaten to make the problems even worse by amplifying false claims and manufacturing credibility.

"In Attack from Within, legal scholar and analyst Barbara McQuade, shows us how to identify the ways disinformation is seeping into all facets of our society and how we can fight against it. The book includes:

  • The authoritarian playbook: a brief history of disinformation from Mussolini and Hitler to Bolsonaro and Trump, chronicles the ways in which authoritarians have used disinformation to seize and retain power.
  • Disinformation tactics—like demonizing the other, seducing with nostalgia, silencing critics, muzzling the media, condemning the courts; stoking violence—and reasons why they work.
  • An explanation of why America is particularly vulnerable to disinformation and how it exploits our First Amendment Freedoms, sparks threats and violence, and destabilizes social structures.
  • Real, accessible solutions for countering disinformation and maintaining the rule of law such as making domestic terrorism a federal crime, increasing media literacy in schools, criminalizing doxxing, and much more.

"Disinformation is designed to evoke a strong emotional response to push us toward more extreme views, unable to find common ground with others. The false claims that led to the breathtaking attack on our Capitol in 2021 may have been only a dress rehearsal. Attack from Within shows us how to prevent it from happening again, thus preserving our country’s hard-won democracy."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (124 ratings)
ISBN 978-1644213636 ?
Pandemic, Inc.:
Chasing the Capitalists and Thieves Who Got Rich While We Got Sick
J. David McSwane
Atria/One Signal Publishers (April 12, 2022)
No Review
"J. David McSwane is a reporter in ProPublica’s DC office. Previously, he was an investigative reporter for The Dallas Morning News and the Austin American-Statesman. McSwane’s reporting has spurred new laws, state and federal criminal investigations, and forced belt-tightening lawmakers to invest in social programs. He has won numerous awards, including Harvard’s Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, the Worth Bingham Prize, a Scripps Howard Award, two Investigative Reporters and Editors Awards, and the Peabody." – Amazon biography

"The United States federal government has spent over $10 billion on medical protective wear and emergency supplies, yet as COVID-19 swept the nation, life-saving equipment such as masks, gloves, and ventilators was nearly impossible to find.

"In this brilliant nonfiction thriller, award-winning investigative reporter J. David McSwane takes us behind the scenes to reveal how traders, contractors, and healthcare companies used one of the darkest moments in American history to fill their pockets. Determined to uncover how this was possible, he spent over a year on private jets and in secret warehouses, traveling from California to Chicago to Washington DC, to interview both the most treacherous of profiteers and the victims of their crimes.

"Pandemic, Inc. is the story of the fraudster who signed a multi-million-dollar contract with the government to provide lifesaving PPE, and yet never came up with a single mask. The Navy admiral at the helm of the national hunt for additional medical resources. The Department of Health whistleblower who championed masks early on and was silenced by the government and conservative media. And the politician who callously slashed federal emergency funding and gutted the federal PPE stockpile.

"Winner of the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, McSwane connects the dots between backdoor deals and the spoils systems to provide the definitive account of how this pandemic was so catastrophically mishandled. Shocking and revelatory, Pandemic, Inc. exposes a system that is both deeply rigged, and singularly American."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (166 ratings)
ISBN 978-1982177744 ?
Impeachment:
An American History
Jon Meacham, Timothy Naftali, Peter Baker, & Jeffrey A. Engel
Modern Library (October 16, 2018)
No Review
"Jon Meacham is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard, where he is founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy. He is the most cited law professor in the United States and probably the world. He has served as Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and as a member of the President's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies. Winner of the 2018 Holberg Prize, Sunstein is a columnist for Bloomberg View and a frequent adviser to governments all over the world. His many books include the bestseller Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (with Richard H. Thaler), Simpler: The Future of Government, and Republic.com." – Amazon biography

"Four experts on the American presidency examine the three times impeachment has been invoked—against Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton—and explain what it means today."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (292 ratings)
ISBN 978-1984853783 ?
Gerrymandering:
The Politics of Redistricting in the United States
Stephen K. Medvic
Polity (July 6, 2021)
No Review
"Stephen K. Medvic is The Honorable & Mrs. John C. Kunkel Professor of Government at Franklin & Marshall College."

"For nearly as long as there have been electoral districts in America, politicians have gerrymandered those districts. Though the practice has changed over time, the public reaction to it has remained the same: gerrymandering is reviled. There is, of course, good reason for that sentiment. Gerrymandering is intended to maximize the number of legislative seats for one party. As such, it is an attempt to gain what appears to be an unfair advantage in elections. Nevertheless, gerrymandering is not well understood by most people and this lack of understanding leads to a false sense that there are easy solutions to this complex problem.

Gerrymandering: The Politics of Redistricting in the United States unpacks the complicated process of gerrymandering, reflecting upon the normative issues to which it gives rise. Tracing the history of partisan gerrymandering from its nineteenth-century roots to the present day, the book explains its legal status and implementation, its consequences, and possible options for reform. The result is a balanced analysis of gerrymandering that acknowledges its troubling aspects while recognizing that, as long as district boundaries have to be drawn, there is no perfect way to do so."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.1 (6 ratings)
ISBN 978-1509536863 ?
Demagogue for President:
The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump
Jennifer Mercieca
Texas A&M University Press (July 7, 2020)
No Review
"Jennifer Mercieca is associate professor in the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University. She is the author of Founding Fictions and coeditor of The Rhetoric of Heroic Expectations: Establishing the Obama Presidency. She frequently appears as an expert commentator and consultant for national and international media outlets." – Amazon biography

"Historic levels of polarization, a disaffected and frustrated electorate, and widespread distrust of government, the news media, and traditional political leadership set the stage in 2016 for an unexpected, unlikely, and unprecedented presidential contest. Donald Trump’s campaign speeches and other rhetoric seemed on the surface to be simplistic, repetitive, and disorganized to many. As Demagogue for President shows, Trump’s campaign strategy was anything but simple.

"Political communication expert Jennifer Mercieca shows how the Trump campaign expertly used the common rhetorical techniques of a demagogue, a word with two contradictory definitions—'a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power' or 'a leader championing the cause of the common people in ancient times' (Merriam-Webster, 2019). These strategies, in conjunction with post-rhetorical public relations techniques, were meant to appeal to a segment of an already distrustful electorate. It was an effective tactic.

"Mercieca analyzes rhetorical strategies such as argument ad hominem, argument ad baculum, argument ad populum, reification, paralipsis, and more to reveal a campaign that was morally repugnant to some but to others a brilliant appeal to American exceptionalism. By all accounts, it fundamentally changed the discourse of the American public sphere."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (49 ratings)
ISBN 978-1623499068 ?
Supreme Discomfort:
The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas
Kevin Merida & Michael Fletcher
Texas A&M University Press (July 7, 2020)
No Review
"Kevin Merida is an associate editor at the Washington Post. He has been a national political reporter for the paper, a feature writer for its 'Style' section, and a columnist for the Post’s Sunday magazine. In 2000 he was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists. Michael Fletcher covers the White House for the Washington Post, where he has been a reporter since 1995. He has previously covered education and race relations, chronicling issues including the racial achievement gap, racial profiling, criminal justice disparities, and the battle over the future of affirmative action."

"Supreme Discomfort originated from a much-commented-upon profile of Clarence Thomas that appeared in an August 2002 issue of The Washington Post Magazine. In it, Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher, both Post staffers, both black, crafted a haunting portrait of an isolated and bitter man, savagely reviled by much of the black community, not entirely comfortable in white society, internally wounded by his passage from a broken family and rural poverty in Georgia to elite educational institutions to the pinnacle of judicial power. He has clearly never recovered from the searing experience of his Senate confirmation hearings and the "he said/she said" drama of the accusations of sexual harassment by Anita Hill.

"Supreme Discomfort tracks the personal odyssey of perhaps the least understood man in Washington, from his poor childhood in Pin Point and Savannah, Georgia, to his educational experiences in a Catholic seminary and Holy Cross, to his law school years at Yale during the black power era, to his rise within the Republican political establishment. It offers a window into a man who straddles two different worlds and is uneasy in both—and whose divided personality and conservative political philosophy will deeply influence American life for years to come."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (34 ratings)
ISBN 978-0385510806 ?
Republic of Lies:
American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power
Anna Merlan
Metropolitan Books (April 16, 2019)
No Review
"Anna Merlan is a journalist specializing in politics, crime, religion, subcultures, and women’s lives. She is a reporter at the Special Projects Desk, the investigative division of Gizmodo Media Group. She was previously a senior reporter at Jezebel and staff writer at the Village Voice and the Dallas Observer. She lives in New York." – Amazon biography

"American society has always been fertile ground for conspiracy theories, but with the election of Donald Trump, previously outlandish ideas suddenly attained legitimacy. Trump himself is a conspiracy enthusiast: from his claim that global warming is a Chinese hoax to the accusations of “fake news,” he has fanned the flames of suspicion.

"But it was not by the power of one man alone that these ideas gained new power. Republic of Lies looks beyond the caricatures of conspiracy theorists to explain their tenacity. Without lending the theories validity, Anna Merlan gives a nuanced, sympathetic account of the people behind them, across the political spectrum, and the circumstances that helped them take hold. The lack of a social safety net, inadequate education, bitter culture wars, and years of economic insecurity have created large groups of people who feel forgotten by their government and even besieged by it. Our contemporary conditions are a perfect petri dish for conspiracy movements: a durable, permanent, elastic climate of alienation and resentment. All the while, an army of politicians and conspiracy-peddlers has fanned the flames of suspicion to serve their own ends.

"Bringing together penetrating historical analysis and gripping on-the-ground reporting, Republic of Lies transforms our understanding of American paranoia."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (64 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250159052 ?
The Submerged State:
How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy
Suzanne Mettler
University of Chicago Press (September 27, 2011)
Part of: Chicago Studies in American Politics (55 books)
No Review
"Suzanne Mettler is the Clinton Rossiter Professor of American Institutions at Cornell University. Her most recent book is Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation." – Amazon biography

" 'Keep your government hands off my Medicare!' Such comments spotlight a central question animating Suzanne Mettler’s provocative and timely book: why are many Americans unaware of government social benefits and so hostile to them in principle, even though they receive them? The Obama administration has been roundly criticized for its inability to convey how much it has accomplished for ordinary citizens. Mettler argues that this difficulty is not merely a failure of communication; rather it is endemic to the formidable presence of the 'submerged state.'

"In recent decades, federal policymakers have increasingly shunned the outright disbursing of benefits to individuals and families and favored instead less visible and more indirect incentives and subsidies, from tax breaks to payments for services to private companies. These submerged policies, Mettler shows, obscure the role of government and exaggerate that of the market. As a result, citizens are unaware not only of the benefits they receive, but of the massive advantages given to powerful interests, such as insurance companies and the financial industry. Neither do they realize that the policies of the submerged state shower their largest benefits on the most affluent Americans, exacerbating inequality. Mettler analyzes three Obama reforms—student aid, tax relief, and health care—to reveal the submerged state and its consequences, demonstrating how structurally difficult it is to enact policy reforms and even to obtain public recognition for achieving them. She concludes with recommendations for reform to help make hidden policies more visible and governance more comprehensible to all Americans.

"The sad truth is that many American citizens do not know how major social programs work—or even whether they benefit from them. Suzanne Mettler’s important new book will bring government policies back to the surface and encourage citizens to reclaim their voice in the political process."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (74 ratings)
ISBN 978-0226521640 ?
Dying of Whiteness:
How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland
Jonathan M. Metzl
Basic Books; First Edition, 3rd printing (March 5, 2019)
No Review
"Jonathan M. Metzl is the Frederick B. Rentschler II professor of sociology and psychiatry at Vanderbilt University and director of its Center for Medicine, Health, and Society. He is the author of several books and a prominent expert on gun violence and mental illness. He hails from Kansas City, Missouri, and lives in Nashville, Tennessee." – Amazon biography

"In the era of Donald Trump, many lower- and middle-class white Americans are drawn to politicians who pledge to make their lives great again. But as Dying of Whiteness shows, the policies that result actually place white Americans at ever-greater risk of sickness and death.

"Physician Jonathan M. Metzl's quest to understand the health implications of 'backlash governance' leads him across America's heartland. Interviewing a range of everyday Americans, he examines how racial resentment has fueled progun laws in Missouri, resistance to the Affordable Care Act in Tennessee, and cuts to schools and social services in Kansas. And he shows these policies' costs: increasing deaths by gun suicide, falling life expectancies, and rising dropout rates. White Americans, Metzl argues, must reject the racial hierarchies that promise to aid them but in fact lead our nation to demise."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (1,022 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250159052 ?
Vigilante Nation:
How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy
Jon Michaels & David Noll
Atria/One Signal Publishers (October 8, 2024)
No Review
"Jon Michaels is a UCLA professor of law specializing in constitutional, administrative, and national-security law. His award-winning scholarship has been published in The Yale Law Journal, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, and the Harvard Law Review; his popular essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, and The Forward. A Yale Law graduate and former Supreme Court clerk, Michaels is a member of the American Law Institute, serves on the advisory board of UCLA’s Safeguarding Democracy Project, and is a faculty affiliate of UCLA’s Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy. His first book, Constitutional Coup, was published by Harvard University Press. David Noll is the associate dean for faculty research and development and a professor of law at Rutgers Law School. His scholarly writings on civil procedure, complex litigation, and administrative law have appeared in the California Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the New York University Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, and the Texas Law Review, among others, and his popular writing has appeared in venues including The New York Times, Politico, Slate, and the New York Law Journal. A graduate of Columbia University and New York University School of Law, Noll is an academic fellow of the National Institute for Civil Justice. He clerked on the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the US District Court for the Southern District of New York."

"For readers of How Democracies Die, two legal scholars expose the MAGA Republican strategy to roll back civil, political, and privacy rights and subvert American democracy—and prescribe a plan for beating the Christian nationalists at their own game.

"Time and again, when confronted with serious challenges to their power and privilege, white Christian nationalists seek solace—and satisfaction—in state-supported forms of vigilantism. This was true at the dawn of the American republic, when Northern abolitionists threatened the Southern slavocracy. It was also true in the aftermath of the Civil War, when emancipated Black Americans and their Northern allies sought to fulfill the promises of Reconstruction. And though this pattern was seemingly broken after the Civil Rights revolution of the 1950s and ’60s—and abandoned once and for all—legal vigilantism has made a surprising, roaring comeback in the months and years following the failed coup of January 6, 2021.

"Committed to never again losing power, let alone experiencing the humiliation that followed on the heels of the ham-fisted insurrection, overlapping networks of right-wing lawyers, politicians, plutocrats, and preachers have resurrected state-supported vigilantism.

"Vigilante Nation tells this story of the American Right marginalizing, subordinating, and disenfranchising the increasingly diverse and cosmopolitan members of the American polity. This book exposes the vigilantes’ plans, explains their methods—everything from book bans to anti-abortion bounties to attacks on government proceedings, including elections—and underscores the stakes. Now that supporters of democratic equality are numerous and dexterous enough to finally secure the broad promises of the civil rights revolution, the race is on for Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and the architects of Project 2025 to subvert our democracy before a countermovement can rise up to thwart their insidious plans."

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 978-1668023235 ?
Fragmented Democracy:
Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics
Jamila Michener
Cambridge University Press (March 22, 2018)
No Review
"Jamila Michener is Assistant Professor of Government at Cornell University. She is a leading expert in the study of poverty, racial inequality, politics and public policy in the United States. Her work has been supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. She is a faculty affiliate at the Center for the Study of Inequality, a graduate field faculty member in the Africana Studies Department, a faculty affiliate in the American Studies Program, and an affiliate at the Cornell Population Center. As a publicly engaged scholar, Michener is also co-leader of the Finger Lakes Branch of the Scholars Strategy Network, sits on the advisory board of the Cornell Prison Education Program, and teaches regularly in local prisons. Prior to coming to Cornell, she received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago and completed a postdoctoral fellowship as a Health Policy Scholar at the University of Michigan." – Amazon biography

"Medicaid is the single largest public health insurer in the United States, covering upwards of 70 million Americans. Crucially, Medicaid is also an intergovernmental program that yokes poverty to federalism: the federal government determines its broad contours, while states have tremendous discretion over how Medicaid is designed and implemented. Where some locales are generous and open handed, others are tight-fisted and punitive. In Fragmented Democracy, Jamila Michener demonstrates the consequences of such disparities for democratic citizenship. Unpacking how federalism transforms Medicaid beneficiaries' interpretations of government and structures their participation in politics, the book examines American democracy from the vantage point(s) of those who are living in or near poverty, (disproportionately) Black or Latino, and reliant on a federated government for vital resources."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (42 ratings)
ISBN 978-1316649589 ?
The Destructionists:
The Twenty-Five Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party
Dana Milbank
Doubleday (August 9, 2022)
No Review
"Dana Milbank is a nationally syndicated op-ed columnist for the Washington Post. He has also been a contributor to CNN and MSNBC and is the author of the national bestseller Homo Politicus, Tears of a Clown, O Is for Obama, and Smashmouth. He lives in Washington, DC." – Amazon biography

"In 1994, more than 300 Republicans under the command of obstructionist and rabble-rouser Congressman Newt Gingrich stood outside the U.S. Capitol to sign the Contract with America and put bipartisanship on notice. Twenty-five years later, on January 6, 2021, a bloodthirsty mob incited by President Trump invaded the Capitol.

"Dana Milbank sees a clear line from the Contract with America to the coup attempt. In the quarter century in between, Americans have witnessed the crackup of the party of Lincoln and Reagan, to its current iteration as a haven for white supremacists, political violence, conspiracy theories and authoritarianism.

"Following the questionable careers of party heavyweights Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Mitch McConnell, and Rudy Giuliani, and those of many lesser known lowlights, Millbank recounts the shocking lengths the Republican Party has gone to to maintain its grip on the American people."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (537 ratings)
ISBN 978-0385548137 ?
Tears of a Clown:
Glenn Beck and the Tea Bagging of America
Dana Milbank
Doubleday (October 5, 2010)
No Review
"Dana Milbank is a nationally syndicated op-ed columnist for the Washington Post. He has also been a contributor to CNN and MSNBC and is the author of the national bestseller Homo Politicus, Tears of a Clown, O Is for Obama, and Smashmouth. He lives in Washington, DC." – Amazon biography

"Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank takes a fair and balanced look at the unsettling rise of the silly Fox News host Glenn Beck.

"Thomas Jefferson famously wrote that 'the tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.' In America in 2010, Glenn Beck provides the very refreshment Jefferson had in mind: Whether he’s the patriot or the tyrant, he’s definitely full of manure.

"The wildly popular Fox News host with three million daily viewers perfectly captures the vitriol of our time and the fact-free state of our political culture. The secret to his success is his willingness to traffic in the fringe conspiracies and Internet hearsay that others wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole: death panels, government health insurance for dogs, FEMA concen­tration camps, an Obama security force like Hitler’s SS.

"But Beck, who is, according to a recent Gallup poll, admired by more Americans than the Pope, has nothing in his background that identifies him as an ideologue, giving rise to the speculation that his right-wing shtick is just that—the act of a brilliant showman, known for both his over-the-top daily out­rages and for weeping on the air.

"Milbank describes, with lacerating wit, just how the former shock jock without a college degree has managed to become the most recognizable leader of antigovernment conservatives and exposes him as the guy who is single-handedly giving patriotism a bad name."

Rating by Amazon customers: 3.6 (73 ratings)
ISBN 978-0385533881 ?
Fools on the Hill:
The Hooligans, Saboteurs, Conspiracy Theorists, and Dunces Who Burned Down the House
Dana Milbank
Little, Brown and Company (September 24, 2024)
No Review
"Dana Milbank is a nationally syndicated op-ed columnist with The Washington Post and a New York Times bestselling author. His column appears in the Post and hundreds of other newspapers. Milbank also has provided political commentary for MSNBC, CNN and various other TV and radio outlets, and he is the author of four books on politics, including the New York Times bestseller The Destructionists and the national bestseller Homo Politicus. Before starting the column, Milbank was a White House reporter for the Post and won the White House Correspondents’ Association Beckman award for 'repeated excellence in White House coverage.' He previously worked as a political reporter in the Post’s Style section, as a senior editor of the New Republic, and as a congressional and foreign correspondent of the Wall Street Journal. He is a graduate of Yale University."

"From the halls of Congress, New York Times bestselling author Dana Milbank exposes the chaotic, incompetent and dysfunctional state of the current Republican House—a confederacy of dunces, united by paranoia and conspiracy theories, blundering from one self-inflicted crisis to the next.

"When Republicans took control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections with a historically slim majority, mayhem began immediately. 'Failed completely.' 'Can’t govern.' 'Broken.' 'Lunatics.' 'Embarrassing.' 'Bunch of idiots.' And that’s how House Republicans described themselves. Take it from Marjorie Taylor Greene, who said in May 2024 that 'many Americans in general are sick and tired and fed up with a feckless, useless Republican Party, a conference that does nothing.' This is the House of George Santos and Jim Jordan, of Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz. They investigated space aliens and Hunter Biden’s art dealer. They punched and they groped. They championed Confederates and insurrectionists—while disparaging the military and sabotaging the economy. They tied up the House so often with far-right fantasies that they produced what was arguably the least effective session of Congress in history.

"Dana Milbank, widely-read Washington Post columnist, spent a year reporting from inside the Capitol, watching the circus from the front row. The result, Fools on the Hill, is simultaneously horrifying and laugh-out-loud funny. Sadly, it is all true."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (129 ratings)
ISBN 978-0316570923 ?
Hate in the Homeland:
The New Global Far Right
Cynthia Miller-Idriss
Princeton University Press (October 27, 2020)
No Review
"Cynthia Miller-Idriss is a professor in the School of Public Affairs and the School of Education at American University, where she runs the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL). She is the author of The Extreme Gone Mainstream: Commercialization and Far Right Youth Culture in Germany (Princeton) and Blood and Culture: Youth, Right-Wing Extremism, and National Belonging in Contemporary Germany.

"Hate crimes. Misinformation and conspiracy theories. Foiled white-supremacist plots. The signs of growing far-right extremism are all around us, and communities across America and around the globe are struggling to understand how so many people are being radicalized and why they are increasingly attracted to violent movements. Hate in the Homeland shows how tomorrow's far-right nationalists are being recruited in surprising places, from college campuses and mixed martial arts gyms to clothing stores, online gaming chat rooms, and YouTube cooking channels.

"Instead of focusing on the how and why of far-right radicalization, Cynthia Miller-Idriss seeks answers in the physical and virtual spaces where hate is cultivated. Where does the far right do its recruiting? When do young people encounter extremist messaging in their everyday lives? Miller-Idriss shows how far-right groups are swelling their ranks and developing their cultural, intellectual, and financial capacities in a variety of mainstream settings. She demonstrates how young people on the margins of our communities are targeted in these settings, and how the path to radicalization is a nuanced process of moving in and out of far-right scenes throughout adolescence and adulthood.

"Hate in the Homeland is essential for understanding the tactics and underlying ideas of modern far-right extremism. This eye-opening book takes readers into the mainstream places and spaces where today's far right is engaging and ensnaring young people, and reveals innovative strategies we can use to combat extremist radicalization."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (141 ratings)
ISBN 978-0691203836 ?
The Religion of American Greatness:
What’s Wrong with Christian Nationalism
Paul D. Miller
David French (Foreword)
IVP Academic (July 5, 2022)
No Review
"Paul D. Miller (PhD, Georgetown University) is Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and co-chair of the Global Politics and Security concentration. He spent a decade in public service as director for Afghanistan and Pakistan on the National Security Council staff, an intelligence analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, and a military intelligence officer in the US Army. Miller's writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Dispatch, The Washington Post, Providence Magazine, Mere Orthodoxy, The Gospel Coalition, Foreign Policy, and elsewhere. He is the author of Just War and Ordered Liberty." – Amazon biography

"Long before it featured dramatically in the 2016 presidential election, Christian nationalism had sunk deep roots in the United States. From America's beginning, Christians have often merged their religious faith with national identity. But what is Christian nationalism? How is it different from patriotism? Is it an honest quirk, or something more threatening?

"Paul D. Miller, a Christian scholar, political theorist, veteran, and former White House staffer, provides a detailed portrait of―and case against―Christian nationalism. Building on his practical expertise not only in the archives and classroom but also in public service, Miller unravels this ideology's historical importance, its key tenets, and its political, cultural, and spiritual implications.

"Miller shows what's at stake if we misunderstand the relationship between Christianity and the American nation. Christian nationalism―the religion of American greatness―is an illiberal political theory, at odds with the genius of the American experiment, and could prove devastating to both church and state. Christians must relearn how to love our country without idolizing it and seek a healthier Christian political witness that respects our constitutional ideals and a biblical vision of justice."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (67 ratings)
ISBN 978-1514000267 ?
Why We Did It:
A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell
Tim Miller
Harper (June 28, 2022)
No Review
"Tim Miller is an MSNBC analyst, writer-at-large for The Bulwark, and host of 'Not My Party' on Snapchat. He has written on politics and culture for Rolling Stone, The Ringer, Playboy, and The Daily Beast. Tim was communications director for Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign and spokesman for the Republican National Committee during Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign. He has since left the GOP and become one of the leaders of the 'Never Trump' movement. He lives in Oakland, CA with his husband and daughter." – Amazon biography

"As one of the strategists behind the famous 2012 RNC 'autopsy,' Miller conducts his own forensic study on the pungent carcass of the party he used to love, cutting into all the hubris, ambition, idiocy, desperation, and self-deception for everyone to see. In a bracingly honest reflection on both his own past work for the Republican Party and the contortions of his former peers in the GOP establishment, Miller draws a straight line between the actions of the 2000s GOP to the Republican political class's Trumpian takeover, including the horrors of January 6th.

"From ruminations on the mental jujitsu that allowed him as a gay man to justify becoming a hitman for homophobes, to astonishingly raw interviews with former colleagues who jumped on the Trump Train, Miller diagrams the flattering and delusional stories GOP operatives tell themselves so they can sleep at night. With a humorous touch he reveals Reince Priebus' neediness, Sean Spicer's desperation, Elise Stefanik and Chris Christie’s raw ambition, and his close friends’ submission to a MAGA psychosis.

"Why We Did It is a vital, darkly satirical warning that all the narcissistic justifications that got us to this place still thrive within the Republican party, which means they will continue to make the same mistakes and political calculations that got us here, with disastrous consequences for the nation."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (1,912 ratings)
ISBN 978-0063161474 ?
The Agenda:
How a Republican Supreme Court is Reshaping America
Ian Millhiser
Columbia Global Reports (March 30, 2021)
No Review
"Ian Millhiser is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. Before joining Vox, he was a columnist at ThinkProgress. He is the author of Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted, and his writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, and the Yale Law & Policy Review. He received his J.D. from Duke University and clerked for judge Eric L. Clay of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He lives in Arlington, Virginia." – Amazon biography

"What will a conservative Supreme Court do with its power?

"From 2011, when Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives, until the present, Congress enacted hardly any major legislation outside of the tax law President Trump signed in 2017. In the same period, the Supreme Court dismantled much of America's campaign finance law, severely weakened the Voting Rights Act, permitted states to opt-out of the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion, weakened laws protecting against age discrimination and sexual and racial harassment, and held that every state must permit same-sex couples to marry. This powerful unelected body, now controlled by six very conservative Republicans, has and will become the locus of policymaking in the United States.

"Ian Millhiser, Vox's Supreme Court correspondent, tells the story of what those six justices are likely to do with their power. It is true that the right to abortion is in its final days, as is affirmative action. But Millhiser shows that it is in the most arcane decisions that the Court will fundamentally reshape America, transforming it into something far less democratic, by attacking voting rights, dismantling and vetoing the federal administrative state, ignoring the separation of church and state, and putting corporations above the law. The Agenda exposes a radically altered Supreme Court whose powers extend far beyond transforming any individual right―its agenda is to shape the very nature of America's government, redefining who gets to have legal rights, who is beyond the reach of the law, and who chooses the people who make our laws."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.1 (58 ratings)
ISBN 978-1734420760 ?
Injustices:
The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted
Ian Millhiser
Nation Books (March 24, 2015)
No Review
"Ian Millhiser is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the editor of ThinkProgress Justice. He received his JD from Duke University and clerked for Judge Eric L. Clay of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. His writings have appeared in a diversity of publications, including the New York Times, the Guardian, the Nation, the American Prospect, and the Yale Law & Policy Review. He lives in Arlington, Virginia." – Amazon biography

"Few American institutions have inflicted greater suffering on ordinary people than the Supreme Court of the United States. Since its inception, the justices of the Supreme Court have shaped a nation where children toiled in coal mines, where Americans could be forced into camps because of their race, and where a woman could be sterilized against her will by state law. The Court was the midwife of Jim Crow, the right hand of union busters, and the dead hand of the Confederacy. Nor is the modern Court a vast improvement, with its incursions on voting rights and its willingness to place elections for sale.

"In this powerful indictment of a venerated institution, Ian Millhiser tells the history of the Supreme Court through the eyes of the everyday people who have suffered the most from it. America ratified three constitutional amendments to provide equal rights to freed slaves, but the justices spent thirty years largely dismantling these amendments. Then they spent the next forty years rewriting them into a shield for the wealthy and the powerful. In the Warren era and the few years following it, progressive justices restored the Constitution's promises of equality, free speech, and fair justice for the accused. But, Millhiser contends, that was an historic accident. Indeed, if it weren't for several unpredictable events, Brown v. Board of Education could have gone the other way.

"In Injustices, Millhiser argues that the Supreme Court has seized power for itself that rightfully belongs to the people's elected representatives, and has bent the arc of American history away from justice."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (170 ratings)
ISBN 978-1568584560 ?
The Power Elite
C. Wright Mills
Alan Wolfe (Afterword)
Oxford University Press; New Edition (February 17, 2000)
No Review
"The late C. Wright Mills, Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, was a leading critic of modern American civilization. Alan Wolfe is University Professor and Professor of Political Science and Sociology at Boston University. He is the author or editor of more than ten books, including Marginalized in the Middle and One Nation, After All."

"First published in 1956, The Power Elite stands as a contemporary classic of social science and social criticism. C. Wright Mills examines and critiques the organization of power in the United States, calling attention to three firmly interlocked prongs of power: the military, corporate, and political elite. The Power Elite can be read as a good account of what was taking place in America at the time it was written, but its underlying question of whether America is as democratic in practice as it is in theory continues to matter very much today.

"What The Power Elite informed readers of in 1956 was how much the organization of power in America had changed during their lifetimes, and Alan Wolfe's astute afterword to this new edition brings us up to date, illustrating how much more has changed since then. Wolfe sorts out what is helpful in Mills' book and which of his predictions have not come to bear, laying out the radical changes in American capitalism, from intense global competition and the collapse of communism to rapid technological transformations and ever changing consumer tastes. The Power Elite has stimulated generations of readers to think about the kind of society they have and the kind of society they might want, and deserves to be read by every new generation."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (356 ratings)
ISBN 978-0195133547 ?
The Invisible Doctrine
George Monbiot & Peter Hutchinson
Allen Lane (March 28, 2024)
No Review
"George Monbiot is an author, Guardian columnist, and environmental campaigner. His books include Feral, Heat, and Regenesis. Peter Hutchinson is a filmmaker, New York Times bestselling author, educator, and activist based in Brooklyn. He produced and directed Requiem for the American Dream, an exploration of wealth inequality in America, featuring Noam Chomsky."

"We live under an ideology that preys on every aspect of our our education and our jobs; our healthcare and our leisure; our relationships and our mental wellbeing; even the planet we inhabit – the very air we breathe. So pervasive has it become that, for most people, it has no name. It seems unavoidable, like a natural law.

"But trace it back to its roots, and we discover that it is neither inevitable nor immutable. It was conceived, propagated, and then concealed by the powerful few. It is time to bring it into the light - and, in doing so, to find an alternative worth fighting for.

"Neoliberalism. Do you know what it is?

"BASED ON A MAJOR MOTION FILM TO BE RELEASED IN 2024""

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (212 ratings)
ISBN 978-0241635902 ?
The Age of Magical Overthinking:
Notes on Modern Irrationality
Amanda Montell
Atria/One Signal Publishers (April 9, 2024)
No Review
"Amanda Montell is is a writer and linguist from Baltimore. She is the author of the acclaimed books Wordslut, Cultish, and The Age of Magical Overthinking. Along with hosting the podcast Sounds Like a Cult, her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, and more. She holds a degree in linguistics from NYU and lives in Los Angeles with her partner, plants, and pets."

"From the bestselling author of Cultish and host of the podcast Sounds Like a Cult, a delicious blend of cultural criticism and personal narrative that explores our cognitive biases and the power, disadvantages, and highlights of magical thinking.

"Utilizing the linguistic insights of her 'witty and brilliant' (Blyth Roberson, author of America the Beautiful?) first book Wordslut and the sociological explorations of her breakout hit Cultish, Amanda Montell now turns her erudite eye to the inner workings of the human mind and its biases in her most personal and electrifying work yet.

"'Magical thinking' can be broadly defined as the belief that one’s internal thoughts can affect unrelated events in the external world: Think of the conviction that one can manifest their way out of poverty, stave off cancer with positive vibes, thwart the apocalypse by learning to can their own peaches, or transform an unhealthy relationship to a glorious one with loyalty alone. In all its forms, magical thinking works in service of restoring agency amid chaos, but in The Age of Magical Overthinking, Montell argues that in the modern information age, our brain’s coping mechanisms have been overloaded, and our irrationality turned up to an eleven.

"In a series of razor sharp, deeply funny chapters, Montell delves into a cornucopia of the cognitive biases that run rampant in our brains, from how the 'Halo effect' cultivates worship (and hatred) of larger than life celebrities, to how the 'Sunk Cost Fallacy' can keep us in detrimental relationships long after we’ve realized they’re not serving us. As she illuminates these concepts with her signature brilliance and wit, Montell’s prevailing message is one of hope, empathy, and ultimately forgiveness for our anxiety-addled human selves. If you have all but lost faith in our ability to reason, Montell aims to make some sense of the senseless. To crack open a window in our minds, and let a warm breeze in. To help quiet the cacophony for a while, or even hear a melody in it."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (40 ratings)
ISBN 978-1668007976 ?
The Great Reset:
Global Elites and the Permanent Lockdown
Marc Morano
Sebastian Gorka (Foreword)
Regnery Publishing (August 30, 2022)
No Review
"Marc Morano is a former senior staff member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, publisher of ClimateDepot.com, bestselling author [of] The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change and Green Fraud, and producer of Climate Hustle (2016) and Climate Hustle 2: Rise of the Climate Monarchy (2020)."

"Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better.

"This is the vision of the Great Reset, according to globalist leaders. While proponents of the Great Reset push slogans like 'Build Back Better,' 'The Fourth Industrial Revolution,' and 'A New Normal,' the Reset is nothing short of a rebranded Soviet system, threatening to strip away property rights, restrict freedom of movement and association, and radically reshape our diets and way of life."

Marc Morano served on the staff of the Senate and Public Works Committee when James Inhofe was its chairman. He was a climate-change denialist then and he's a climate-change denialist now. He's also broadened his deception to encompass the entire basis of Democratic policies.

An Amazon customer writes: "The Great Reset is a conspiracy theory about how some elite used the COVID pandemic to enact some agenda. A large part of his claim is that no one voted for lockdowns. In fact, all states in the US have what is known as police power to [do] what is needed to do when there is a epidemic that endangers the community. Each state has its own laws that govern the use of this police power. Each governor did what they thought best. In FL, TX, AL, MS and similar states they did almost nothing until their hospital systems were close to collapsing from all the patients with COVID."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (54 ratings)
ISBN 978-1684512386 ?
The Great Experiment:
Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure
Yascha Mounk
Penguin Press (April 19, 2022)
No Review
"Yascha Mounk is a writer and academic known for his work on the rise of populism and the crisis of liberal democracy. Born in Germany to Polish parents, Mounk received his BA in history from Trinity College, University of Cambridge, and his PhD in government from Harvard University. He is now a Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University and the founder of Persuasion. Mounk is also a contributing editor at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations." – Amazon biography

"Some democracies are highly homogeneous. Others have long maintained a brutal racial or religious hierarchy, with some groups dominating and exploiting others. Never in history has a democracy succeeded in being both diverse and equal, treating members of many different ethnic or religious groups fairly. And yet achieving that goal is now central to the democratic project in countries around the world. It is, Yascha Mounk argues, the greatest experiment of our time.

"Drawing on history, social psychology, and comparative politics, Mounk examines how diverse societies have long suffered from the ills of domination, fragmentation, or structured anarchy. So it is hardly surprising that most people are now deeply pessimistic that different groups might be able to integrate in harmony, celebrating their differences without essentializing them. But Mounk shows us that the past can offer crucial insights for how to do better in the future. There is real reason for hope.

"It is up to us and the institutions we build whether different groups will come to see each other as enemies or friends, as strangers or compatriots. To make diverse democracies endure, and even thrive, we need to create a world in which our ascriptive identities come to matter less—not because we ignore the injustices that still characterize the United States and so many other countries around the world, but because we have succeeded in addressing them.

"The Great Experiment is that rare book that offers both a profound understanding of an urgent problem and genuine hope for our human capacity to solve it. As Mounk contends, giving up on the prospects of building fair and thriving diverse democracies is simply not an option—and that is why we must strive to realize a more ambitious vision for the future of our societies."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (46 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593296813 ?
The Identity Trap:
A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time
Yascha Mounk
Penguin Press (September 26, 2023)
No Review
"Yascha Mounk is a writer and academic known for his work on the rise of populism and the crisis of liberal democracy. Born in Germany to Polish parents, Mounk received his BA in history from Trinity College, University of Cambridge, and his PhD in government from Harvard University. He is now a Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University and the founder of the digital magazine Persuasion. Mounk is also a contributing editor at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations." – Amazon biography

"One of our leading public intellectuals traces the origin of a set of ideas about identity and social justice that is rapidly transforming America—and explains why it will fail to accomplish its noble goals.

"For much of history, societies have violently oppressed ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities. It is no surprise that many who passionately believe in social justice came to believe that members of marginalized groups need to take pride in their identity to resist injustice.

"But over the past decades, a healthy appreciation for the culture and heritage of minority groups has transformed into a counterproductive obsession with group identity in all its forms. A new ideology aiming to place each person’s matrix of identities at the center of social, cultural, and political life has quickly become highly influential. It stifles discourse, vilifies mutual influence as cultural appropriation, denies that members of different groups can truly understand one another, and insists that the way governments treat their citizens should depend on the color of their skin.

"This, Yascha Mounk argues, is the identity trap. Though those who battle for these ideas are full of good intentions, they will ultimately make it harder to achieve progress toward the genuine equality we desperately need. Mounk has built his acclaimed scholarly career on being one of the first to warn of the risks right-wing populists pose to American democracy. But, he shows, those on the left and center who are stuck in the identity trap are now inadvertent allies to the MAGA movement.

"In The Identity Trap Mounk provides the most ambitious and comprehensive account to date of the origins, consequences, and limitations of so-called “wokeness.” He is the first to show how postmodernism, postcolonialism, and critical race theory forged the “identity synthesis” that conquered many college campuses by 2010. He lays out how a relatively marginal set of ideas came to gain tremendous influence in business, media, and government by 2020. He makes a nuanced philosophical case for why the application of these ideas to areas from education to public policy is proving to be so deeply counterproductive—and why universal, humanist values can best serve the vital goal of true equality. In explaining the huge political and cultural transformations of the past decade, The Identity Trap provides truth and clarity where they are needed most."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (8 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593493182 ?
The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself:
Racial Myths and Our American Narratives
David Mura
University Of Minnesota Press (January 31, 2023)
No Review
"David Mura is the author of three collections of poetry including Angels for the Burning (BOA, 2004). He is also a creative nonfiction writer, critic, playwright, and performance artist. A third-generation Japanese American, he has written intimately about his life as a man of color and the connections between race, sexuality, and history. Mura teaches at Hamline University, VONA (Voices of the Nation Association), and in the Stonecoast MFA program. For more information about David Mura, visit www.davidmura.com"

"Uncovering the pernicious narratives white people create to justify white supremacy and sustain racist oppression

"The police murders of two Black men, Philando Castile and George Floyd, frame this searing exploration of the historical and fictional narratives that white America tells itself to justify and maintain white supremacy. From the country’s founding through the summer of Black Lives Matter in 2020, David Mura unmasks how white stories about race attempt to erase the brutality of the past and underpin systemic racism in the present.

"Intertwining history, literature, ethics, and the deeply personal, Mura looks back to foundational narratives of white supremacy (Jefferson’s defense of slavery, Lincoln’s frequently minimized racism, and the establishment of Jim Crow) to show how white identity is based on shared belief in the pernicious myths, false histories, and racially segregated fictions that allow whites to deny their culpability in past atrocities and current inequities. White supremacy always insists white knowledge is superior to Black knowledge, Mura argues, and this belief dismisses the truths embodied in Black narratives.

"Mura turns to literature, comparing the white savior portrayal of the film Amistad to the novelization of its script by the Black novelist Alexs Pate, which focuses on its African protagonists; depictions of slavery in Faulkner and Morrison; and race’s absence in the fiction of Jonathan Franzen and its inescapable presence in works by ZZ Packer, tracing the construction of Whiteness to willfully distorted portraits of race in America. In James Baldwin’s essays, Mura finds a response to this racial distortion and a way for Blacks and other BIPOC people to heal from the wounds of racism.

"Taking readers beyond apology, contrition, or sadness, Mura attends to the persistent trauma racism has exacted and lays bare how deeply we need to change our racial narratives—what white people must do—to dissolve the myth of Whiteness and fully acknowledge the stories and experiences of Black Americans."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.9 (21 ratings)
ISBN 978-1517914547 ?
Coming Apart:
The State of White America, 1960-2010
Charles Murray
Crown Forum (January 31, 2012)
No Review
"Charles Murray is a political scientist, author, and libertarian. He first came to national attention in 1984 with the publication of Losing Ground, which has been credited as the intellectual foundation for the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. His 1994 New York Times bestseller, The Bell Curve (Free Press, 1994), coauthored with the late Richard J. Herrnstein, sparked heated controversy for its analysis of the role of IQ in shaping America's class structure. Murray's other books include What It Means to Be a Libertarian (1997), Human Accomplishment (2003), In Our Hands (2006), and Real Education (2008). His 2012 book, Coming Apart (Crown Forum, 2012), describes an unprecedented divergence in American classes over the last half century. His most recent book is By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission (Crown Forum, 2015)."

"Coming Apart - an acclaimed bestseller that explains why white America has become fractured and divided in education and class.

"In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anything we have ever known, focusing on whites as a way of driving home the fact that the trends he describes do not break along lines of race or ethnicity.

"Drawing on five decades of statistics and research, Coming Apart demonstrates that a new upper class and a new lower class have diverged so far in core behaviors and values that they barely recognize their underlying American kinship—divergence that has nothing to do with income inequality and that has grown during good economic times and bad.

"The top and bottom of white America increasingly live in different cultures, Murray argues, with the powerful upper class living in enclaves surrounded by their own kind, ignorant about life in mainstream America, and the lower class suffering from erosions of family and community life that strike at the heart of the pursuit of happiness. That divergence puts the success of the American project at risk.

"The evidence in Coming Apart is about white America. Its message is about all of America."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (1,714 ratings)
ISBN 978-0307453426 ?
Let's Start the Revolution:
Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country that Works for the People
Ralph Nader
Skyhorse (July 23, 2024)
No Review
"Ralph Nader iis an author, a lecturer, an attorney, and an American political activist in areas of consumer and worker protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government. He is the bestselling author of many books, including Unsafe at Any Speed, a critique of the safety record of American automobile manufacturers. The book led to congressional hearings and automobile safety laws passed in 1966, including the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. He was instrumental in the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CSPC), and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA). Many lives have been saved by Nader's involvement in the recall of millions of unsafe consumer products, including defective motor vehicles, and in the protection of laborers and the environment. By starting dozens of citizen groups, Ralph Nader has created an atmosphere of corporate and governmental accountability. Nader is a four-time candidate for president of the United States, having run as the Green Party nominee in 1996 and 2000 and as an independent candidate in 2004 and 2008."

"In his latest eye-opening exploration, political maverick Ralph Nader dissects the astonishing twists and turns of the 2020 presidential election, a race that left the nation on the edge of its seat. Although Joe Biden clinched victory with a substantial popular vote lead, Nader unveils the precarious nature of the outcome, where a mere 100,000 votes in key swing states could have catapulted Donald Trump back to the presidency.

"In Let's Start the Revolution, Nader asks: How did the Democrats, despite winning the 2020 election, find themselves teetering on the edge of defeat?

"The answers, he finds, lie in the Democratic Party's gradual decline into decrepitude—a self-isolation from blue-collar America, an unhealthy fixation on corporate funding, and an alarming aversion to introspection. Nader argues that the Democrats' abandonment of their base and failure to address critical issues allowed the Republicans to solidify their hold on key states. Let's Start the Revolution exposes the insular nature of the Democratic Party apparatus, adept at fundraising but detached from the grassroots movements that truly define the political landscape. Nader argues that the focus on dollars over principles has eroded the authenticity of the Democratic Party's rhetoric on workers, consumers, and children.

"Drawing on historical parallels and real-life examples, Nader unearths the pitfalls of relying on political and media consultants who prioritize corporate interests over the needs of the people, isolating candidates from progressive citizen organizations and obstructing crucial, campaign-winning agendas.

"As Nader dissects the Democratic Party's stagnation, he offers a compelling narrative on its post-2010 decline, exploring the devastating impact of gerrymandering and the loss of over 1000 state legislative seats. The book highlights the party's inability to connect with voters, missing opportunities for meaningful engagement, and perpetuating a cycle of defeat. The Democrats have written off competing in half the country and have ceased to be a true national party.

"Let's Start the Revolution is not just a critique but a call to action. Nader advocates for a genuine relationship between the Democratic Party and the everyday lives of the people it seeks to represent. Based on his deep understanding of the necessities, anxieties, and dreams of millions of families, Nader charts a path forward—a path that prioritizes authenticity, community engagement, and a relentless pursuit of the common good. In a political landscape marred by a "divide and rule" polarization emanating from the power struggle between the major parties, this book serves as a vital roadmap for revitalizing democracy, empowering all citizens, and steering the Democratic Party away from cronyism and complacency. Ralph Nader's latest work is a rallying cry for those who believe in the power of the people to arouse the heart of American democracy."

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 978-1510781856 ?
The Revenge of Power:
How Autocrats Are Reinventing Politics for the 21st Century
Moisés Naím
St. Martin's Press (February 22, 2022)
No Review
"Moisés Naím is a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an internationally syndicated columnist. He served as editor in chief of Foreign Policy, as Venezuela's trade minister, and as executive director of the World Bank. His books include The End of Power and Illicit, which was the basis of a National Geographic documentary." – Amazon biography

"In his bestselling book The End of Power, Moisés Naím examined power-diluting forces. In The Revenge of Power, Naím turns to the trends, conditions, technologies and behaviors that are contributing to the concentration of power, and to the clash between those forces that weaken power and those that strengthen it. He concentrates on the three 'P's―populism, polarization, and post-truths. All of which are as old as time, but are combined by today’s autocrats to undermine democratic life in new and frightening ways. Power has not changed. But the way people go about gaining it and using it has been transformed.

"The Revenge of Power is packed with alluring characters, riveting stories about power grabs and losses, and vivid examples of the tricks and tactics used by autocrats to counter the forces that are weakening their power. It connects the dots between global events and political tactics that, when taken together, show a profound and often stealthy transformation in power and politics worldwide. Using the best available data and insights taken from recent research in the social sciences, Naím reveals how, on close examination, the same set of strategies to consolidate power pop up again and again in places with vastly different political, economic, and social circumstances, and offers insights about what can be done to ensure that freedom and democracy prevail.

"The outcomes of these battles for power will determine if our future will be more autocratic or more democratic. Naím addresses the questions at the heart of the matter: Why is power concentrating in some places while in others it is fragmenting and degrading? And the big question: What is the future of freedom?"

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (75 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250279200 ?
The Plot that Failed:
Nixon and the Administrative Presidency
Richard P. Nathan
John Wiley & Sons Inc; Underlining and Notation edition (January 1, 1975)
No Review
"Richard P. Nathan (1935-2021) was Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the State University of New York, Albany, and Director of SUNY’s Rockefeller Institute of Government from 1989 to 2004, co-director from 2005 to 2009, and Senior Fellow from 2009 to 2021. From 1979 to 1989, he was Professor of Public and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and director of the school’s Urban and Regional Research Center. Before entering academic life, he served in several federal government positions, including associate director for program research for the National Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission 1967-1968) and chair of the Domestic Council Committee on Welfare Reform Planning (1969-1970). Under President Richard M. Nixon (1969-1974), he served as assistant director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (1969-1972) and deputy undersecretary for welfare reform of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (1972). He later served on the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (1994-1996) and chaired the Panel on Research and Development Priorities for the U.S. Census Bureau’s State and Local Government Statistics Program in the lead up to the 2010 census. In 1972, he was appointed Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution." – Center for the Study of Federalism

"By definition, a plot is 'a secret project or scheme, often harmful. The Plot that Failed refers to President Richard M. Nixon's attempt in 1972 and 1973 to achieve his major aims in domestic policy by controlling the management of domestic government. This strategy—referred to in this book as the 'Administrative Presidency'—raises basic and intriguing questions for the American government. Under the plan, a cadre of newly appointed Cabinet and sub-Cabinet officials was to take over entrenched bureaucracies—and thus seek to attain Nixon's goals through administrative action. Watergate, however, was the downfall of the 'Administrative Presidency.'

"The Plot that Failed is an account of an abortive attempt to control the machinery of domestic government. Richard P. Nathan, an official in the first term of the Nixon Administration, presents an interesting and balanced treatment of Nixon's domestic program. He underscores the fact that people across the political spectrum supported many of the aims of the 'New Federalism.' Was there merit in Nixon's concept of adopting an administrative strategy for putting these objective into effect? Would his strategy have worked if there had been no Watergate? What are its implications? These are some of the questions examined in this book."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (1 rating)
ISBN 978-0471630654 ?
Courage in The People's House:
Nine Trailblazing Representatives Who Shaped America
Joe Neguse
Simon & Schuster (August 1, 2023)
No Review
"Congressman Joe Neguse represents Colorado’s 2nd District in the US House of Representatives. A lawyer and former state-cabinet official, he was elected to his first term in November 2018. He serves as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, Natural Resources Committee, and Rules Committee, and in February 2021 served as a House impeachment manager." – Amazon biography

"The remarkable stories of nine US Representatives who helped shape America

"Courage in the People’s House tells the gripping stories of nine individuals who served in the US House of Representatives—the 'People’s House'—during a span of over one hundred years, from the 1870s to the 1990s. From the first African American to serve in the House, to immigrants elected at the dawn of the 20th century, all were trailblazers who made significant contributions to the country. The book provides an inspiring story of America through profiles of each of them, representatives of all political stripes who overcame the odds and demonstrated the courage to challenge powerful interests, and at times, their own political allies. The nine members of Congress are:

  • Joseph Rainey, South Carolina
  • Josiah Walls, Florida
  • William B. Wilson, Pennsylvania
  • Adolph Sabath, Illinois
  • Oscar Stanton De Priest, Illinois
  • Margaret Chase Smith, Maine
  • Henry B. Gonzalez, Texas
  • Shirley Chisholm, New York
  • Barbara Jordan, Texas

"Representative Joe Neguse, the first African American elected to the Congress from Colorado, shares how these nine ordinary Americans served nobly despite the barriers before them and did extraordinary things in service to their constituents, the Constitution, and the country."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (2 ratings)
ISBN 978-1982191672 ?
Alt-America:
The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump
David Neiwert
Verso (October, 2017)
No Review
"David Neiwert is a journalist and author and an acknowledged expert in American right-wing extremism. He has appeared on Anderson Cooper 360, CNN Newsroom, and The Rachel Maddow Show. His work has also appeared in the American Prospect, the Washington Post, MSNBC, Salon, and other publications. His previous books include The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right and Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese-American Community, as well as And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing the Dark Side of the American Border, which won the 2014 International Latino Book Award" – Amazon biography

"Just as Donald Trump’s victorious campaign for the U.S. presidency shocked the world, the seemingly sudden national prominence of white supremacists, xenophobes, militia leaders, and mysterious “alt-right” figures mystifies many. But the American extreme right has been growing steadily in number and influence since the 1990s with the rise of patriot militias. Following 9/11, conspiracy theorists found fresh life; and in virulent reaction to the first black U.S. president, militant racists have come out of the woodwork. Nurtured by a powerful right-wing media sector in radio, TV, and online, the far right, Tea Party movement conservatives, and Republican activists found common ground. Figures such as Stephen Bannon, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Alex Jones, once rightly dismissed as cranks, now haunt the reports of mainstream journalism.

"Investigative reporter David Neiwert has been tracking extremists for more than two decades. In Alt-America, he provides a deeply researched and authoritative report on the growth of fascism and far-right terrorism, the violence of which in the last decade has surpassed anything inspired by Islamist or other ideologies in the United States. The product of years of reportage, and including the most in-depth investigation of Trump’s ties to the far right, this is a crucial book about one of the most disturbing aspects of American society."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (227 ratings)
ISBN 978-1786634468 ?
The Age of Insurrection:
The Radical Right's Assault on American Democracy
David Neiwert
Melville House (June 27, 2023)
No Review

"David Neiwert is an award-winning investigative journalist and the author of several books, including Red Pill, Blue Pill: How to Counteract the Conspiracy Theories that are Killing Us (Prometheus 2020), Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump (Verso 2017), Of Orcas and Men: What Killer Whales Can Teach Us (Overlook 2016), and And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing the Dark Side of the American Border (Nation Books 2013).

"He is a journalist and author and an acknowledged expert in American right-wing extremism. He has appeared on Anderson Cooper 360, CNN Newsroom, and The Rachel Maddow Show and is the Pacific Northwest correspondent for the Southern Poverty Law Center. His work has also appeared in Mother Jones. Reveal News, The American Prospect, The Washington Post, MSNBC.com, Salon.com, and other publications."

"The strange and terrible tale of the far right’s long war on American democracy . . .

"From a smattering of ominous right-wing compounds in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s, to the shocking January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, America has seen the culmination of a long-building war on democracy being waged by a fundamentally violent and antidemocratic far-right movement that unironically calls itself the 'Patriot' movement.

"So how did we get here? Award-winning journalist David Neiwert—who been following the rise of these extremist groups since the late 1970s, when he was a young reporter in Idaho—explores how the movement was built over decades, how it was set aflame by Donald Trump and his cohorts, and how it will continue to attack American democracy for the foreseeable future. Neiwert especially studies how the Pacific Northwest has long been a breeding ground of extremist violence, from the time when neo-nazis migrated to the area from southern California in the 1970s, through the great battles in Portland and Seattle and neighboring towns over the last decade.

"Laying out how these groups organize their terroristic violence and attacks on democratic institutions at every level—including local, state, and federal targets—Neiwert details what their strategies and plans look like for the foreseeable future."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (32 ratings)
ISBN 978-1685890360 ?
Shadow Network:
Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right
Anne Nelson
Bloomsbury Publishing (October 29, 2019)
No Review
"Anne Nelson has received a Livingston Award for her journalism, a Guggenheim Fellowship for her historical research, and a Bellagio Fellowship for her research on the social impact of digital media. A graduate of Yale University, she began her career as a journalist in the U.S and abroad. She won an Associated Church Press Award for her writing on the conflict in Central America, which she covered for the Los Angeles Times, NPR, and the BBC. She has taught at Columbia University for over two decades, first at the School of Journalism and then at the School of International and Public Affairs. Her previous books include Red Orchestra: The Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler, a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice; and Suzanne's Children: A Daring Rescue in Nazi Paris, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. A native of Oklahoma, she lives in New York City." – Amazon biography

"In 1981, emboldened by Ronald Reagan's election, a group of some fifty Republican operatives, evangelicals, oil barons, and gun lobbyists met in a Washington suburb to coordinate their attack on civil liberties and the social safety net. These men and women called their coalition the Council for National Policy. Over four decades, this elite club has become a strategic nerve center for channeling money and mobilizing votes behind the scenes. Its secretive membership rolls represent a high-powered roster of fundamentalists, oligarchs, and their allies, from Oliver North, Ed Meese, and Tim LaHaye in the Council's early days to Kellyanne Conway, Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins, and the DeVos and Mercer families today.

"In Shadow Network, award-winning author and media analyst Anne Nelson chronicles this astonishing history and illuminates the coalition's key figures and their tactics. She traces how the collapse of American local journalism laid the foundation for the Council for National Policy's information war and listens in on the hardline broadcasting its members control. And she reveals how the group has collaborated with the Koch brothers to outfit Radical Right organizations with state-of-the-art apps and a shared pool of captured voter data - outmaneuvering the Democratic Party in a digital arms race whose result has yet to be decided.

"In a time of stark and growing threats to our most valued institutions and democratic freedoms, Shadow Network is essential reading."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (346 ratings)
ISBN 978-1635573190 ?
Poison Tea:
How Big Oil and Big Tobacco Invented the Tea Party and Captured the GOP
Jeff Nesbit
Thomas Dunne Books (April 5, 2016)
My Review

"Jeff Nesbit was director of public affairs for two federal science agencies. He was once profiled in The Wall Street Journal as one of the seven people who ended the Tobacco Wars. He was a journalist, communications director for Vice President Quayle, and the director of a strategic communications business for nearly 15 years. Now an executive director of Climate Nexus, he writes a weekly science blog for U.S. News & World Report. He lives in New York.

"In Washington, he was a senior public affairs official in the U.S. Senate and federal agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration; a national journalist with Knight-Ridder and others; head of a strategic communications consulting firm for more than a decade; director of communications for former Vice President Dan Quayle at the White house; and the director of legislative and public affairs at the National Science Foundation from 2006-2011.

"His new book This Is the Way the World Ends from St. Martin's Press will be available Sept. 25, 2018. Bill McKibben calls it a 'touchstone book for understanding the world we're daily creating.' Senator John Kerry says it is an 'enlightening - and alarming - explanation of the climate challenge as it exists today.' Sierra Club leader Michael Brune said the book 'challenges us to save not just our world but our humanity.'

"In addition to his non-fiction work, Nesbit has also written more than 20 inspirational novels with Tyndale, Zondervan, Thomas Nelson, Guideposts, Summerside Press, David C. Cook, Hodder & Stoughton, Harold Shaw (part of Random House) and Victor Books. His latest fiction series, with New York Times best-selling author Dr. Kevin Leman, is the Worthington Destiny series."

"Poison Tea shines a spotlight on the shadowy Koch brother network and reveals hidden connections between the tobacco industry, the reclusive billionaire brothers, and the Tea Party movement. It's a major story that for too long has been underreported and poorly understood."--REP. HENRY WAXMAN, a former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee

"How did today's Tea Party movement really come to be Did it suddenly appear in 2009 as a spontaneous response to Barack Obama and health-care reform? Or was its true purpose and history something far different? Was it in fact a careful, strategic effort by two of the planet's wealthiest individuals, the tobacco industry, and other corporate interests to remake the government and seize control of one of our two national parties, ultimately gaining both the White House and Congress?

"Jeff Nesbit was in the room at the beginning of the unholy alliance between representatives of the world's largest private oil company and the planet's largest public tobacco company. There, they planned for a grassroots national political movement—one that would later be known as the Tea Party—that would promote their own corporate interests and political goals. Drawing from his own experience as well as from troves of recently released internal tobacco industry documents, Nesbit reveals the long game that these corporate giants have played to become a dominant force in American politics."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (37 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250076106 ?
The Temple at the End of the Universe:
A Search for Spirituality in the Anthropocene
Josiah Neufeld
House of Anansi Press (June 6, 2023)
No Review
"Josiah Neufeld is an award-winning journalist who grew up as an expatriate in Burkina Faso and returned to Canada as a young adult. His essays, journalism, and short fiction have been published in the Walrus, Hazlitt, the Globe and Mail, Eighteen Bridges, the Ottawa Citizen, the Vancouver Sun, Utne Reader, Prairie Fire, and the New Quarterly. He lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba." – Amazon biography

"A journalistic memoir by a lapsed evangelical Christian that examines how the ecological crisis is shifting the ground of religious faith.

"Our species is leaving scars on the earth that will last for millennia. How has religious ideology helped bring humanity to the brink of catastrophe? What new expressions of faith might help us respond with grace, self-sacrifice, and love? What will spark our compassion, transcend our divisions, and spur us to action?

"Josiah Neufeld explores how the interlocking crises of climate change have shifted the ground of religious faith on a quest that is both philosophical and deeply personal. As the son of Christian missionaries based in Burkina Faso, Neufeld grew up aware of his privilege in an unjust world. His faith gave way to skepticism as he realized the fundamental injustice underpinning evangelical Christianity: only a minority would be saved, and the rest would be damned.

"He was left, though, with an understanding of how people’s actions are influenced by spiritual motives and religious convictions, and of how a framework of faith can counter one’s sense of personal powerlessness. The Temple at the End of the Universe is the rallying cry for a new spiritual paradigm for the Anthropocene."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (7 ratings)
ISBN 978-1635573190 ?
Kingdom of Rage:
The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace
Elizabeth Neumann
Worthy Books (April 23, 2024)
No Review
"Elizabeth Neumann served as the Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Neumann is an ABC News contributor and the chief strategy officer at Moonshot. She is based in the Denver, CO area."

"A former counterterrorism official explores how modern evangelicalism and right-wing conservatism intermingled to form the combustible ideology that resulted in the January 6 attacks on the Capitol—and which threatens to destroy the American Church from within. How did a Church that purports to follow the teachings of Jesus - the Prince of Peace - become a breeding ground for violent extremism?

"When Elizabeth Neumann began her anti-terrorism career as part of President George W. Bush’s Homeland Security Counsel in the wake of the September 11 attacks, she expected to spend her life protecting her country from the threat of global terrorism.

"But as her career evolved, she began to perceive that the greatest threat to American security came not from religious fundamentalists in Afghanistan or Iraq but from white nationalists and radicalized religious fundamentalists within the very institution that was closest to her heart – the American evangelical church. And she began to sound the alarm, raising her concerns to anyone in government who would listen, including testifying before Congress in February of 2020. At that time, Neumann warned that anti-Semitic and white supremacist terrorism was a transnational threat that was building to the doorstep of another major attack. Shortly after her testimony, she resigned from her role as Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention in protest of what she believed was then-President Trump’s failure of leadership and his stoking of the hatred, anger, and division from which she had dedicated her life to protecting her country.

"Her worst fears came true when she witnessed the attack on the capital on January 6, 2021.

"In Kingdom of Rage, Neumann explores the forces within American society that have encouraged the radicalization of white supremacist, anti-government and other far-right terrorists by co-opting Christian symbols and culture and perverting the faith’s teachings. While Neumann offers decades of insights into the role government policies can play to prevent further bloodshed, she believes real change must come from the within the Christian church. She shines a bright light on the responsibility of ordinary Americans – and particularly American Christians – to work within their families and their communities to counteract the narrative of victimization and marginalization within American evangelicalism. Her goal for this book is not only to sound a warning about one of the greatest threats to our security but to rescue the Church from the forces that will, if left unchecked, destroy it – culturally, morally, and ultimately quite literally. This is a book for anyone who wants to understand the unholy marriage of right-wing politics and Christian exceptionalism in America and who wants to be a part of reversing the current path towards division, hatred, violence and the ultimate undermining of both evangelical Christianity and American democracy."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (52 ratings)
ISBN 978-1546002055 ?
Stories Are Weapons:
Psychological Warfare and the American Mind
Annalee Newitz
W. W. Norton & Company (June 4, 2024)
No Review
"Annalee Newitz is a journalist and author of science fiction and nonfiction, including the national best-seller Four Lost Cities. They write for the New York Times and New Scientist and co-host the Hugo Award–winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct. They live in San Francisco."

"A sharp and timely exploration of the dark art of manipulation through weaponized storytelling, from the best-selling author of Four Lost Cities.

"In Stories Are Weapons, best-selling author Annalee Newitz traces the way disinformation, propaganda, and violent threats―the essential tool kit for psychological warfare―have evolved from military weapons deployed against foreign adversaries into tools in domestic culture wars. Newitz delves into America’s deep-rooted history with psychological operations, beginning with Benjamin Franklin’s Revolutionary War–era fake newspaper and nineteenth-century wars on Indigenous nations, and reaching its apotheosis with the Cold War and twenty-first-century influence campaigns online. America’s secret weapon has long been coercive storytelling. And there’s a reason for that: operatives who shaped modern psychological warfare drew on their experiences as science fiction writers and in the advertising industry.

"Now, through a weapons-transfer program long unacknowledged, psyops have found their way into the hands of culture warriors, transforming democratic debates into toxic wars over American identity. Newitz zeroes in on conflicts over race and intelligence, school board fights over LGBT students, and campaigns against feminist viewpoints, revealing how, in each case, specific groups of Americans are singled out and treated as enemies of the state. Crucially, Newitz delivers a powerful counternarrative, speaking with the researchers and activists who are outlining a pathway to achieving psychological disarmament and cultural peace.

"Incisive and essential, Stories are Weapons reveals how our minds have been turned into blood-soaked battlegrounds―and how we can put down our weapons to build something better."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (52 ratings)
ISBN 978-1546002055 ?
The Genius of Impeachment:
The Founders' Cure for Royalism
John Nichols
The New Press (October 1, 2006)
No Review
John Nichols is Washington correspondent for The Nation and an editor at the Capital Times. He is the author of The Rise and Rise of Richard B. Cheney and Jews for Buchanan." – Amazon biography

"The founders designed impeachment as one of the checks against executive power. As John Nichols reveals in this fascinating look at impeachment's hidden history, impeachment movements—in addition to congressional proceedings themselves—have played an important role in countering an out-of-control executive branch. The threat of impeachment has worked to temper presidential excesses and to reassert democratic values in times of national drift.

"The Genius of Impeachment also makes clear that we sorely need such a movement today, and that both the president and vice president [meaning Bush & Cheney] deserve impeachment. In the spirit of maverick congressmember Henry B. Gonzalez, who introduced articles of impeachment against both George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan for making war without a declaration, this book is a fearless call to Americans to hold our leaders accountable to democracy."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (49 ratings)
ISBN 978-1595581402 ?
Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse:
A Field Guide to the Most Dangerous People in America
John Nichols
Bold Type Books; New edition (August, 2017)
No Review
John Nichols is the national affairs writer for The Nation magazine and a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times. He is also the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin, and a cofounder of the media-reform group Free Press. A frequent commentator on American politics and media, he has appeared often on MSNBC, NPR, BBC and regularly lectures at major universities on presidential administrations and executive power. The author of ten books and has earned numerous awards for his investigative reports, including groundbreaking examinations (in collaboration with the Center for Media and Democracy) of the Koch brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council." – Amazon biography

"Donald Trump has assembled a rogue's gallery of alt-right hatemongers, crony capitalists, immigrant bashers, and climate-change deniers to run the American government. To survive the next four years, we the people need to know whose hands are on the levers of power. And we need to know how to challenge their abuses. John Nichols, veteran political correspondent at the Nation, has been covering many of these deplorables for decades. Sticking to the hard facts and unafraid to dig deep into the histories and ideologies of the people who make up Trump's inner circle, Nichols delivers a clear-eyed and complete guide to this wrecking-crew administration."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (86 ratings)
ISBN 978-1568587806 ?
Our Own Worst Enemy:
The Assault from within on Modern Democracy
Tom Nichols
Oxford University Press (August 19, 2021)
No Review
Tom Nichols is Professor of National Security Affairs, US Naval War College, a columnist for USA Today, and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of The Death of Expertise (Oxford 2017), No Use: Nuclear Weapons and US National Security (2013), and Eve of Destruction: The Coming Age of Preventive War (2008). He is also an instructor at the Harvard Extension School and an adjunct professor at the US Air Force School of Strategic Force Studies. He is a former aide in the US Senate and has been a Fellow of the International Security Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University." – Amazon biography

"Over the past three decades, citizens of democracies who claim to value freedom, tolerance, and the rule of law have increasingly embraced illiberal politicians and platforms. Democracy is in trouble--but who is really to blame?

"In Our Own Worst Enemy, Tom Nichols challenges the current depictions of the rise of illiberal and anti-democratic movements in the United States and elsewhere as the result of the deprivations of globalization or the malign decisions of elites. Rather, he places the blame for the rise of illiberalism on the people themselves. Nichols traces the illiberalism of the 21st century to the growth of unchecked narcissism, rising standards of living, global peace, and a resistance to change. Ordinary citizens, laden with grievances, have joined forces with political entrepreneurs who thrive on the creation of rage rather than on the encouragement of civic virtue and democratic cooperation. While it will be difficult, Nichols argues that we need to defend democracy by resurrecting the virtues of altruism, compromise, stoicism, and cooperation—and by recognizing how good we've actually had it in the modern world.

"Trenchant, contrarian, and highly engaging, Our Own Worst Enemy reframes the debate about how democracies have ended up in this dire state of affairs and what to do about it."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (863 ratings)
ISBN 978-0197518878 ?
The Death of Expertise:
The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters
Tom Nichols
Oxford University Press; 2nd edition (April 3, 2024)
No Review

Tom Nichols is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He was a professor of national security affairs for 25 years at the U.S. Naval War College, and is the author of The Death of Expertise (Oxford 2017) as well as books on Russia, the Cold War, nuclear weapons, and the future of armed conflict. He is also an instructor at the Harvard Extension School and an adjunct professor at the US Air Force School of Strategic Force Studies. He is a former aide in the U.S. Senate and has been a Fellow of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

"He is also a Senior Associate of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs in New York City, a Fellow of the International History Institute at Boston University, and a Senior Fellow of the Graham Center for Contemporary International History at the University of Toronto. Previously he was a Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC.

"In 2017 Tom was named one of POLITICO Magazine's "POLITICO 50," the thinkers whose ideas are shaking up American politics and public life.

"Tom is also a five-time undefeated Jeopardy! champion. He played in the 1994 Tournament of Champions, is listed in the Jeopardy! Hall of Fame, and as one of the game's top players was invited to participate in the 2005 Ultimate Tournament of Champions, where he played his final match."

"Building on his enormously successful first edition, Tom Nichols confirms his thesis that events, such as the COVID pandemic, prove that the assault on expertise has only intensified.

"Fully updated chapters continue to address how technology and increasing levels of education have exposed people to more information than ever before. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Over the past several years, the rise of populism and conspiracy theories have taken this to new levels. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism.

"Tom Nichols' The Death of Expertise, Second Edition, follows up on how this rejection of experts has occurred: the openness of the internet, the emergence of a customer satisfaction model in higher education, the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine, and importantly, the election of Donald Trump. Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. When ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy or, in the worst case, a combination of both.""

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (57 ratings)
ISBN 978-0197763834 ?
The Year that Broke Politics:
Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968
Luke A. Nichter
Yale University Press (August 1, 2023)
No Review
"Luke A. Nichter is professor of history and James H. Cavanaugh Endowed Chair in Presidential Studies at Chapman University. He is the author of The Last Brahmin: Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. and the Making of the Cold War. He lives in Orange, CA, and Bowling Green, OH."

"The unknown story of the election that set the tone for today’s fractured politics

"The 1968 presidential race was a contentious battle between vice president Hubert Humphrey, Republican Richard Nixon, and former Alabama governor George Wallace. The United States was reeling from the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy and was bitterly divided on the Vietnam War and domestic issues, including civil rights and rising crime. Drawing on previously unexamined archives and numerous interviews, Luke A. Nichter upends the conventional understanding of the campaign.

"Nichter chronicles how the evangelist Billy Graham met with Johnson after the president’s attempt to reenter the race was stymied by his own party, and offered him a deal: Nixon, if elected, would continue Johnson’s Vietnam War policy and also not oppose his Great Society, if Johnson would soften his support for Humphrey. Johnson agreed.

"Nichter also shows that Johnson was far more active in the campaign than has previously been described; that Humphrey’s resurgence in October had nothing to do with his changing his position on the war; that Nixon’s 'Southern Strategy' has been misunderstood, since he hardly even campaigned there; and that Wallace’s appeal went far beyond the South and anticipated today’s Republican populism. This eye-opening account of the political calculations and maneuvering that decided this fiercely fought election reshapes our understanding of a key moment in twentieth-century American history."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (27 ratings)
ISBN 978-0300254396 ?
The Cancel Culture Curse:
From Rage to Redemption in a World Gone Mad
Evan Nierman & Mark Sachs
Skyhorse (April 11, 2023)
No Review
Evan Nierman is founder and CEO of Red Banyan, an international crisis management and public relations firm. He and his team have provided counsel to thousands of clients across the world, including scores who have been the targets of cancel culture attacks. Evan’s writings on issues related to communications and marketing are featured in a range of leading outlets. He speaks at various conferences and universities around the world and is often called upon by media to provide insight and analysis. Mark Sachs is senior vice president of Client Success at Red Banyan. As a member of the firm’s leadership team, Mark heads the effort to scale relationship management and growth models as the agency continues expanding nationally and globally. Mark’s professional career can best be described as having 'range,' equipping him with broad experience in strategic communications, business, science, finance, and foreign policy."

"In a groundbreaking first, cancel culture and its core elements are clearly defined, and a convincing case is made against this fundamentally un-American practice.

"Cancel culture is an insidious force in society today. In the seconds it takes to make one regrettable social media post—or wind up on the wrong side of a false accusation or misunderstanding—reputations, relationships, and careers are destroyed. Have we entered an era when people cannot make mistakes; where no apology or change of heart can ever deliver forgiveness? Making a comeback used to be a celebrated American ideal. But have the roads to redemption been permanently blocked by internet mobs seeking vengeance?

"In The Cancel Culture Curse, global crisis manager Evan Nierman and his colleague Mark Sachs examine the impact of cancel culture in today’s media-driven world. The authors also explore the history of cancel culture and the trends that have fostered it, defining the telltale elements that are hallmarks of such campaigns.

"Nierman and Sachs provide fascinating case studies and interviews with well-known victims of cancel culture, including philosopher Peter Boghossian, Mumford & Sons cofounder Winston Marshall, and 'San Francisco Karen,' among others. Also featured, is a playbook for rebounding from public shame, helping readers avoid becoming the latest targets of 'cancel vultures' who enjoy picking apart the remains of those left to die on the side of the Internet highway."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.9 (38 ratings)
ISBN 978-1510777194 ?
American Carnage:
An Officer's Duty to Warn
Steve Nolan
Ragged Sky Press (August 21, 2020)
No Review
Steve Nolan, Ph.D., is a palliative care chaplain at Princess Alice Hospice, Surrey, UK, where he works daily with people who are dying, supporting them and their families. He regularly teaches spiritual care to students visiting the hospice and is a tutor on the MTh in Chaplaincy Studies at St. Michael's College, Llandaff, part of Cardiff University." (from the bio on another book)

"Had I been faced with any service member who stated that sexual assault was due to putting men and women together, who refused to believe that their commander in chief was a U.S. citizen, who thought he knew more than the generals, who believed and claimed that enemy leadership was stronger than American leadership, that we should murder family members of terrorists, that the Geneva Conventions tie the hands of our military, that proven U.S. intelligence is a hoax, that Neo-Nazis are fine people, or that a free press is the enemy of the people, I would be obligated to discharge that person from the military."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (13 ratings)
ISBN 978-1933974408 ?
The Misinformation Age:
How False Beliefs Spread
Cailin O'Connor & James Owen Weatherall
Yale University Press (December, 2018)
No Review
Cailin O’Connor is associate professor of logic and philosophy of science at the University of California, Irvine.
James Owen Weatherall is professor of logic and philosophy of science at the University of California, Irvine, and author of the New York Times best-seller The Physics of Wall Street. Both are members of the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Science. They reside in California." – Amazon biography

"Why should we care about having true beliefs? And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread despite bad, even fatal, consequences for the people who hold them?

"Philosophers of science Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall argue that social factors, rather than individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the spread and persistence of false beliefs. It might seem that there’s an obvious reason that true beliefs matter: false beliefs will hurt you. But if that’s right, then why is it (apparently) irrelevant to many people whether they believe true things or not?

"The Misinformation Age, written for a political era riven by 'fake news,' 'alternative facts,' and disputes over the validity of everything from climate change to the size of inauguration crowds, shows convincingly that what you believe depends on who you know. If social forces explain the persistence of false belief, we must understand how those forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (138 ratings)
ISBN 978-0300234015 ?
Preparing for War:
The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism—and What Comes Next
Bradley Onishi
Broadleaf Books (January 3, 2023)
No Review
Bradley Onishi is a scholar of religion and cohost of the Straight White American Jesus podcast. His writing has been published in the New York Times, LA Review of Books, and Religion & Politics, among other outlets. He holds degrees from Azusa Pacific University, Oxford University, and L'institut catholique de Paris, and he received his PhD from the University of California at Santa Barbara. A TEDx speaker and the author, editor, or translator of four previous books, Onishi teaches at the University of San Francisco and lives in the Bay Area with his wife and daughter.

"Watching the eerie footage of the January 6 insurrection, Bradley Onishi wondered: If I hadn't left evangelicalism, would I have been there?

"The insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, was not a blip or an aberration. It was the logical outcome of years of a White evangelical subculture's preparation for war. Religion scholar and former insider Bradley Onishi maps the origins of White Christian nationalism and traces its offshoots in Preparing for War.

"Combining his own experiences in the youth groups and prayer meetings of the 1990s with an immersive look at the steady blending of White grievance politics with evangelicalism, Onishi crafts an engrossing account of the years-long campaign of White Christian nationalism that led to January 6. How did the rise of what Onishi calls the New Religious Right, between 1960 and 2015, give birth to violent White Christian nationalism during the Trump presidency and beyond? What propelled some of the most conservative religious communities in the country--communities of which Onishi was once a part--to ignite a cold civil war?

"Through chapters on White supremacy and segregationist theologies, conspiracy theories, the Christian-school movement, purity culture, and the right-wing media ecosystem, Onishi pulls back the curtain on a subculture that birthed a movement and has taken a dangerous turn. In taut and unsparing prose, Onishi traces the migration of many White Christians to Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming in what is known as the American Redoubt. Learning the troubling history of the New Religious Right and the longings and logic of White Christian nationalism is deeply alarming. It is also critical for preserving the shape of our democracy for years to come."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (248 ratings)
ISBN 978-1506482163 ?
The Big Myth:
How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market
Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway
Bloomsbury Publishing (February 21, 2023)
No Review
Naomi Oreskes is Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. Her opinion pieces have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and many other outlets. Her TED talk, “Why We Should Trust Scientists,” was viewed more than a million times. Erik M. Conway is a historian of science and technology and works for the California Institute of Technology. He is the author of seven books and dozens of articles and essays." – Amazon biography

"In their bestselling book Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway revealed the origins of climate change denial. Now, they unfold the truth about another disastrous dogma: the 'magic of the marketplace.'

"In the early 20th century, business elites, trade associations, wealthy powerbrokers, and media allies set out to build a new American orthodoxy: down with 'big government' and up with unfettered markets. With startling archival evidence, Oreskes and Conway document campaigns to rewrite textbooks, combat unions, and defend child labor. They detail the ploys that turned hardline economists Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman into household names; recount the libertarian roots of the Little House on the Prairie books; and tune into the General Electric-sponsored TV show that beamed free-market doctrine to millions and launched Ronald Reagan's political career.

"By the 1970s, this propaganda was succeeding. Free market ideology would define the next half-century across Republican and Democratic administrations, giving us a housing crisis, the opioid scourge, climate destruction, and a baleful response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Only by understanding this history can we imagine a future where markets will serve, not stifle, democracy."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (195 ratings)
ISBN 978-1635573572 ?
Wildland:
The Making of America's Fury
Evan Osnos
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (September 14, 2021)
No Review
Evan Osnos is a staff writer at The New Yorker, a CNN contributor, and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Based in Washington D.C., he writes about politics and foreign affairs. He was the China Correspondent at The New Yorker from 2008 to 2013. His first book, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, won the 2014 National Book award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2020, he published the international bestseller Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now, based on interviews with Biden, Barack Obama, and others. Prior to The New Yorker, Osnos worked as the Beijing bureau chief of the Chicago Tribune, where he contributed to a series that won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. Before his appointment in China, he worked in the Middle East, reporting mostly from Iraq. He and his wife, Sarabeth Berman, have two children." – Amazon biography

"Evan Osnos moved to Washington, D.C., in 2013 after a decade away from the United States, first reporting from the Middle East before becoming the Beijing bureau chief at the Chicago Tribune and then the China correspondent for The New Yorker. While abroad, he often found himself making a case for America, urging the citizens of Egypt, Iraq, or China to trust that even though America had made grave mistakes throughout its history, it aspired to some foundational moral commitments: the rule of law, the power of truth, the right of equal opportunity for all. But when he returned to the United States, he found each of these principles under assault.

"In search of an explanation for the crisis that reached an unsettling crescendo in 2020―a year of pandemic, civil unrest, and political turmoil―he focused on three places he knew firsthand: Greenwich, Connecticut; Clarksburg, West Virginia; and Chicago, Illinois. Reported over the course of six years, Wildland follows ordinary individuals as they navigate the varied landscapes of twenty-first-century America. Through their powerful, often poignant stories, Osnos traces the sources of America’s political dissolution. He finds answers in the rightward shift of the financial elite in Greenwich, in the collapse of social infrastructure and possibility in Clarksburg, and in the compounded effects of segregation and violence in Chicago. The truth about the state of the nation may be found not in the slogans of political leaders but in the intricate details of individual lives, and in the hidden connections between them. As Wildland weaves in and out of these personal stories, events in Washington occasionally intrude, like flames licking up on the horizon.

"A dramatic, prescient examination of seismic changes in American politics and culture, Wildland is the story of a crucible, a period bounded by two shocks to America’s psyche, two assaults on the country’s sense of itself: the attacks of September 11 in 2001 and the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Following the lives of everyday Americans in three cities and across two decades, Osnos illuminates the country in a startling light, revealing how we lost the moral confidence to see ourselves as larger than the sum of our parts."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (873 ratings)
ISBN 978-0374286675 ?
From Ronald To Donald:
How the Myth of Reagan Became the Cult of Trump
Edwin G. Oswald & Alan Axelrod
McFarland (January 19, 2024)
No Review
Edwin G. Oswald is a partner with the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, resident in Washington D.C. He served as an attorney-advisor in the United States Treasury's Office of Tax Legislative Counsel during the Clinton Administration. He is a Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel and a frequent lecturer on financing State and local infrastructure and the federal taxation of municipal debt. The book is a personal project of Mr. Oswald's and the views and opinions expressed herein are those of the co-authors and do not represent the views and opinions of Orrick. Alan Axelrod is the author or coauthor of 160 books. He has been a featured speaker at the Conference on Excellence in Government, the Leadership Institute of Columbia College, the Annual Conference of the Goizueta School of Business, Emory University, and the 2014 annual conference of Ecopetrol."

"On November 4, 1980, American voters gave Ronald Reagan a 41-state Electoral College landslide. The man this mandate carried into the White House was largely compounded of mythology. Like most compelling mythologies, Reagan's was a synthesis of celebrity as well as emotional, intellectual, and cultural streams. Throughout his eight years in the oval office, the 'Great Communicator' was largely successful in shaping the soul of America to reflect his durable mantra that 'government is the problem.' That same American soul later embraced Donald Trump—a president who, the authors argue, would have appalled Reagan.

"Reagan's myth persists, and by understanding his time in office in the context of American history and of the American presidency, we can understand how a transformative president created more than policy by also shaping culture with the instrumental force of mythology. This book attempts to neither praise nor bury Reagan but to explain him in non-partisan terms of contemporary popular mythology. The authors examine his legacy in his war on 'big government,' which still drives politics, economic policy, and culture, even in Trump's era. They make the case that understanding the mythology at work is a necessary step toward healing American politics and saving American democracy."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (3 ratings)
ISBN 978-1476690322 ?
American Nightmare:
The History of Jim Crow
Jerrold M. Packard
St. Martin's Griffin (July 21, 2003)
No Review
Jerrold M. Packard's books include the best-selling Victoria's Daughters, the life stories of the five princesses born to Britain's longest-reigning monarch; Sons of Heaven, a chronicle of Japan's monarchy over fourteen centuries; and American Nightmare, the history of Jim Crow and the racial torment that America endured for more than a hundred years in the wake of the Civil War. Mr. Packard lives in Vermont."

"For a hundred years after the end of the Civil War, a quarter of all Americans lived under a system of legalized segregation called Jim Crow. Together with its rigidly enforced canon of racial 'etiquette,' these rules governed nearly every aspect of life―and outlined draconian punishments for infractions.

"The purpose of Jim Crow was to keep African Americans subjugated at a level as close as possible to their former slave status. Exceeding even South Africa's notorious apartheid in the humiliation, degradation, and suffering it brought, Jim Crow left scars on the American psyche that are still felt today. American Nightmare examines and explains Jim Crow from its beginnings to its end: how it came into being, how it was lived, how it was justified, and how, at long last, it was overcome only a few short decades ago. Most importantly, this book reveals how a nation founded on principles of equality and freedom came to enact as law a pervasive system of inequality and virtual slavery.

"Although America has finally consigned Jim Crow to the historical graveyard, Jerrold Packard shows why it is important that this scourge―and an understanding of how it happened―remain alive in the nation's collective memory."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (318 ratings)
ISBN 978-0312302412 ?
Last Best Hope:
America in Crisis and Renewal
George Packer
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (June 15, 2021)
No Review
George Packer is an award-winning author and staff writer at The Atlantic. His previous books include The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (winner of the National Book Award), The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, and Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century (winner of the Hitchens Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography). He is also the author of two novels and a play, and the editor of a two-volume edition of the essays of George Orwell. " – Amazon biography

"In the year 2020, Americans suffered one rude blow after another to their health, livelihoods, and collective self-esteem. A ruthless pandemic, an inept and malign government response, polarizing protests, and an election marred by conspiracy theories left many citizens in despair about their country and its democratic experiment. With pitiless precision, the year exposed the nation’s underlying conditions―discredited elites, weakened institutions, blatant inequalities―and how difficult they are to remedy.

"In Last Best Hope, George Packer traces the shocks back to their sources. He explores the four narratives that now dominate American life: Free America, which imagines a nation of separate individuals and serves the interests of corporations and the wealthy; Smart America, the world view of Silicon Valley and the professional elite; Real America, the white Christian nationalism of the heartland; and Just America, which sees citizens as members of identity groups that inflict or suffer oppression.

"In lively and biting prose, Packer shows that none of these narratives can sustain a democracy. To point a more hopeful way forward, he looks for a common American identity and finds it in the passion for equality―the “hidden code”―that Americans of diverse persuasions have held for centuries. Today, we are challenged again to fight for equality and renew what Alexis de Tocqueville called “the art” of self-government. In its strong voice and trenchant analysis, Last Best Hope is an essential contribution to the literature of national renewal."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (130 ratings)
ISBN 978-0374603663 ?
Democracy in America?:
What Has Gone Wrong and What We Can Do About It
Benjamin I. Page & Martin Gilens
University of Chicago Press; Enlarged edition (April 2, 2020)
No Review
Benjamin I. Page is the Gordon Scott Fulcher Professor of Decision Making at Northwestern University. Martin Gilens is professor of public policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs." – Amazon biography

"UPDATED FOR THE TRUMP AND POST-TRUMP ERAS WITH A NEW CHAPTER: "A CRITICAL JUNCTURE"

"America faces daunting problems--stagnant wages, high health care costs, neglected schools, deteriorating public services. How did we get here? Through decades of dysfunctional government. In Democracy in America? veteran political observers Benjamin I. Page and Martin Gilens marshal an unprecedented array of evidence to show that while other countries have responded to a rapidly changing economy by helping people who've been left behind, the United States has failed to do so. Instead, we have actually exacerbated inequality, enriching corporations and the wealthy while leaving ordinary citizens to fend for themselves.

"What's the solution? More democracy. More opportunities for citizens to shape what their government does. To repair our democracy, Page and Gilens argue, we must change the way we choose candidates and conduct our elections, reform our governing institutions, and curb the power of money in politics. By doing so, we can reduce polarization and gridlock, address pressing challenges, and enact policies that truly reflect the interests of average Americans.

"This book lays out a set of proposals that would boost citizen participation, curb the power of money, and democratize the House and Senate."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (39 ratings)
ISBN 978-0226724935 ?
American Nero:
The History of the Destruction of the Rule of Law, and Why Trump Is the Worst Offender
Richard Painter & Peter Golenbock
Dallas: BenBella Books (March 24, 2020)
No Review
Richard Painter, a Republican, worked in the George W. Bush Administration as associate counsel to the President in the White House Counsel’s office from February 2005 to July of 2007. His specialties are government ethics, business ethics, and lawyers’ ethics. Since Donald Trump began his run for the presidency in 2016, Painter has been an outspoken critic of candidate Trump and President Trump, appearing frequently on such popular cable news stations as CNN and MSNBC. The author of two books, he has also appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered and recently was a guest on The Bill Maher Show. Norman Eisen, President Barack Obama’s ethics chief, described Painter as “the Number 1 scholar in the country on government ethics.” Painter, like the President, has a dedicated and faithful Twitter following.
Peter Golenbock, a graduate of NYU Law School, has written 65 books, ten of which have been New York Times bestsellers. In addition to his best sellers about sports and with sports figures, he has also written Presumed Guilty with Jose Baez, the attorney for Casey Anthony, The Chairman, written with Jim Greer, the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, and In The Country of Brooklyn, a book about the liberal strain emanating from there." – Amazon biography

"From Richard Painter, a senate candidate and law professor who served as White House chief ethics counsel under President George W. Bush, and New York Times bestselling author Peter Golenbock, American Nero is an in-depth exploration the rule of law—the legal bedrock on which this country was founded.

"Painter and Golenbock present a clear description of rule of law—arguably the single most important principle underlying our civilization. They also describe the abuses of power that have occurred throughout our nation’s history. Beginning in Puritan New England with the infamous Salem Witch Trials, American Nero makes vivid stops at The Red Scare of the 1920s, Japanese-American internment, the McCarthy Era, and, much more recently, President Trump’s attempt to violate the First Amendment by banning Muslims from entering the US.

"While Trump is not the first offender, he is arguably the most blatant, and this unflinchingly honest and insightful work presents in devastating detail the ways in which our current president has trampled the rule of law with his attacks on the freedom of the press, the independence of the judiciary, and the autonomy of the justice department.

"This is not a book about right vs. left—instead, it is about the rule of law, a principle that transcends partisan politics, and how vital it is to the survival of our country. This book serves as a call-to-action, looking ahead to a brighter future for our country, one where citizens and officials alike protect our rights and honor their responsibilities. Timely and revealing, American Nero shares the lessons of history and lays the framework for returning to a society that respects the rule of law—an America that is consistent with our Founding Fathers’ vision of a genuinely free nation."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (34 ratings)
ISBN 978-1948836012 ?
The Echo Machine:
How Right-Wing Extremism Created a Post-Truth America
David Pakman
Boston: Beacon Press (March 25, 2025)
No Review
David Pakman is the Host and Executive Producer of The David Pakman Show, a popular podcast and YouTube channel with more than 2.2 million subscribers and more than 2 billion total video views. He is known among his audience for providing incisive progressive political analysis and opinion without being dogmatic or tribal, or falling prey to the orthodoxy of the day. With a focus on economic and cultural issues, he has appeared on more than 100 media outlets, podcasts, radio and television shows, and in written interviews."

"From the host of The David Pakman Show comes a vital look at how right-wing extremism has led to the fall of critical thinking and rise of reactionary politics—and what we can do about it to save our democracy.

"Known for providing incisive progressive political analysis without being dogmatic, popular radio and podcast host David Pakman delves into the vicious cycle of reactionary political ideology.

"If there is one thing the 2024 election cycle showed us, it’s how the right-wing has benefited and capitalized on disinformation and the polarization of US politics. Critical thinking and media literacy are on a rapid decline, and our republic is unable to agree upon a shared set of facts.

"Infused with Pakman’s signature pragmatic insight, The Echo Machine is not just a critique nor an instruction manual, but an invitation to think, question, and understand how we got to this point and what we can do to mend our broken system. Deeply researched and accessibly written, readers will learn:

  • The underlying issues with political discourse in America today.
  • How these issues have led to the intellectual race to the bottom.
  • Practical ways to improve discourse through improving critical thinking, media literacy, and public education.
  • Examples from real-world debates and discussions to better understand the impact of these issues on our democracy and why leftism is the best path forward.

"Pakman calmly cuts through the alarmist noise to inspire readers across the political spectrum to break out of our toxic political echo chambers and ultimately save our democracy."

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 978-1948836012 ?
How Trump Stole 2020:
The Hunt for America's Vanished Voters
Greg Palast
Ted Rall (Illustrator)
Seven Stories Press (July 14, 2020)
No Review
Born in Los Angeles in 1952, Greg Palast worked as a government consultant and an investigator for labor unions before turning to journalism full time. A self-described 'reporting investigator' as opposed to an investigative journalist, he became a writer in order to alert a wider public to abuses he saw committed by governments, corporations, politicians, and lobbyists. For years Palast wrote a column for The Guardian called 'Inside Corporate America,' and his articles have appeared in magazines and journals including The Nation, Harper's, and In These Times. Palast's 2002 bestseller The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, which covered in detail the fiasco of President Bush's victory in Florida in 2000, appeared in 2002 and served as the basis for his documentary film Bush Family Fortunes. His most recent book is Billionaires and Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, with illustrations by Ted Rall. Palast lives in New York City.
Twice the winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, Ted Rall is a political cartoonist, opinion columnist, graphic novelist and occasional war correspondent whose work has appeared in hundreds of publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Village Voice, and Los Angeles Times. He is the illustrator of the full-length comic in Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, written by Greg Palast." – Amazon biography

"Palast lets you in on the nasty secrets of Trump-merica's democracy:

  • One in five mail-in ballots are never counted.
  • The chance of your vote being thrown in the garbage is 900% higher if you're Black than if you're white.
  • 16.7 million voters were purged from the rolls in the past two years. Guess their color.

"In How Trump Stole 2020, you meet the scamps, scoundrels and grifters (or "Governors" as we call them in America) doing the dirty to voters of color. Check out the photo of Palast confronting GOP Governor Kemp of Georgia whom Palast catches under a neon pig at a bar-b-que joint to ask Kemp if he's wiping away Black voter registrations to steal the election. The response: Palast gets busted.

"The book includes an exclusive interview with Stacey Abrams on vote thievery—and a 48-page comic book from the piercing pen of Ted Rall.

"You may know Palast as the fedora-wearing gum-shoe old-school investigative reporter who busted the theft of Florida in 2000 for The Guardian and in his New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (268 ratings)
ISBN 978-1644210567 ?
White Evangelicals and Right-Wing Populism:
How Did We Get Here?
Marcia Pally
Routledge (May 5, 2022)
No Review
Marcia Pally teaches at New York University, USA, and held the Mercator Guest Professorship in the Theology Faculty at Humboldt University-Berlin, Germany, where she remains an annual guest professor." – Amazon biography

"How did America’s white evangelicals, from often progressive history, come to right-wing populism? Addressing populism requires understanding how its historico-cultural roots ground present politics. How have the very qualities that contributed much to American vibrancy―an anti-authoritarian government-wariness and energetic community-building―turned, under conditions of distress, to defensive, us-them worldviews?

"Readers will gain an understanding of populism and of the socio-political and religious history from which populism draws its us-them policies and worldview. The book ponders the tragic cast of the white evangelical story: (i) the distorting effects of economic and way-of-life duress on the understanding of history and present circumstances and (ii) the tragedy of choosing us-them solutions to duress that won’t relieve it, leaving the duress in place. Readers will trace the trajectory from economic, status loss, and way-of-life duresses to solutions in populist, us-them binaries. They will explore the robust white evangelical contribution to civil society but also to racism, xenophobia, and sexism. White evangelicals not in the ranks of the right―their worldview and activism―are discussed in a final chapter.

"This book is valuable reading for students of political and social sciences as well as anyone interested in US politics."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (5 ratings)
ISBN 978-1032134826 ?
School Moms:
Parent Activism, Partisan Politics, and the Battle for Public Education
Laura Pappano
Beacon Press (January 30, 2024)
No Review
Laura Pappano is an award-winning journalist and author who has written about K–12 and higher education for over 30 years. A former education columnist for the Boston Globe, Pappano has written about education for the New York Times, Hechinger Report, Harvard Education Letter, Washington Post, USA Today, Christian Science Monitor, among other publications. She is the author or co-author of 3 books, The Connection Gap: Why Americans Feel So Alone, Playing with the Boys: Why Separate is Not Equal in Sports, and Inside School Turnarounds.

"An investigative study of the far-right’s attack on education and an on-the-ground look at the parent activist battle, on either side of the debate, to control the future of public schools.

"For well over a century, public schools have been a non-partisan gathering place and vital center of civic life in America—but something has changed. In School Moms, journalist Laura Pappano explores the on-the-ground story of how public schools across the country have become ground zero in a cultural and political war as the far-right have made efforts to seek power over school boards.

"Pappano argues that the rise of parent activism is actually the culmination of efforts that began in the 1990s after campaigns to stop sex education largely fizzled. Recent efforts to make public schools more responsive and inclusive, as well as the pandemic, have offered openings the far-right have been waiting for to organize and sway parents, who are frustrated and exhausted by remote learning, objections by teachers’ unions, and shifting directives from school leaders. Groups like Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education are organizing against revised history curricula they have dubbed as 'CRT,' banning books, pressing for 'Don’t Say Gay' laws, and asserting 'parental rights' to gain control over the review of classroom materials. On the other side, progressive groups like Support Our Schools and Red, Wine & Blue are mobilizing parents to counter such moves.

"Combining on-the-ground reporting with research and expert interviews, School Moms will take a hard look at where these battles are happening, what is at stake, and why it matters for the future of our schools."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (17 ratings)
ISBN 978-0807012666 ?
Blackshirts & Reds:
Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
Michael Parenti
City Lights Publishers; First Printing, Notations edition (June 1, 1997)
No Review
Michael Parenti, PhD Yale, is an internationally known author and lecturer. He is one of the nation's leading progressive political analysts. He is the author of over 250 published articles and seventeen books. His writings are published in popular periodicals, scholarly journals, and his op-ed pieces have been in leading newspapers such as the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. His informative and entertaining books and talks have reached a wide range of audiences in North America and abroad."

"A bold and entertaining exploration of the epic struggles of yesterday and today.

"Blackshirts & Reds explores some of the big issues of our time: fascism, capitalism, communism, revolution, democracy, and ecology. These terms are often bandied about, but seldom explored in the original and exciting way that has become Michael Parenti's trademark.

"Parenti shows how 'rational fascism' renders service to capitalism, how corporate power undermines democracy, and how revolutions are a mass empowerment against the forces of exploitative privilege. He also maps out the external and internal forces that destroyed communism, and the disastrous impact of the 'free-market' victory on eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He affirms the relevance of taboo ideologies like Marxism, demonstrating the importance of class analysis in understanding political realities and dealing with the ongoing collision between ecology and global corporatism.

"Written with lucid and compelling style, this book goes beyond truncated modes of thought, inviting us to entertain iconoclastic views, and to ask why things are as they are."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (923 ratings)
ISBN 978-0872863293 ?
The Anatomy of Fascism
Robert O. Paxton
Part of: Allen Lane History (52 books)
Knopf (March 23, 2004)
No Review
Robert O. Paxton taught at Columbia University. His other books include Vichy France, Vichy France and the Jews (with Michael Marrus), Europe in the Twentieth Century, and French Peasant Fascism. He lives in New York City.

"From the author of Vichy France, a fascinating, authoritative history of fascism in all its manifestations, and how and why it took hold in certain countries and not in others.

"What is fascism? Many authors have proposed succinct but abstract definitions. Robert O. Paxton prefers to start with concrete historical experience. He focuses more on what fascists did than on what they said. Their first uniformed bands beat up 'enemies of the nation,' such as communists and foreign immigrants, during the tense days after 1918 when the liberal democracies of Europe were struggling with the aftershocks of World War I. Fascist parties could not approach power, however, without the complicity of conservatives willing to sacrifice the rule of law for security.

"Paxton makes clear the sequence of steps by which fascists and conservatives together formed regimes in Italy and Germany, and why fascists remained out of power elsewhere. Fascist regimes were strained alliances. While fascist parties had broad political leeway, conservatives preserved many social and economic privileges. Goals of forced national unity, purity, and expansion, accompanied by propaganda-driven public excitement, held the mixture together. War opened opportunities for fascist extremists to pursue these goals to the point of genocide. Paxton shows how these opportunities manifested themselves differently in France, in Britain, in the Low Countries, and in Eastern Europe–and yet failed to achieve supreme power. He goes on to examine whether fascism can exist outside the specific early-twentieth-century European setting in which it emerged, and whether it can reappear today. This groundbreaking book, based on a lifetime of research, will have a lasting impact on our understanding of twentieth-century history."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (573 ratings)
ISBN 978-1400040940 ?
Sagebrush Rebel:
Reagan's Battle with Environmental Extremists and Why It Matters Today
William Perry Pendley
Regnery Publishing; Illustrated edition (July, 2013)
No Review
William Perry Pendley was born and raised in Cheyenne, Wyoming, received a B.A. and M.A. from George Washington University, earned a law degree from the University of Wyoming College of Law, and served as a Captain in the U.S. Marine Corps. He was a lawyer to a U.S. Senator and to a Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, served as a senior official in the Reagan administration, and engaged in the private practice of law in the Washington, D.C. area. From 1989 to 2018, he led Mountain States Legal Foundation during which he appeared three times before the Supreme Court of the United States in a historic civil rights case. He is the author of five books: It Takes a Hero (Free Enterprise Press, 1993), War on the West (Regnery, 1994), Warriors for the West (Regnery, 2006), Sagebrush Rebel (Regnery, 2013), and Summary Judgment (2015). During the Trump administration he led the Bureau of Land Management. Since 1990, his writings have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Post, Washington Times, USA Today, Cow Country, Landman, Loggers World, Miners News, and many other publications across the country. He appears often on radio and television to discuss legal and public policy issues of the day. He and his wife live in Colorado." – Amazon biography

"The fascinating story of how Ronald Reagan, self-proclaimed 'sagebrush rebel,' took his revolutionary energy policies to Washington and revitalized the American economy.

"The environmental movement was in its ascendancy and had persuaded Congress to enact a series of well-intentioned laws that posed threats of great mischief in the hands of covetous bureaucrats, radical groups, and activist judges. A conservationist and an environmentalist, Ronald Reagan believed in being a good steward. More than anything else, however, he believed in people; specifically, for him, people were part of the ecology as well. That was where the split developed.

"William Perry Pendley, a former member of the Reagan administration and author of some of Reagan's most sensible energy and environmental policies, tells the gripping story of how Reagan fought the new wave of anti-human environmentalists and managed to enact laws that protected nature while promoting the prosperity and freedom of man—saving the American economy in the process."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.1 (41 ratings)
ISBN 978-1032134826 ?
The Art of Power:
My Story as America's First Woman Speaker of the House
Nancy Pelosi
Simon & Schuster (August 6, 2024)
No Review
Nancy Pelosi was elected the 52nd Speaker of the House in 2007—and served as the first woman Speaker for eight years, off and on until 2023. She came to Congress in 1987 for the children and to fight HIV/AIDS. Under Pelosi’s leadership, Congress enacted transformative legislation, most notably the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. A defender of democracy, she directed House efforts to investigate the January 6th insurrection and has spoken out forcefully for human rights globally. Pelosi continues to represent San Francisco in the House, a privilege she has treasured for thirty-seven years. Pelosi and her husband, Paul, have five children and ten grandchildren. They live in San Francisco, which they consider heaven on earth."

"The most powerful woman in American political history tells the story of her transformation from housewife to House Speaker—how she became a master legislator, a key partner to presidents, and the most visible leader of the Trump resistance.

"When, at age forty-six, Nancy Pelosi, mother of five, asked her youngest daughter if she should run for Congress, Alexandra Pelosi answered: 'Mother, get a life!' And so Nancy did, and what a life it has been.

"In The Art of Power, Pelosi describes for the first time what it takes to make history—not only as the first woman to ascend to the most powerful legislative role in our nation, but to pass laws that would save lives and livelihoods, from the emergency rescue of the economy in 2008 to transforming health care. She describes the perseverance, persuasion, and respect for her members that it took to succeed, but also the joy of seeing America change for the better. Among the best-prepared and hardest working Speakers in history, Pelosi worked to find common ground, or stand her ground, with presidents from Bush to Biden. She also shares moving moments with soldiers sent to the front lines, women who inspired her, and human rights activists who fought by her side.

"Pelosi took positions that established her as a prophetic voice on the major moral issues of the day, warning early about the dangers of the Iraq War and of the Chinese government’s long record of misbehavior. This moral courage prepared her for the arrival of Trump, with whom she famously tangled, becoming a red-coated symbol of resistance to his destructive presidency. Here, she reveals how she went toe-to-toe with Trump, leading up to January 6, 2021, when he unleashed his post-election fury on the Congress. Pelosi gives us her personal account of that day: the assault not only on the symbol of our democracy but on the men and women who had come to serve the nation, never expecting to hide under desks or flee for their lives—and her determined efforts to get the National Guard to the Capitol. Nearly two years later, violence and fury would erupt inside Pelosi’s own home when an intruder, demanding to see the Speaker, viciously attacked her beloved husband, Paul. Here, Pelosi shares that horrifying day and the traumatic aftermath for her and her family.

"The woman who has been lauded by her opposition as 'the most powerful Speaker' ever shows us why she is not afraid of a good fight. The Art of Power is about the fighting spirit that has always animated her, and the historic legacy that spirit has produced."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (1,014 ratings)
ISBN 978-1668048047 ?
Laboratories of Autocracy:
A Wake-Up Call from Behind the Lines
David Pepper
Scribner (November 9, 2021)
No Review
David Pepper is the author of Laboratories of Autocracy (October 2021), as well as four novels, including A Simple Choice (forthcoming Putnam, 2022) and the Jack Sharpe series, including The Voter File, The Wingman, and The People's House. He earned his B.A. from Yale University and his J.D. from Yale Law School. He has clerked for a judge on the United States Court of Appeals, served in local elected office in Ohio, worked for major law firms, and teaches election and voting rights law. Prior to law school, Pepper worked in St. Petersburg, Russia, for the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. He served as Chairman of the Democratic Party of Ohio from 2015-2021. The Wall Street Journal described Pepper as 'one of the best political-thriller writers on the scene.' " – Amazon biography

" 'It’s the statehouses, stupid.'

"Laboratories of Autocracy shows that far more than the high-profile antics of politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Jim Jordan—and yes, even bigger than Donald Trump’s 'Big Lie'—it’s anonymous, often corrupt politicians in statehouses across the country who pose the greatest dangers to American democracy.

"Because these statehouses no longer operate as functioning democracies, these unknown politicians have all the incentive to keep doing greater damage, and cannot be held accountable however extreme they get. This has driven steep declines in states like Ohio and others across the country. And collectively, it’s placed American democracy in its greatest peril since the dawn of the Jim Crow era.

"But Pepper doesn’t stop there. He lays out a robust pro-democracy agenda outlining how everyone from elected officials to business leaders to everyday citizens can fight back."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (325 ratings)
ISBN 978-1662919572 ?
Reaganland:
America's Right Turn 1976-1980
Rick Perlstein
Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (August 17, 2021)
No Review
Rick Perlstein is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan; Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, a New York Times bestseller picked as one of the best nonfiction books of 2007 by over a dozen publications; and Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, which won the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Award for history and appeared on the best books of the year lists of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune. His essays and book reviews have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, The Village Voice, and Slate, among others. A contributing editor and board member of In These Times magazine, he lives in Chicago."

"From the bestselling author of Nixonland and The Invisible Bridge comes the dramatic conclusion of how conservatism took control of American political power.

"Over two decades, Rick Perlstein has published three definitive works about the emerging dominance of conservatism in modern American politics. With the saga’s final installment, he has delivered yet another stunning literary and historical achievement.

"In late 1976, Ronald Reagan was dismissed as a man without a political future: defeated in his nomination bid against a sitting president of his own party, blamed for President Gerald Ford’s defeat, too old to make another run. His comeback was fueled by an extraordinary confluence: fundamentalist preachers and former segregationists reinventing themselves as militant crusaders against gay rights and feminism; business executives uniting against regulation in an era of economic decline; a cadre of secretive 'New Right' organizers deploying state-of-the-art technology, bending political norms to the breaking point—and Reagan’s own unbending optimism, his ability to convey unshakable confidence in America as the world’s 'shining city on a hill.'

"Meanwhile, a civil war broke out in the Democratic party. When President Jimmy Carter called Americans to a new ethic of austerity, Senator Ted Kennedy reacted with horror, challenging him for reelection. Carter’s Oval Office tenure was further imperiled by the Iranian hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, near-catastrophe at a Pennsylvania nuclear plant, aviation accidents, serial killers on the loose, and endless gas lines.

"Backed by a reenergized conservative Republican base, Reagan ran on the campaign slogan 'Make America Great Again'—and prevailed. Reaganland is the story of how that happened, tracing conservatives’ cutthroat strategies to gain power and explaining why they endure four decades later."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (746 ratings)
ISBN 978-1476793061 ?
The Button:
The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump
William J. Perry & Tom Z. Collina
Dallas: BenBella Books (June 30, 2020)
No Review
William J. Perry served as Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering in the Carter administration, and then as Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration, and has advised presidents all through the Obama administration. He oversaw the development of major nuclear weapons systems, such as the MX missile, the Trident submarine and the Stealth Bomber. His new 'offset strategy' ushered in the age of stealth, smart weapons, GPS, and technologies that changed the face of modern warfare. His vision now, as founder of the William J. Perry Project, is a world free from nuclear weapons. Tom Z. Collina is the Director of Policy at Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation in Washington, DC. He has 30 years of nuclear weapons policy experience and has testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was closely involved with successful efforts to end U.S. nuclear testing in 1992, extend the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1995, ratify the New START Treaty in 2010, and enact the Iran nuclear deal in 2015. Collina has published hundreds of articles, op-eds, and reports and appears frequently in major media." – Amazon biography

"Since the Truman administration, America has been one 'push of a button' away from nuclear war—a decision that rests solely in the hands of the President. Without waiting for approval from Congress or even the Secretary of Defense, the President can unleash America's entire nuclear arsenal.

"Almost every governmental process is subject to institutional checks and balances. Why is potential nuclear annihilation the exception to the rule? For decades, glitches and slip-ups have threatened to trigger nuclear winter: misinformation, false alarms, hacked warning systems, or even an unstable President. And a new nuclear arms race has begun, threatening us all. At the height of the Cold War, Russia and the United States each built up arsenals exceeding 30,000 nuclear weapons, armed and ready to destroy each other—despite the fact that just a few hundred are necessary to end life on earth.

"The Button recounts the terrifying history of nuclear launch authority, from the faulty 46-cent microchip that nearly caused World War III to President Trump's tweet about his 'much bigger & more powerful' button. Perry and Collina share their firsthand experience on the front lines of the nation's nuclear history and provide illuminating interviews with former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Congressman Adam Smith, Nobel Peace Prize winner Beatrice Fihn, senior Obama administration officials, and many others."

"Written in an accessible and authoritative voice, The Button reveals the shocking tales and sobering facts of nuclear executive authority throughout the atomic age, delivering a powerful condemnation against ever leaving explosive power this devastating under any one person's thumb."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (107 ratings)
ISBN 978-1948836999 ?
Insurgency:
How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted
Jeremy W. Peters
Crown (February 8, 2022)
No Review
Jeremy W. Peters has been a correspondent for The New York Times for more than fifteen years and is also a political contributor for MSNBC." – Amazon biography

"Jeremy W. Peters’s epic narrative chronicles the fracturing of the Republican Party. Insurgency is a fantasia-like story of a party establishment that believed it could control the dark energy it helped foment—right up until it suddenly couldn’t. How, Peters asks, did conservative values that Republicans claimed to cherish, like small government, fiscal responsibility, and morality in public service, get completely eroded as an unshakable faith in Donald Trump grew to define the party?

"The answer is a tale traced across three decades—with new reporting and firsthand accounts from the people who were there—of populist uprisings that destabilized the party. The signs of conflict were plainly evident for anyone who cared to look. After Barack Obama’s election convinced many Republicans that they faced an existential demographics crossroads, many believed the only way to save the party was to create a more inclusive and diverse coalition. But party leaders underestimated the energy and popular appeal of those who would pull the party in the opposite direction. They failed to see how the right-wing media they hailed as truth-telling was warping the reality in which their voters lived. And they did not understand the complicated moral framework by which many conservatives would view Trump, leading evangelicals and one-issue voters to shed Republican orthodoxy if it delivered a Supreme Court that would undo Roe v. Wade.

"In this sweeping history, Peters details key junctures and episodes to unfurl the story of a revolution from within. Its architects had little interest in the America of the new century but a deep understanding of the iron will of a shrinking minority. With Trump as their polestar, their gamble paid greater dividends than they’d ever imagined, extending the life of far-right conservatism in United States domestic policy into the next half century."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (382 ratings)
ISBN 978-0525576587 ?
Battling the Big Lie:
How Fox, Facebook, and the MAGA Media Are Destroying America
Dan Pfeiffer
Twelve (June 7, 2022)
No Review
Dan Pfeiffer is a cohost of Pod Save America. One of Barack Obama's longest serving advisors, he was White House director of communications under President Obama (2009-2013) and senior advisor to the president (2013-2015). He lives in the Bay Area of California with his wife, Howli, their daughter, Kyla, and their son, Jack." – Amazon biography

"In Battling the Big Lie, bestselling author Dan Pfeiffer dissects how the right-wing built a massive, billionaire-funded disinformation machine powerful enough to bend reality and nearly steal the 2020 election. From the perspective of someone who has spent decades on the front lines of politics and media, Pfeiffer lays out how the right-wing media apparatus works, where it came from, and what progressives can do to fight back against disinformation.

"Over a period of decades, the right wing has built a massive media apparatus that is weaponizing misinformation and spreading conspiracy theories for political purposes. This 'MAGA megaphone' that is personified by Fox News and fueled by Facebook is waging war on the very idea of objective truth—and they are winning. This disinformation campaign is how Donald Trump won in 2016, and why the United States is incapable of addressing problems from COVID-19 to climate change.

"Pfeiffer explains how and why the Republicans have come to depend on culture war grievances, crackpot conspiracies, and truly sinister propaganda as their primary political strategies, including:

  • Republican efforts from Roger Ailes to Steve Bannon and Donald Trump to sow distrust while exploiting the media’s biases and the Democratic Party’s blind spots.
  • The optimization of Facebook as the ultimate carrier of Trumpist messaging.
  • Educating the Left to stop clutching pearls and start “fighting fire with fire.”
  • How to fight back against the trolls spreading disinformation and hate on the Internet.

"A functioning democracy depends on a shared understanding of reality. America is teetering on the edge because one of the two parties in our two-party system views truth, facts, and science as their opponent. Battling the Big Lie is a call to arms for anyone and everyone who cares about truth and democracy. There are no easy answers or quick fixes, but something must be done."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (428 ratings)
ISBN 978-1538707975 ?
Dynamite Nashville:
Unmasking the FBI, the KKK, and the Bombers beyond their Control
Betsy Phillips
Third Man Books (July 16, 2024)
No Review
Betsy Phillips has written for the Nashville Scene and the Washington Post. Her fiction has appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Apex Magazine, among others. She was named 2019 Best Historian in the Best of Nashville edition of the Nashville Scene and serves on the board of Historic Nashville, Inc. She lives in Whites Creek, Tennessee."

"New evidence in Dynamite Nashville: Unmasking the FBI, the KKK, and the Bombers Beyond their Control uncovers the origin of an organized group of racist terrorists committing nationwide acts of violence against integration efforts in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The book also implicates both the FBI and local law enforcement agencies. No understanding of the violent nationwide white response to desegregation efforts then and white supremacist actions now can be complete without reading Dynamite Nashville. Award winning historian Betsy Phillips not only paints a detailed picture of the social dynamic of the times, but details how a violent fringe of racists came to national prominence. In Dynamite Nashville, Phillips unmasks the KKK, reveals a racist terrorist network, 'The Confederate Underground,' names its principle leader, J.B. Stoner, and shines a much needed historical spotlight on unsung civil rights hero and near martyr Z. Alexander Looby.

"Just as Nashville was where Civil Rights icons like John Lewis, James Lawson, and Diane Nash began, Nashville is where one of the country's most prominent organizations of racist terrorists formed. Members of The Confederate Underground would participate in least twenty bombings between 1957 and 1963, including the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama—a bombing for which J.B. Stoner allegedly provided the dynamite. In Dynamite Nashville, Phillips revisits three unsolved Nashville bombings—Hattie Cotton Elementary School (1957), The Jewish Community Center (1958), and the home of Civil Rights attorney and city councilman, Z. Alexander Looby (1960)—and uncovers the same J.B. Stoner, perhaps best known by the public as one of James Earl Ray’s attorneys, as the mind behind the bombings. Additionally, her research shows how the differing agendas of local police and the FBI allowed these bombers to escape prosecution until decades later, if at all. Dynamite Nashville is a prequel to the racist violence of the 1960s, the story of how these bombers came together to learn how to terrorize communities, to blow up homes, schools, and religious buildings, and to escape any meaningful justice. It is also the story of how communities and heroes like Z. Alexander Looby pushed back."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.0 (1 rating)
ISBN 979-8986614571 ?
How We Win the Civil War:
Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good
Steve Phillips
The New Press (October 18, 2022)
No Review
Steve Phillips is a New York Times bestselling author, columnist, and leading national political thought leader. He is the author of the New York Times and Washington Post bestselling Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority as well as How We Win the Civil War (both from The New Press); he is also the founder of Democracy in Color, a political media organization dedicated to race, politics, and the multicultural progressive New American Majority. Phillips is the host of “Democracy in Color with Steve Phillips,” a color-conscious podcast on politics. He is regular columnist for The Nation and The Guardian. He lives in San Francisco." – Amazon biography

"Steve Phillips’s first book, Brown Is the New White, helped shift the national conversation around race and electoral politics, earning a spot on the New York Times and Washington Post bestseller lists and launching Phillips into the upper ranks of trusted observers of the nation’s changing demographics and their implications for our political future.

"Now, in How We Win the Civil War, Phillips charts the way forward for progressives and people of color after four years of Trump, arguing that Democrats must recognize the nature of the fight we’re in, which is a contest between democracy and white supremacy left unresolved after the Civil War. We will not overcome, Phillips writes, until we govern as though we are under attack—until we finally recognize that the time has come to finish the conquest of the Confederacy and all that it represents.

"With his trademark blend of political analysis and historical argument, Phillips lays out razor-sharp prescriptions for 2022 and beyond, from increasing voter participation and demolishing racist immigration policies to reviving the Great Society programs of the 1960s—all of them geared toward strengthening a new multiracial democracy and ridding our politics of white supremacy, once and for all."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (23 ratings)
ISBN 978-1620976760 ?
One Long Night
Andrea Pitzer
Back Bay Books; Reprint edition (November 13, 2018)
No Review
Andrea Pitzer is the author of The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov. Her writing has appeared in USA Today, Slate, Lapham's Quarterly, and McSweeney's, among other publications. In 2009, she founded Nieman Storyboard, the narrative nonfiction site of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. She lives in Falls Church, Virginia."

"A groundbreaking, haunting, and profoundly moving history of modernity's greatest tragedy: concentration camps.

"For over 100 years, at least one concentration camp has existed somewhere on Earth. First used as battlefield strategy, camps have evolved with each passing decade, in the scope of their effects and the savage practicality with which governments have employed them. Even in the twenty-first century, as we continue to reckon with the magnitude and horror of the Holocaust, history tells us we have broken our own solemn promise of 'never again.'

"In this harrowing work based on archival records and interviews during travel to four continents, Andrea Pitzer reveals for the first time the chronological and geopolitical history of concentration camps. Beginning with 1890s Cuba, she pinpoints concentration camps around the world and across decades. From the Philippines and Southern Africa in the early twentieth century to the Soviet Gulag and detention camps in China and North Korea during the Cold War, camp systems have been used as tools for civilian relocation and political repression. Often justified as a measure to protect a nation, or even the interned groups themselves, camps have instead served as brutal and dehumanizing sites that have claimed the lives of millions.

"Drawing from exclusive testimony, landmark historical scholarship, and stunning research, Andrea Pitzer unearths the roots of this appalling phenomenon, exploring and exposing the staggering toll of the camps: our greatest atrocities, the extraordinary survivors, and even the intimate, quiet moments that have also been part of camp life during the past century."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (119 ratings)
ISBN 978-0316303569 ?
A Citizen's Guide to Beating Donald Trump
David Plouffe
Viking (March 3, 2020)
No Review
David Plouffe served as the campaign manager for Barack Obama's primary and general election victories in 2008. He was the architect of the strategy for both elections. Prior to running the Obama campaign, Plouffe served as a leading Democratic Party media consultant from 2001 to 2007, playing a key role in the election of US senators, governors, mayors, and House members across the country. He lives in Washington, DC." – Amazon biography

"In A Citizen's Guide to Beating Donald Trump, Plouffe's message is simple: the only way change happens, especially on scale, is one human being talking to another. It won't happen magically, it won't happen because of debates and conventions, it won't happen because of ads. It will happen because citizens take action. And Plouffe is here to help, with specific strategies and tailored talking points to make sure your time and energy aren't wasted. He lays out why different activities the average citizen can take can make a difference to getting to 270 electoral votes, how people can go about doing them and examples of where it's worked in the past.

"There are at least 65 million Americans who are likely committed to voting against Trump. It is entirely in our control to grow that number and make sure the support materializes in actual votes. Plouffe arms us with advice on how to defend against misinformation online, how to create and spread content, how to register and get out the vote early, how to make a difference in the battlegrounds and how to stay involved after the big election. Filled with stories from the last sixteen years, both successes and failures, as well as political strategies that have evolved in the wake of the breakthrough campaign that Plouffe masterminded, A Citizen's Guide to Beating Donald Trump is a pragmatic, specific, and very motivational guide for the path forward."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (239 ratings)
ISBN 978-1984879493 ?
The Education of Brett Kavanaugh:
An Investigation
Robin Pogrebin & Kate Kelly
Portfolio (September 17, 2019)
No Review
Robin Pogrebin is a reporter on the New York Times Culture Desk, where she covers the art world and cultural institutions—exploring the internal politics, finances, and governance of museums, auction houses, galleries, and performing arts organizations. She has covered the media for the Business Desk and city news for the Metro Desk. Prior to the Times, she was a reporter at the New York Observer and an associate producer at ABC News for Peter Jennings's documentary unit. She attended Riverdale Country School in New York and graduated from Yale College in 1987. Kate Kelly is a reporter for the New York Times who covers Wall Street. She is also an experienced television broadcaster and the author of Street Fighters, the bestselling account of the bank failure that touched off the financial crisis. Her reporting focuses on big banks, the worlds of trading and lending, and the crucial players setting financial policy both in business and in politics. Prior to the Times, she worked at the New York Observer, the Wall Street Journal, and CNBC. She attended the National Cathedral School in Washington and graduated from Columbia College in 1997."

"From two New York Times reporters, a deeper look at the formative years of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and his confirmation.

"In September 2018, the F.B.I. was given only a week to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct against Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump's Supreme Court nominee. But even as Kavanaugh was sworn in to his lifetime position, many questions remained unanswered, leaving millions of Americans unsettled.

"During the Senate confirmation hearings that preceded the bureau's brief probe, New York Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly broke critical stories about Kavanaugh's past, including the 'Renate Alumni' yearbook story. They were inundated with tips from former classmates, friends, and associates that couldn't be fully investigated before the confirmation process closed. Now, their book fills in the blanks and explores the essential question: Who is Brett Kavanaugh?

"The Education of Brett Kavanaugh paints a picture of the prep-school and Ivy-League worlds that formed our newest Supreme Court Justice. By offering commentary from key players from his confirmation process who haven't yet spoken publicly and pursuing lines of inquiry that were left hanging, it will be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand our political system and Kavanaugh's unexpectedly emblematic role in it."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.1 (137 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593084397 ?
The Nature of the Religious Right:
The Struggle between Conservative Evangelicals and the Environmental Movement
Neall W. Pogue
Cornell University Press (April 15, 2022)
No Review
Neall W. Pogue is an Assistant Professor of Instruction at the University of Texas at Dallas." – Amazon biography

"In The Nature of the Religious Right, Neall W. Pogue examines how white conservative evangelical Christians became a political force known for hostility toward environmental legislation. Before the 1990s, this group used ideas of nature to help construct the religious right movement while developing theologically based, eco-friendly philosophies that can be described as Christian environmental stewardship. On the twentieth anniversary of Earth Day in 1990, members of this conservative evangelical community tried to turn their eco-friendly philosophies into action. Yet this attempt was overwhelmed by a growing number in the leadership who made anti-environmentalism the accepted position through public ridicule, conspiracy theories, and cherry-picked science.

"Through analysis of rhetoric, political expediency, and theological imperatives, The Nature of the Religious Right explains how ideas of nature played a role in constructing the conservative evangelical political movement, why Christian environmental stewardship was supported by members of the community for so long, and why they turned against it so decidedly beginning in the 1990s."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (1 rating)
ISBN 978-1501762000 ?
Audience of One:
Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America
James Poniewozik
Liveright (September 10, 2019)
No Review
"James Poniewozik has been the chief television critic of the New York Times since 2015. He was previously the television and media critic for Time magazine and media columnist for Salon. He lives in Brooklyn." – Amazon biography

"Television has entertained America, television has ensorcelled America, and with the election of Donald J. Trump, television has conquered America. In Audience of One, New York Times chief television critic James Poniewozik traces the history of TV and mass media from the Reagan era to today, explaining how a volcanic, camera-hogging antihero merged with America's most powerful medium to become our forty-fifth president.

"In the tradition of Neil Postman's masterpiece Amusing Ourselves to Death, Audience of One shows how American media have shaped American society and politics, by interweaving two crucial stories. The first story follows the evolution of television from the three-network era of the 20th century, which joined millions of Americans in a shared monoculture, into today's zillion-channel, Internet-atomized universe, which sliced and diced them into fractious, alienated subcultures. The second story is a cultural critique of Donald Trump, the chameleonic celebrity who courted fame, achieved a mind-meld with the media beast, and rode it to ultimate power.

"Braiding together these disparate threads, Poniewozik combines a cultural history of modern America with a revelatory portrait of the most public American who has ever lived. Reaching back to the 1940s, when Trump and commercial television were born, Poniewozik illustrates how Donald became 'a character that wrote itself, a brand mascot that jumped off the cereal box and entered the world, a simulacrum that replaced the thing it represented.' Viscerally attuned to the media, Trump shape-shifted into a boastful tabloid playboy in the 1980s; a self-parodic sitcom fixture in the 1990s; a reality-TV 'You're Fired' machine in the 2000s; and finally, the biggest role of his career, a Fox News-obsessed, Twitter-mad, culture-warring demagogue in the White House.

"Poniewozik deconstructs the chaotic Age of Trump as the 24-hour TV production that it is, decoding an era when politics has become pop culture, and vice versa. Trenchant and often slyly hilarious, Audience of One is a penetrating and sobering review of the raucous, raging, farcical reality show—performed for the benefit of an insomniac, cable-news-junkie 'audience of one'—that we all came to live in, whether we liked it or not."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (129 ratings)
ISBN 978-1631494420 ?
The Demagogue's Playbook:
The Battle for American Democracy from the Founders to Trump
Eric A. Posner
All Points Books; Illustrated edition (June 30, 2020)
No Review
"Eric A. Posner teaches at the University of Chicago. He has written more than one hundred articles on international law, constitutional law, and other topics, and as well as more than ten books, including Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society and The Twilight of Human Rights Law. He has written opinion pieces for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New Republic, Slate, and other popular media. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Law Institute." – Amazon biography

"What―and who―is a demagogue? How did America’s Founders envision the presidency? What should a constitutional democracy look like―and how can it be fixed when it appears to be broken?

"Something is definitely wrong with Donald Trump’s presidency, but what exactly? The extraordinary negative reaction to Trump’s election―by conservative intellectuals, liberals, Democrats, and global leaders alike―goes beyond ordinary partisan and policy disagreements. It reflects genuine fear about the vitality of our constitutional system. The Founders, reaching back to classical precedents, feared that their experiment in mass self-government could produce a demagogue: a charismatic ruler who would gain and hold on to power by manipulating the public rather than by advancing the public good.

"President Trump, who has played to the mob and attacked institutions from the judiciary to the press, appears to embody these ideas. How can we move past his rhetoric and maintain faith in our great nation?

"In The Demagogue’s Playbook, acclaimed legal scholar Eric A. Posner offers a blueprint for how America can prevent the rise of another demagogue and protect the features of a democracy that help it thrive―and restore national greatness, for one and all."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (43 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250303035 ?
Unholy:
Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump
Sarah Posner
Random House (May 26, 2020)
No Review
"Sarah Posner is a reporting fellow with Type Investigations. Her investigative reporting has appeared in Rolling Stone, VICE, The Nation, Mother Jones, The New Republic, HuffPost, and Talking Points Memo. Her coverage and analysis of politics and religion has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The American Prospect, Politico, and many other outlets. She graduated from Wesleyan University and has a law degree from the University of Virginia. Her story "How Trump Took Hate Groups Mainstream," published before the 2016 election, won a Sidney Hillman Foundation Award." – Amazon biography

"Why did so many evangelicals turn out to vote for Donald Trump, a serial philanderer with questionable conservative credentials who seems to defy Christian values with his every utterance? To a reporter like Sarah Posner, who has been covering the religious right for decades, the answer turns out to be far more intuitive than one might think.

"In this taut inquiry, Posner digs deep into the radical history of the religious right to reveal how issues of race and xenophobia have always been at the movement's core, and how religion often cloaked anxieties about perceived threats to a white, Christian America. Fueled by an antidemocratic impulse, and united by this narrative of reverse victimization, the religious right and the alt-right support a common agenda—and are actively using the erosion of democratic norms to roll back civil rights advances, stock the judiciary with hard-right judges, defang and deregulate federal agencies, and undermine the credibility of the free press. Increasingly, this formidable bloc is also forging ties with European far right groups, giving momentum to a truly global movement.

"Revelatory and engrossing, Unholy offers a deeper understanding of the ideological underpinnings and forces influencing the course of Republican politics. This is a book that must be read by anyone who cares about the future of American democracy."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (447 ratings)
ISBN 978-1984820426 ?
Amusing Ourselves To Death:
Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Neil Postman
Andrew Postman (Introduction)
Penguin Books; Anniversary edition (December 27, 2005)
No Review
"Neil Postman (1931–2003) was chairman of the Department of Communication Arts at New York University and founder of its Media Ecology program. He wrote more than twenty books." – Amazon biography

"What happens when media and politics become forms of entertainment? As our world begins to look more and more like Orwell's 1984, Neil's Postman's essential guide to the modern media is more relevant than ever.

"Originally published in 1985, Neil Postman’s groundbreaking polemic about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century. Now, with television joined by more sophisticated electronic media—from the Internet to cell phones to DVDs—it has taken on even greater significance. Amusing Ourselves to Death is a prophetic look at what happens when politics, journalism, education, and even religion become subject to the demands of entertainment. It is also a blueprint for regaining control of our media, so that they can serve our highest goals."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (2,359 ratings)
ISBN 978-0143036531 ?
Gaming the Vote:
Why Elections Aren't Fair (and What We Can Do About It)
William Poundstone
Hill and Wang (February 5, 2008)
No Review
"William Poundstone is the author of ten books. His latest, Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street, was published by Hill and Wang in September 2005.

"Our Electoral System is Fundamentally Flawed, But There's a Simple and Fair Solution.

"At least five U.S. presidential elections have been won by the second most popular candidate. The reason was a 'spoiler'—a minor candidate who takes enough votes away from the most popular candidate to tip the election to someone else. The spoiler effect is more than a glitch. It is a consequence of one of the most surprising intellectual discoveries of the twentieth century: the 'impossibility theorem' of Nobel laureate economist Kenneth Arrow. The impossibility theorem asserts that voting is fundamentally unfair—a finding that has not been lost on today's political consultants. Armed with polls, focus groups, and smear campaigns, political strategists are exploiting the mathematical faults of the simple majority vote. In recent election cycles, this has led to such unlikely tactics as Republicans funding ballot drives for Green spoilers and Democrats paying for right-wing candidates' radio ads. Gaming the Vote shows that there is a solution to the spoiler problem that will satisfy both right and left. A system called range voting, already widely used on the Internet, is the fairest voting method of all, according to computer studies. Despite these findings, range voting remains controversial, and Gaming the Vote assesses the obstacles confronting any attempt to change the American electoral system. The latest of several books by William Poundstone on the theme of how important scientific ideas have affected the real world, Gaming the Vote is a wry exposé of how the political system really works, and a call to action."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (50 ratings)
ISBN 978-0809048939 ?
Inside the NRA:
A Tell-All Account of Corruption, Greed, and Paranoia within the Most Powerful Political Group in America
by Joshua L. Powell
Twelve; Illustrated Edition (September 8, 2020)
No Review
"From 2016 to 2019, Joshua L. Powell served as Senior Strategist to the NRA and Chief of Staff to NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre." – Amazon biography

"A shocking exposé of rampant, decades-long incompetence at the National Rifle Association, as told by a former member of its senior leadership.

"Joshua L. Powell is the NRA—a lifelong gun advocate, in 2016, he began his new role as a senior strategist and chief of staff to NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre. What Powell uncovered was horrifying: "the waste and dysfunction at the NRA was staggering."

"INSIDE THE NRA reveals for the first time the rise and fall of the most powerful political organization in America—how the NRA became feared as the Death Star of Washington lobbies and so militant and extreme as "to create and fuel the toxicity of the gun debate until it became outright explosive."

"INSIDE THE NRA explains this intentional toxic messaging was wholly the product of LaPierre's leadership and the extremist branding by his longtime PR puppet master Angus McQueen. In damning detail, Powell exposes the NRA's plan to "pour gasoline" on the fire in the fight against gun control, to sow discord to fill its coffers, and to secure the presidency for Donald J. Trump."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (151 ratings)
ISBN 978-1538737255 ?
The Age of the Strongman:
How the Cult of the Leader Threatens Democracy Around the World
Gideon Rachman
Other Press (April 19, 2022)
No Review
"Gideon Rachman is chief foreign affairs commentator for the Financial Times. He joined the FT in 2006, after 15 years at The Economist, where he served as a correspondent in Washington D.C., Brussels, and Bangkok. In 2010 Rachman published his first book, Zero Sum World, which predicted the rise in international political tensions and turmoil that followed the global financial crisis. In 2016, Rachman won the Orwell Prize, Britain’s leading award for political writing. He was also named Commentator of the year at the European Press Prize, known as the “European Pulitzers.” Rachman’s previous book, Easternization: Asia’s Rise and America’s Decline From Obama to Trump and Beyond, was published by Other Press in 2018." – Amazon biography

"This is the most urgent political story of our time: authoritarian leaders have become a central feature of global politics. Since 2000, self-styled strongmen have risen to power in capitals as diverse as Moscow, Beijing, Delhi, Brasilia, Budapest, Ankara, Riyadh, and Washington. These leaders are nationalists and social conservatives, with little tolerance for minorities, dissent, or the interests of foreigners. At home, they claim to be standing up for ordinary people against globalist elites; abroad, they posture as the embodiments of their nations. And everywhere they go, they encourage a cult of personality. What’s more, these leaders are not just operating in authoritarian political systems but have begun to emerge in the heartlands of liberal democracy.

"Gideon Rachman has been in the same room with most of these strongmen and reported from their countries over a long journalistic career. While others have tried to understand their rise individually, Rachman pays full attention to the widespread phenomenon and uncovers the complex and often surprising interaction among these leaders. In the process, he identifies the common themes in our local nightmares, finding global coherence in the chaos and offering a bold new paradigm for navigating our world."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (269 ratings)
ISBN 978-1635422801 ?
A Citizen's Guide To Impeachment:
Barbara A. Radnofsky
Melville House (September 12, 2017)
No Review
"Barbara A. Radnofsky was the first woman in Texas history to run as the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in 2006 and the first, also, to run as the Democratic nominee for Texas Attorney General in 2010. A magna cum laude graduate of the University of Houston, where she enrolled at age sixteen, and the University of Texas School of Law, Radnofsky has practiced law for nearly four decades and lives in Houston." – Amazon biography

"Spotlighting in particular the precise rules of impeachment—including an explanation of the crucial grounds for impeachment, the famous 'high crimes and misdemeanors'—the book also details its origins in British law, the rules as set out by the founding fathers in the Constitution, and their application throughout the history of our democracy. That history involves a detailed chronology of the nineteen instances of impeachment that have taken place—of judges, presidents, and officials from the cabinet and congress—throughout American history, including the very first impeachment conviction of an America official: that of a federal judge who seemed to have developed dementia."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (31 ratings)
ISBN 978-1612197050 ?
American Schism:
How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation
Seth David Radwell
Jonathan Israel (Foreword)
Greenleaf Book Group Press (June 29, 2021)
No Review

"Seth David Radwell is an internationally known business executive and thought leader in consumer marketing. A common thread across all his leadership and business endeavors has been his passion for our shared democratic values and his interest in American public policy.

"Mr. Radwell served as president of e-Scholastic, the digital arm of the global children’s publishing and education conglomerate. In an earlier role he was president of Bookspan/Bertelsmann, where he was responsible for all editorial, marketing, media, and digital functions for such iconic brands as Book of the Month Club, Doubleday Book Club, and Literary Guild. Until 2018, Mr. Radwell served as the CEO of The Proactiv Company, the leading skincare brand for acne. Previously, he served as president and chief revenue officer of Guthy-Renker, the worldwide leading direct-to-consumer beauty company. Prior to his publishing career, Radwell served as senior vice president, content, for Prodigy Services Company, where he pioneered new ecommerce revenue streams for the online service business. Before that, he spent six years with management consulting firm McKinsey & Company.

"Seth David Radwell received a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He holds a bachelor of arts degree, summa cum laude from Columbia College, Columbia University. He currently divides his time between New York, Los Angeles, and Paris." – Amazon biography

"Two disparate Americas have always coexisted. In this thoroughly researched, engaging and ultimately hopeful story of our nation’s divergent roots, Seth David Radwell clearly links the fascinating history of the two American Enlightenments to our raging political division. He also demonstrates that reasoned analysis and historical perspective are the only antidote to irrational political discourse.

“ 'Did my vision of America ever exist at all, or was it but a myth?' Searching for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of our civic life, Radwell’s very personal and yet broadly shared question propelled his search back to our nation’s founding for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of our civic life - and led to a surprising discovery. Today’s battles reflect the fundamentally divergent visions of our country that emerged at our nation’s founding and have been vying for prominence ever since. The founding principles that shaped the United States may be rooted in the Enlightenment era. But the origin of our dual Americas is a product of two distinct Enlightenments - Radical and Moderate.

"American Schism begins with a quick reintroduction to the pre-Enlightenment Middle Ages and then takes readers on an in-depth journey through the revolutionary Enlightenment period including the eventual schism that began in Europe but then found its way to American shores. Radwell shows the impact of this schism on American history from the early expansion of the U.S. through Jim Crow and The Age of Trumpism.

"In an optimistic and rigorous final section, Radwell lays out an analysis of our current governmental structure and a plan to move forward, demonstrating that it is only by embracing Enlightenment principles that we can build a civilized, progressive, and tolerant society - where Americans can firmly ground their different views in rationality."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (325 ratings)
ISBN 978-1626348615 ?
Defectors:
The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America
Paola Ramos
Pantheon (September 24, 2024)
No Review

"Paola Ramos is an author and Emmy-Award winning journalist. She is a contributor for Telemundo News and MSNBC, where she is the host of 'Field Report.' Ramos is a former Correspondent for Vice News. Prior to her career in journalism, Ramos was the Deputy Director of Hispanic Media for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, a political appointee during the Obama Administration, and served in President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.

"She is also a former Hauser Leader in the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School, where she received her Master’s in Public Policy, and recently joined the board of trustees of her alma mater, Barnard College. She is the author of Finding Latin-X: In Search of the Voices Redefining Latino Identity. Ramos was born in Miami to Cuban and Mexican parents, grew up in Madrid, and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY."

"An award-winning journalist's deeply reported exploration of how race, identity and political trauma have influenced the rise in far-right sentiment among Latinos, and how this group can shape American politics.

“Democrats have historically assumed they can rely on the Latino vote, but recent elections have called that loyalty into question. In fact, despite his vociferous anti-immigrant rhetoric and disastrous border policies, Trump won a higher percentage of the Latino vote in 2020 than he did in 2016. Now, journalist Paola Ramos pulls back the curtain on these voters, traveling around the country to uncover what motivates them to vote for and support issues that seem so at odds with their self-interest.

"From coast to coast, cities to rural towns, Defectors introduces readers to underdog GOP candidates, January 6th insurrectionists, Evangelical pastors and culture war crusaders, aiming to identify the influences at the heart of this rightward shift. Through their stories, Ramos shows how tribalism, traditionalism, and political trauma within the Latino community has been weaponized to radicalize and convert voters who, like many of their white counterparts, are fearful of losing their place in American society.

"We meet Monica de la Cruz, a Republican congresswoman from the Rio Grande Valley who won on a platform centered on finishing 'what Donald Trump started' and pushing the Great Replacement Theory; David Ortiz, a Mexican man who refers to himself as a Spaniard and opposed the removal of a statue of a Spanish conquistador in New Mexico; Luis Cabrera, an evangelical pastor pushing to 'Make America Godly Again;' Anthony Aguero, an independent journalist turned border vigilante; and countless other individuals and communities that make up the rising conservative Latino population. Cross-cultural and assiduously reported, Defectors highlights how one of America's most powerful and misunderstood electorates may come to define the future of American politics."

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593701362 ?
The Constitutional Bind:
How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them
Aziz Rana
University of Chicago Press (April 16, 2024)
No Review

"Aziz Rana is the incoming J. Donald Monan, S.J., University Professor of Law and Government at Boston College. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Dissent, n+1, the Boston Review, and Jacobin. He is the author of The Two Faces of American Freedom."

"An eye-opening account of how Americans came to revere the Constitution and what this reverence has meant domestically and around the world.

“Some Americans today worry that the Federal Constitution is ill-equipped to respond to mounting democratic threats and may even exacerbate the worst features of American politics. Yet for as long as anyone can remember, the Constitution has occupied a quasi-mythical status in American political culture, which ties ideals of liberty and equality to assumptions about the inherent goodness of the text’s design. The Constitutional Bind explores how a flawed document came to be so glorified and how this has impacted American life.

"In a pathbreaking retelling of the American experience, Aziz Rana shows that today’s reverential constitutional culture is a distinctively twentieth-century phenomenon. Rana connects this widespread idolization to another relatively recent development: the rise of US global dominance. Ultimately, such veneration has had far-reaching consequences: despite offering a unifying language of reform, it has also unleashed an interventionist national security state abroad while undermining the possibility of deeper change at home.

"Revealing how the current constitutional order was forged over the twentieth century, The Constitutional Bind also sheds light on an array of movement activists—in Black, Indigenous, feminist, labor, and immigrant politics—who struggled to imagine different constitutional horizons. As time passed, these voices of opposition were excised from memory. Today, they offer essential insights."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (2 ratings)
ISBN 978-0226350721 ?
Overruling Democracy
Jamin B. Raskin
Routledge (March 20, 2003)
No Review

"Jamin B. Raskin is Professor of Law at American University in Washington D.C. His articles have appeared in Slate, The Washington Monthly, The American Prospect, TheNation, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and many other newspapers, journals and magazines." – Amazon biography

"The Supreme Court has recently issued decisions announcing that citizens have neither a constitutional right to vote, nor the right to an education. Conservative judges have continually disavowed claims to any rights not specifically mentioned in the Constitution. In Overruling Democracy, celebrated law professor Jamin B. Raskin argues that we need to develop a whole new set of rights, through amendments or court decisions, that revitalize and protect the democracy of everyday life. Detailing specific cases through interesting narratives, Overruling Democracy describes the transgressions of the Supreme Court against the Constitution and the people - and the faulty reasoning behind them -- and lays out the plan for the best way to back a more democratic system."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (10 ratings)
ISBN 978-0415934398 ?
Unthinkable:
Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy
Jamie Raskin
Harper (January 4, 2022)
No Review

"Congressman Jamie Raskin has proudly represented Maryland’s 8th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2017. Prior to his time in Congress, Raskin was a three-term State Senator in Maryland and the Senate Majority Whip. He was also a professor of constitutional law at American University’s Washington College of Law for more than 25 years. He has authored several books, including the Washington Post bestseller Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court versus the American People and the highly acclaimed We the Students: Supreme Court Cases For and About America’s Students. Congressman Raskin is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School and a former Editor of the Harvard Law Review. He and his wife Sarah live in Takoma Park." – Amazon biography

"On December 31, 2020, Tommy Raskin, the only son of Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin, tragically took his own life after a long struggle with depression. Seven days later on January 6, Congressman Raskin returned to Congress to help certify the 2020 Presidential election results, when violent insurrectionists led by right wing extremist groups stormed the U.S. Capitol hoping to hand four more years of power to President Donald Trump. As our reeling nation mourned the deaths of numerous people and lamented the injuries of more than 140 police officers hurt in the attack, Congressman Raskin, a Constitutional law professor, was called upon to put aside his overwhelming grief—both personal and professional—and lead the impeachment effort against President Trump for inciting the violence. Together this nine-member team of House impeachment managers riveted a nation still in anguish, putting on an unprecedented Senate trial that produced the most bipartisan Presidential impeachment vote in American history.

"Now for the first time, Congressman Raskin discusses this unimaginable convergence of personal and public trauma, detailing how the painful loss of his son and the power of Tommy’s convictions fueled the Congressman’s work in the aftermath of modern democracy’s darkest day. Going inside Congress on January 6, he recounts the horror of that day, a day that he and other Democrats had spent months preparing for under the correct assumption that they would encounter an attempted electoral coup—not against a President but for one. And yet, on January 6, he faced the one thing he had failed to anticipate: mass political violence designed to block Biden’s election. With an inside account of leading the team prosecuting President Trump in the Senate, Congressman Raskin shares never before told stories of just how close we came to losing our democracy that fateful day and lays out the methodical prosecution that convinced Democrats and Republicans alike of Trump’s responsibility for inciting insurrectionary violence against our government.

"Through it all, he reckons with the loss of his brilliant, remarkable son, a Harvard Law student whose values and memory continually inspired the Congressman to confront the dark impulses unleashed by Donald Trump. At turns, a moving story of a father coping with his pain and a revealing examination of holding President Trump accountable for the violence he fomented, this book is a vital reminder of the ongoing struggle for the soul of American democracy and the perseverance that our Constitution demands from us all."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (3,991 ratings)
ISBN 978-0063209787 ?
The Constitution of Knowledge:
A Defense of Truth
Jonathan Rauch
Brookings Institution Press (June 22, 2021)
No Review

"Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution and a contributing writer of The Atlantic. His previous books include Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought. Rauch resides in Washington, DC." – Amazon biography

"Disinformation. Trolling. Conspiracies. Social media pile-ons. Campus intolerance. On the surface, these recent additions to our daily vocabulary appear to have little in common. But together, they are driving an epistemic crisis: a multi-front challenge to America’s ability to distinguish fact from fiction and elevate truth above falsehood.

"In 2016 Russian trolls and bots nearly drowned the truth in a flood of fake news and conspiracy theories, and Donald Trump and his troll armies continued to do the same. Social media companies struggled to keep up with a flood of falsehoods, and too often didn’t even seem to try. Experts and some public officials began wondering if society was losing its grip on truth itself. Meanwhile, another new phenomenon appeared: “cancel culture.” At the push of a button, those armed with a cellphone could gang up by the thousands on anyone who ran afoul of their sanctimony.

"In this pathbreaking book, Jonathan Rauch reaches back to the parallel eighteenth-century developments of liberal democracy and science to explain what he calls the “Constitution of Knowledge”—our social system for turning disagreement into truth.

"By explicating the Constitution of Knowledge and probing the war on reality, Rauch arms defenders of truth with a clearer understanding of what they must protect, why they must do—and how they can do it. His book is a sweeping and readable description of how every American can help defend objective truth and free inquiry from threats as far away as Russia and as close as the cellphone."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (91 ratings)
ISBN 978-0815738862 ?
The Partisan Court:
The Era of Political Partisanship on the U.S. Supreme Court
Ryan J. Rebe
Lexington Books (October 11, 2021)
No Review

"Ryan J. Rebe is associate professor of political science and Director of Legal Studies at William Paterson University in New Jersey." – Amazon biography

"The Partisan Court challenges conventional notions of consensus-building and neutral decision-making on the U.S. Supreme Court and argues that the justices vote their partisan preferences on election law cases. By focusing specifically on election law, Rebe reveals a consistent pattern of partisanship on the Court. The findings controvert popular perceptions of non-biased decision-making and fundamental fairness. The aggregate analysis shows that the justices vote along party-lines in a majority of election law cases, and consensus-building is rare when there is a contentious electoral issue at stake. Moreover, these decisions often conflict with principles of stare decisis, originalism, or judicial restraint. The topics covered include: gerrymandering, campaign finance, voter ID laws, and mail-in voting, among others. Rebe also conducts a content analysis of the most controversial election law cases of the past twenty years, such as: Vieth v. Jubelirer, Crawford v. Marion County, Citizens United v. FEC, and Shelby County v. Holder. This book provides a thorough overview of two decades of election law cases and sheds light on the impact these decisions have had on remaking America’s electoral institutions."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (3 ratings)
ISBN 978-1793611338 ?
Political Tribalism in America:
How Hyper-Partisanship Dumbs Down Democracy and How to Fix It
Timothy J. Redmond
McFarland (October 13, 2022)
No Review

"Timothy J. Redmond received his PhD in political science from the University at Buffalo. He is an award-winning educator and author of over one hundred articles on critical thinking and politics." – Amazon biography

"The democratic ideal demands that the citizenry think critically about matters of public import. Yet many Democrats and Republicans in the United States have fallen short of that standard because political tribalism motivates them to acquire, perceive and evaluate political information in a biased manner. The result is an electorate that is more extreme, hostile and willing to reject unfavorable democratic outcomes. In this work, the author provides a host of actionable strategies that are designed to reduce the influence of political tribalism in our lives. The text includes instructions for plumbing the depths of political views; evaluating sources of political information; engaging in difficult political conversations; appraising political data; and assessing political arguments. The first of its kind, this how-to guide is a must-read for partisans who want to become more critical political thinkers."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (12 ratings)
ISBN 978-1476683102 ?
How Reasonable Americans Could Support Trump:
Helping liberals understand the MAGAverse, and whatever comes next
Brian M. Rees
Manu Publishing (November 14, 2021)
No Review

"Brian M. Rees is the author of this book." – Amazon biography

"We are a deeply divided country.

"If you’re a never-Trumper, maybe you’d like to understand better your Trump-supporting relative at Thanksgiving dinner. Over 74 million of your fellow Americans voted for Trump in 2020. Despite all the things about him that make you crazy, they decided, ‘that’s my guy,’ and filled in the dot or pulled the lever. Why did they? How could they? Is there any way to bridge the gap between you and them?

"And if you’re a Trump supporter, you might be tired of having 'friends' beat you up by calling you a racist idiot; you could give them this book to help explain that there’s more to the story. You might even begin to understand better what it was about Trump that you liked, and that some of those things may even be of interest to your liberal friends and relatives.

"This book has three parts. First, we’ll explore our own natures, attributes with which we’re born that inform much of our moral and political perspective, how those are channeled, and how they contribute to how you feel about Trump. We’ll see why a lot of what we try to do to influence others is doomed to fail.

"The second deals with how the things Trump said and did have resonated so robustly with his supporters. It’s not that hard to understand, and even if you’re a never-Trumper you should be able to see Trumpism in a different light. We’ll explore a number of issues and see if there might be common ground between the Trump and never-Trump viewpoints.

"The third addresses what we can do, to improve ourselves, to enhance our relationships with friends and relatives with apparently polar opposite views, and even to impact our nation’s political life. If this book can give someone pause before jumping to the conclusion that people with differing political views must be traitors who hate America, I’ll have hit my target."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.1 (27 ratings)
ISBN 978-0965231916 ?
No Blank Check:
The Origins and Consequences of Public Antipathy towards Presidential Power
Andrew Reeves & Jon C. Rogowski
Cambridge University Press; New edition (September 22, 2022)
No Review
"Andrew Reeves is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis. He is co-author (with Douglas Kriner) of The Particularistic President: Executive Branch Politics and Political Inequality, which received the 2016 Richard E. Neustadt Award for the best book published in the field of the American presidency.
Jon C. Rogowski is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He is co-author (with William Howell and Saul Jackman) of The Wartime President: Executive Influence and the Nationalizing Politics of Threat, which won the 2014 William H. Riker prize for the best book published in political economy." – Amazon biography

"Concerns about unaccountable executive power have featured recurrently in political debates from the American founding to today. For many, presidents' use of unilateral power threatens American democracy. No Blank Check advances a new perspective: Instead of finding Americans apathetic towards how presidents exercise power, it shows the public is deeply concerned with core democratic values. Drawing on data from original surveys, innovative experiments, historical polls, and contexts outside the United States, the book highlights Americans' skepticism towards presidential power. This skepticism results in a public that punishes unilaterally minded presidents and the policies they pursue. By departing from existing theories of presidential power which acknowledge only institutional constraints, this timely and revealing book demonstrates the public's capacity to tame the unilateral impulses of even the most ambitious presidents. Ultimately, when it comes to exercising power, the public does not hand the president a blank check."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (1 rating)
ISBN 978-1107174306 ?
Grand Inquests:
The Historic Impeachments Of Justice Samuel Chase And President Andrew Johnson
William H. Rehnquist
William Morrow (May, 1992)
No Review
"William H. Rehnquist (1924-2005) was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court from 1972 to 1986 and then Chief Justice from 1986 until his death in 2005."

"The Chief Justice presents a dramatic account of two precedent-setting impeachment cases that strengthened the concept of separation of powers and further defined the institutions of American government."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (31 ratings)
ISBN 978-0688051426 ?
The Tribalization of Politics:
How Rush Limbaugh's Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump
Ian Reifowitz
Markos Moulitsas (Fwd.)
Ig Publishing (June 25, 2019)
No Review
"Raised in Smithtown, Long Island, Ian Reifowitz graduated from Brown University with a BA in history and from Georgetown University with a PhD in history. Since 2002, he has taught history at Empire State College of the State University of New York, where he now holds the rank of professor, and in 2009 won the college's Susan H. Turben Award for Scholarly Excellence. In 2014 he received a S.U.N.Y. Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarly and Creative Activities. He is a Contributing Editor at the political website Daily Kos, and his opinion pieces and articles on American politics have appeared in the Daily News, Newsday, The New Republic, In These Times, and other publications. His first book, Imagining an Austrian Nation: Joseph Samuel Bloch and the Search for a Multiethnic Austrian Identity, 1846-1919, was published by East European Monographs and distributed by Columbia University Press in 2003. He has published a number of academic articles in the Journal of Jewish Identities, Nationalities Papers, and East European Quarterly, amongst other publications, as well as numerous book reviews." – Amazon biography

"How did we get here?" is one of the essential questions right now in American politics. How did we go from a country that elected Barack Obama twice to one that, popular vote loss aside, elected Donald Trump? Two words: Rush Limbaugh.

"The Tribalization of Politics explores how the conservative radio host “tribalized” our politics through his racially divisive, falsehood-ridden portrayal of President Obama. By playing and preying on white anxiety, Limbaugh laid the groundwork for the election of a president who essentially adopted his view of the Obama presidency.

"During Obama’s eight years in office, Limbaugh repeatedly used a technique called “racial priming” against America’s first black president―language designed to heighten white racial or cultural resentment. Limbaugh’s aim was to convince his audience that Obama was anti-white, anti-American, radical, Marxist, black nationalist, among other labels. Limbaugh’s divisive rhetoric against Obama was designed to cleave America in two, creating a conservative “tribe” animated by passionate racial and cultural hatred toward the opposing tribe.

"A vital analysis of the assault on truth and accuracy carried out by right-wing media as well as by politicians like Trump, The Tribalization of Politics reveals how the race-baiting rhetoric of the most popular radio host in America against President Obama helped elect our current president, in the process threatening the democratic principles upon which our country was built."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (20 ratings)
ISBN 978-1632460912 ?
Tower of Lies:
What My Eighteen Years of Working With Donald Trump Reveals About Him
Barbara A. Res
Graymalkin Media, LLC (November 30, 2020)
No Review

"Barbara A. Res is frequently interviewed on talk shows as an expert on Donald Trump, having worked with him for eighteen years. Res was first hired by Trump to oversee construction of Trump Tower. She became Executive Vice-President in charge of Development and Construction at the Trump Organization, reporting directly to Donald Trump. She started working with Trump on his first construction project in Manhattan, The Grand Hyatt.

"Res is a trailblazer, working in construction in the 1970s when few women worked in that field. With over forty years in construction in the U.S. and Europe, she is a professional engineer and has held virtually every position in the contracting and subcontracting trades. She is a construction attorney licensed in New York and New Jersey, a mediator and arbitrator in construction disputes, and travels the world as a public speaker. She has been awarded the Townsend Harris Medal by CCNY as a pioneer among women engineers and The Emily Roebling Award by Professional Women in Construction. She is a native of New York City, growing up in Queens, and is a mother of two. She currently lives in New Jersey." – Amazon biography

"Barbara A. Res worked directly with Donald Trump for eighteen years on some of his biggest projects and had nearly unlimited access to him. Trump selected Res to be in charge of construction of Trump Tower, his greatest success as a developer. In this insider's look at how the ambitious real estate developer became the most divisive president in recent U.S. history, Res takes us into closed-door meetings, boardrooms, limo rides, and helicopter flights to really understand what makes him tick and shows us why his claim to be a great dealmaker and savvy businessman is just a mirage.

No one with this kind of access to Trump during his formative years as a developer has ever written so completely about who he is away from the cameras. It's no wonder that when the media are looking for someone who really understands Trump, they turn to Res. Candid, personal, and deeply perceptive, Res shines new light on the man whose depravity has put us all and democracy itself in danger."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (154 ratings)
ISBN 978-1631683046 ?
How to Stand Up to a Dictator:
The Fight for Our Future
Maria Ressa
Harper (November 29, 2022)
No Review

"Maria Ressa is the co-recipient of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for her work defending freedom of expression and democracy. She is CEO, cofounder, and president of Rappler, the Philippines’ top digital news site, and has been a journalist in Asia for over thirty-six years. She was TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2018 and won the UNESCO World Press Freedom Prize in 2021. Among the many other awards she has received are the prestigious Golden Pen of Freedom Award from the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, the Knight International Journalism Award from the International Center for Journalists, the Shorenstein Journalism Award from Stanford University, and the Sergei Magnitsky Award for Investigative Journalism. She grew up in the Philippines and the United States and currently lives in Manila.

"She has been a journalist in Asia for more than 25 years, most of them as CNN's bureau chief in Manila then Jakarta. For nearly 2 decades, she had a front-row seat chronicling Southeast Asia's transition from authoritarian rule to democracy, the Asian financial crisis, as well as reporting on separatist, ethnic and sectarian violence across Asia. She was CNN's lead investigative reporter focusing on terrorism in Southeast Asia.

"Maria was one of the founders of independent production company, Probe Productions, Inc. based in the Philippines. In 2005, she took the helm of ABS-CBN News and Current affairs, for 6 years managing more than 1,000 journalists for the largest multi-platform news operation in the Philippines. Her work aimed to redefine journalism by combining traditional broadcast, new media and mobile phone technology for social change.

"She taught courses in politics and media for her alma mater, Princeton University, and in broadcasting at the University of the Philippines. She was Author-in-Residence and Senior Fellow at the International Centre for Political Violence & Terrorism Research in Singapore as well as Southeast Asia Visiting Scholar at CORE Lab at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California."

"Maria Ressa is one of the most renowned international journalists of our time. For decades, she challenged corruption and malfeasance in her native country, the Philippines, on its rocky path from an authoritarian state to a democracy. As a reporter from CNN, she transformed news coverage in her region, which led her in 2012 to create a new and innovative online news organization, Rappler. Harnessing the emerging power of social media, Rapplercrowdsourced breaking news, found pivotal sources and tips, harnessed collective action for climate change, and helped increase voter knowledge and participation in elections.

"But by their fifth year of existence, Rappler had gone from being lauded for its ideas to being targeted by the new Philippine government, and made Ressa an enemy of her country’s most powerful man: President Duterte. Still, she did not let up, tracking government seeded disinformation networks which spread lies to its own citizens laced with anger and hate. Hounded by the state and its allies using the legal system to silence her, accused of numerous crimes, and charged with cyberlibel for which she was found guilty, Ressa faces years in prison and thousands in fines.

"There is another adversary Ressa is battling. How to Stand Up to a Dictator is also the story of how the creep towards authoritarianism, in the Philippines and around the world, has been aided and abetted by the social media companies. Ressa exposes how they have allowed their platforms to spread a virus of lies that infect each of us, pitting us against one another, igniting, even creating, our fears, anger, and hate, and how this has accelerated the rise of authoritarians and dictators around the world. She maps a network of disinformation—a heinous web of cause and effect—that has netted the globe: from Duterte’s drug wars to America's Capitol Hill; Britain’s Brexit to Russian and Chinese cyber-warfare; Facebook and Silicon Valley to our own clicks and votes.

Democracy is fragile. How to Stand Up to a Dictator is an urgent cry for Western readers to recognize and understand the dangers to our freedoms before it is too late. It is a book for anyone who might take democracy for granted, written by someone who never would. And in telling her dramatic and turbulent and courageous story, Ressa forces readers to ask themselves the same question she and her colleagues ask every day: What are you willing to sacrifice for the truth?"

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (516 ratings)
ISBN 978-0063257511 ?
The World as It Is:
A Memoir of the Obama White House
Ben Rhodes
Random House (June 5, 2018)
No Review

"From 2009 to 2017, Ben Rhodes served as deputy national security advisor to President Barack Obama, overseeing the administration’s national security communications, speechwriting, public diplomacy, and global engagement programming. Prior to joining the Obama administration, from 2007 to 2008 Rhodes was a senior speechwriter and foreign policy advisor to the Obama campaign. Before joining then–Senator Obama’s campaign, he worked for former congressman Lee Hamilton from 2002 to 2007. He was the co-author, with Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, of Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission. A native New Yorker, Rhodes has a BA from Rice University and an MFA from New York University."

"From one of Barack Obama’s most trusted aides comes a revelatory behind-the-scenes account of his presidency—and how idealism can confront harsh reality and still survive.

"For nearly ten years, Ben Rhodes saw almost everything that happened at the center of the Obama administration—first as a speechwriter, then as deputy national security advisor, and finally as a multipurpose aide and close collaborator. He started every morning in the Oval Office with the President’s Daily Briefing, traveled the world with Obama, and was at the center of some of the most consequential and controversial moments of the presidency. Now he tells the full story of his partnership—and, ultimately, friendship—with a man who also happened to be a historic president of the United States.

"Rhodes was not your typical presidential confidant, and this is not your typical White House memoir. Rendered in vivid, novelistic detail by someone who was a writer before he was a staffer, this is a rare look inside the most poignant, tense, and consequential moments of the Obama presidency—waiting out the bin Laden raid in the Situation Room, responding to the Arab Spring, reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran, leading secret negotiations with the Cuban government to normalize relations, and confronting the resurgence of nationalism and nativism that culminated in the election of Donald Trump.

"In The World as It Is, Rhodes shows what it was like to be there—from the early days of the Obama campaign to the final hours of the presidency. It is a story populated by such characters as Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Hillary Clinton, Bob Gates, and—above all—Barack Obama, who comes to life on the page in moments of great urgency and disarming intimacy. This is the most vivid portrayal yet of Obama’s worldview and presidency, a chronicle of a political education by a writer of enormous talent, and an essential record of the forces that shaped the last decade."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (2,587 ratings)
ISBN 978-0525509356 ?
After the Fall:
Being American in the World We've Made
Ben Rhodes
Random House (June 1, 2021)
No Review

"Ben Rhodes is the author of the New York Times bestseller The World as It Is, co-host of Pod Save the World, a contributor for NBC News and MSNBC, and an adviser to former president Barack Obama." – Amazon biography

"At a time when democracy in the United States is endangered as never before, Ben Rhodes spent years traveling the world to understand why. He visited dozens of countries, meeting with politicians and activists confronting the same nationalism and authoritarianism that are tearing America apart. Along the way, he discusses the growing authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin, and his aggression towards Ukraine, with the foremost opposition leader in Russia, who was subsequently poisoned and imprisoned; he profiled Hong Kong protesters who saw their movement snuffed out by China under Xi Jinping; and America itself reached the precipice of losing democracy before giving itself a fragile second chance.

"The characters and issues that Rhodes illuminates paint a picture that shows us where we are today—from Barack Obama to a rising generation of international leaders; from the authoritarian playbook endangering democracy to the flood of disinformation enabling authoritarianism. Ultimately, Rhodes writes personally and powerfully about finding hope in the belief that looking squarely at where America has gone wrong can make clear how essential it is to fight for what America is supposed to be, for our own country and the entire world."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (1,342 ratings)
ISBN 978-1984856050 ?
Jesus Is Not Republican:
A Secular Liberal's Adventures With Religion, Politics and Sex
Kate Rice
By the Seat of My Pants Productions (November 4, 2021)
No Review

"Kate Rice is a runner, ex-ski bum, java junkie, Green Bay Packer fan and a rock’n roll singer and stand-up comic who performs mostly in the shower and sometimes on stage. She is a prizewinning reporter from a purple-to-red corner of Wisconsin. Her family's American saga began when her great-great grandparents fled starvation and persecution in Ireland to come to America. Ann Rice and John Rice were married in St. Brigid's Church on Tompkins Square Park in New York City's East Village in 1853, and then followed the railroad to Wisconsin. She is an American who has learned that to be a citizen of this great country is both a gift and a responsibility." – Amazon biography

"A party girl with a broken heart gets pissed off at the teachings of church and society that made her an easy victim of a love gone wrong. The result? This irreverent memoir of her own adventures with sex, religion and politics intertwined with our nation's story of how the right hijacked Jesus, subverting his message of love with one of hate.

"Revelations Kate Rice style include the tatted up minister who preaches the joy of sex, church-going progressives standing strong in a rural America that is not as red as you think, and a host of Christian progressives who believe in science, equality for all and LGBTQ rights. They fight for voter rights. They fight climate change. Their God embraces those on the fringes and is a God of love, inclusiveness and tolerance.

"This battle-scarred veteran of three different religions pulls back the veil on Christian nationalism, revealing its racist roots. She puts the spotlight on the misogyny and sexism of evangelical (and other) churches and how that spawned the evangelical #metoo movement. She shows how the trauma wrought by the purity movement. She explains our nation's wrestling match with religion, politics, and sex by viewing it through the prism of her own struggles. She pokes fun at hypocrites but shows love and respect for true people of faith. And then she gives us all a pep talk about what we can do to keep our nation one that guarantees freedom for all."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (43 ratings)
ISBN 978-1737483434 ?
To Make Men Free:
A History of the Republican Party
Heather Cox Richardson
Basic Books (September 23, 2014)
No Review
Heather Cox Richardson is an American historian and professor of history at Boston College. Her daily newsletter, Letters from an American, has over a half million subscribers. The author of Democracy Awakening, How the South Won the Civil War, and Wounded Knee, she splits her time between Boston and Maine."

"When Abraham Lincoln helped create the Republican Party on the eve of the Civil War, his goal was to promote economic opportunity for all Americans, not just the slaveholding Southern planters who steered national politics. Yet while visionary Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower shared Lincoln’s egalitarian dream, their attempts to use government to guard against the concentration of wealth have repeatedly been undone by the country’s moneyed interests and members of their own party. Ronald Reagan’s embrace of big business—and the ensuing financial crisis—is the latest example of this calamitous cycle, but it is by no means the first.

"In To Make Men Free, celebrated historian Heather Cox Richardson traces the shifting ideology of the Grand Old Party from the antebellum era to the Great Recession, showing how Republicans’ ideological vacillations have had terrible repercussions for minorities, the middle class, and America at large. Expansive and authoritative, To Make Men Free explains how a relatively young party became America’s greatest political hope—and, time and time again, its greatest disappointment."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (428 ratings)
ISBN 978-0465024315 ?
How the South Won the Civil War:
Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America
Heather Cox Richardson
Oxford University Press (April 1, 2020)
No Review
Heather Cox Richardson is Professor of History at Boston College. Her previous works include West from Appomattox and To Make Men Free.

"While the North prevailed in the Civil War, ending slavery and giving the country a "new birth of freedom," Heather Cox Richardson argues in this provocative work that democracy's blood-soaked victory was ephemeral. The system that had sustained the defeated South moved westward and there established a foothold. It was a natural fit. Settlers from the East had for decades been pushing into the West, where the seizure of Mexican lands at the end of the Mexican-American War and treatment of Native Americans cemented racial hierarchies. The South and West equally depended on extractive industries-cotton in the former and mining, cattle, and oil in the latter-giving rise a new birth of white male oligarchy, despite the guarantees provided by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and the economic opportunities afforded by expansion.

"To reveal why this happened, How the South Won the Civil War traces the story of the American paradox, the competing claims of equality and subordination woven into the nation's fabric and identity. At the nation's founding, it was the Eastern 'yeoman farmer' who galvanized and symbolized the American Revolution. After the Civil War, that mantle was assumed by the Western cowboy, singlehandedly defending his land against barbarians and savages as well as from a rapacious government. New states entered the Union in the late nineteenth century and western and southern leaders found yet more common ground. As resources and people streamed into the West during the New Deal and World War II, the region's influence grew. 'Movement Conservatives,' led by westerners Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan, claimed to embody cowboy individualism and worked with Dixiecrats to embrace the ideology of the Confederacy.

"Richardson's searing book seizes upon the soul of the country and its ongoing struggle to provide equal opportunity to all. Debunking the myth that the Civil War released the nation from the grip of oligarchy, expunging the sins of the Founding, it reveals how and why the Old South not only survived in the West, but thrived."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (1,751 ratings)
ISBN 978-0190900908 ?
Democracy Awakening:
Notes on the State of America
Heather Cox Richardson
Viking (September 26, 2023)
No Review
"Heather Cox Richardson is Professor of History at Boston College. She has written about the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, and the American West in award-winning books whose subjects stretch from the European settlement of the North American continent to the history of the Republican Party through the Trump administration. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and The Guardian, among other outlets. She is the cohost of the Vox Media podcast Now & Then. Her widely read newsletter, Letters from an American, synthesizes history and modern political issues."

"From historian and author of the popular daily newsletter Letters from an American, a vital narrative that explains how America, once a beacon of democracy, now teeters on the brink of autocracy — and how we can turn back.

"In the midst of the impeachment crisis of 2019, Heather Cox Richardson launched a daily Facebook essay providing the historical background of the daily torrent of news. It soon turned into a newsletter and its readership ballooned to more than 2 million dedicated readers who rely on her plainspoken and informed take on the present and past in America.

"In Democracy Awakening, Richardson crafts a compelling and original narrative, explaining how, over the decades, a small group of wealthy people have made war on American ideals. By weaponizing language and promoting false history they have led us into authoritarianism — creating a disaffected population and then promising to recreate an imagined past where those people could feel important again. She argues that taking our country back starts by remembering the elements of the nation’s true history that marginalized Americans have always upheld. Their dedication to the principles on which this nation was founded has enabled us to renew and expand our commitment to democracy in the past. Richardson sees this history as a roadmap for the nation’s future.

"Richardson’s talent is to wrangle our giant, meandering, and confusing news feed into a coherent story that singles out what we should pay attention to, what the precedents are, and what possible paths lie ahead. In her trademark calm prose, she is realistic and optimistic about the future of democracy. Her command of history allows her to pivot effortlessly from the Founders to the abolitionists to Reconstruction to Goldwater to Mitch McConnell, highlighting the political legacies of the New Deal, the lingering fears of socialism, the death of the liberal consensus and birth of 'movement conservatism.'

"Many books tell us what has happened over the last five years. Democracy Awakening explains how we got to this perilous point, what our history really tells us about ourselves, and what the future of democracy can be."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (99 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593652961 ?
Waging a Good War:
A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968
Thomas E. Ricks
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (October 4, 2022)
No Review
"Thomas E. Ricks is the author of multiple bestselling books, including First Principles, The Generals, and Fiasco, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A member of two Pulitzer Prize–winning teams in his years at The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, he has been called 'the dean of military correspondents.' He lives in Maine and Texas."

"#1 New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas E. Ricks offers a new take on the Civil Rights Movement, stressing its unexpected use of military strategy and its lessons for nonviolent resistance around the world.

"In Waging a Good War, the bestselling author Thomas E. Ricks offers a fresh perspective on America’s greatest moral revolution―the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s―and its legacy today. While the Movement has become synonymous with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ethos of nonviolence, Ricks, a Pulitzer Prize–winning war reporter, draws on his deep knowledge of tactics and strategy to advance a surprising but revelatory idea: the greatest victories for Black Americans of the past century were won not by idealism alone, but by paying attention to recruiting, training, discipline, and organization―the hallmarks of any successful military campaign.

"An engaging storyteller, Ricks deftly narrates the Movement’s triumphs and defeats. He follows King and other key figures from Montgomery to Memphis, demonstrating that Gandhian nonviolence was a philosophy of active, not passive, resistance―involving the bold and sustained confrontation of the Movement’s adversaries, both on the ground and in the court of public opinion. While bringing legends such as Fannie Lou Hamer and John Lewis into new focus, Ricks also highlights lesser-known figures who played critical roles in fashioning nonviolence into an effective tool―the activists James Lawson, James Bevel, Diane Nash, and Septima Clark foremost among them. He also offers a new understanding of the Movement’s later difficulties as internal disputes and white backlash intensified. Rich with fresh interpretations of familiar events and overlooked aspects of America’s civil rights struggle, Waging a Good War is an indispensable addition to the literature of racial justice and social change―and one that offers vital lessons for our own time."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (106 ratings)
ISBN 978-0374605162 ?
The Loneliness of the Black Republican:
Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power
Leah Wright Rigueur
Princeton University Press; Reprint edition (August, 2016)
(Politics and Society in Modern America, 122)
No Review
"Leah Wright Rigueur is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Her award-winning first book, The Loneliness of the Black Republican (2015), looks at the tumultuous relationship between the GOP and racial minorities. Leah's research, writing, and commentary has been featured in numerous outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Root, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, The Atlantic, and the New Republic."

"The story of black conservatives in the Republican Party from the New Deal to Ronald Reagan

"Covering more than four decades of American social and political history, The Loneliness of the Black Republican examines the ideas and actions of black Republican activists, officials, and politicians, from the era of the New Deal to Ronald Reagan's presidential ascent in 1980. Their unique stories reveal African Americans fighting for an alternative economic and civil rights movement―even as the Republican Party appeared increasingly hostile to that very idea. Black party members attempted to influence the direction of conservatism―not to destroy it, but rather to expand the ideology to include black needs and interests.

"As racial minorities in their political party and as political minorities within their community, black Republicans occupied an irreconcilable position―they were shunned by African American communities and subordinated by the GOP. In response, black Republicans vocally, and at times viciously, critiqued members of their race and party, in an effort to shape the attitudes and public images of black citizens and the GOP. And yet, there was also a measure of irony to black Republicans' "loneliness": at various points, factions of the Republican Party, such as the Nixon administration, instituted some of the policies and programs offered by black party members. What's more, black Republican initiatives, such as the fair housing legislation of senator Edward Brooke, sometimes garnered support from outside the Republican Party, especially among the black press, Democratic officials, and constituents of all races. Moving beyond traditional liberalism and conservatism, black Republicans sought to address African American racial experiences in a distinctly Republican way.

"The Loneliness of the Black Republican provides a new understanding of the interaction between African Americans and the Republican Party, and the seemingly incongruous intersection of civil rights and American conservatism."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (99 ratings)
ISBN 978-0691173641 ?
The Breach:
The Untold Story of the Investigation into January 6th
Denver Riggleman & Hunter Walker
Henry Holt and Co. (September 27, 2022)
No Review
Denver Riggleman supported advanced intelligence analysis and technical development programs during his over two decades as an intelligence officer, NSA adviser, federal contractor, research and development technology lead, and successful CEO of support companies for the Department of Defense. A veteran of the Global War on Terror and multiple worldwide operations, he served with honor in the US Air Force for nine active-duty years. Riggleman is a former member of the House of Representatives from Virginia’s Fifth Congressional District, which he represented as a Republican from 2019–2021, and the former senior technical advisor for the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. He is the CEO of Riggleman Information and Intelligence Group and co-owner of the award-winning Silverback Distillery. Riggleman currently lives in Virginia with his wife and family.
Hunter Walker is an investigative reporter and author from Brooklyn, New York. He spent the entirety of the Trump administration as a White House correspondent for Yahoo! News. Walker reported live from the Capitol on January 6th and went on to author a Substack newsletter dedicated to the attack. He has also written for a wide variety of magazines and websites, including Rolling Stone, the New Yorker, The Atlantic, NBC News, Vanity Fair’s Hive website, and New York magazine, among others."

"Make no mistake: modern information warfare is here and January 6th was just the first battle. That day, an unhinged mindset led to an attack on the Capitol, the most serious assault on American democracy since the end of the Civil War. And that thinking portends even darker days ahead.

"In The Breach, a former House Republican and the first member of Congress to sound the alarm about QAnon, Denver Riggleman, provides readers with an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at the January 6th select committee’s investigation. Riggleman, who joined the committee as senior technical advisor after he was asked to help, lays out the full intent and scope of the plot to overturn the election. The book includes previously unpublished texts from key political leaders. And it also contains shocking details about the Trump White House’s links to militant extremist groups―even during the almost-eight-hour period on January 6th when the White House supposedly had no phone calls. The man responsible for unearthing Mark Meadows’s infamous texts shows how data analysis shapes the contours of our new war, telling how the committee uncovered many of its explosive findings and sharing revealing stories from his time in the Trump-era GOP.

"With unique insights from within the far-right movement and from the front lines of the courageous team investigating it, Riggleman shows how our democracy is balanced on a knife’s edge between disinformation and truth. Here is a revelatory peek at the inner workings of the January 6th committee and a clear-eyed look at the existential threats facing our republic―and a blueprint for how America can fight to survive the darkest night before the dawn."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (393 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250866769 ?
High Conflict:
Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out
Amanda Ripley
Simon & Schuster (April 6, 2021)
No Review
Amanda Ripley is the New York Times bestselling author of The Smartest Kids in the World, High Conflict, and The Unthinkable. She writes for The Atlantic, Politico, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications.

"When we are baffled by the insanity of the 'other side'—in our politics, at work, or at home—it’s because we aren’t seeing how the conflict itself has taken over.

"That’s what 'high conflict' does. It’s the invisible hand of our time. And it’s different from the useful friction of healthy conflict. That’s good conflict, and it’s a necessary force that pushes us to be better people.

"High conflict, by contrast, is what happens when discord distills into a good-versus-evil kind of feud, the kind with an us and a them. In this state, the normal rules of engagement no longer apply. The brain behaves differently. We feel increasingly certain of our own superiority and, at the same time, more and more mystified by the other side.

"New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist Amanda Ripley investigates how good people get captured by high conflict—and how they break free.

"Our journey begins in California, where a world-renowned conflict expert struggles to extract himself from a political feud. Then we meet a Chicago gang leader who dedicates his life to a vendetta—only to find himself working beside the man who killed his childhood idol. Next, we travel to Colombia, to find out whether thousands of people can be nudged out of high conflict at scale. Finally, we return to America to see what happens when a group of liberal Manhattan Jews and conservative Michigan corrections officers choose to stay in each other’s homes in order to understand one another better.

"All these people, in dramatically different situations, were drawn into high conflict by similar forces, including conflict entrepreneurs, humiliation, and false binaries. But ultimately, all of them found ways to transform high conflict into something good, something that made them better people. They rehumanized and recatego­rized their opponents, and they revived curiosity and wonder, even as they continued to fight for what they knew was right.

"People do escape high conflict. Individuals—even entire communities—can short-circuit the feedback loops of outrage and blame, if they want to. This is a mind-opening new way to think about conflict that will transform how we move through the world."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (979 ratings)
ISBN 978-1982128562 ?
Where Tyranny Begins:
The Justice Department, the FBI, and the War on Democracy
David Rohde
W. W. Norton & Company (August 27, 2024)
No Review
David Rohde is the executive editor for news of newyorker.com and an MSNBC contributor. A two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, he is a former investigative reporter and foreign correspondent for Reuters, the New York Times, and the Christian Science Monitor who covered the wars in Afghanistan and Bosnia. He lives in New York with his wife and two daughters.

"How Donald Trump used threats, co-option, and conspiracy theories to bend DOJ and FBI officials to his will to a greater extent than publicly known―and how Merrick Garland, other prosecutors, and judges failed to hold him accountable before the 2024 election.

"Over the course of his presidency, Donald Trump intimidated, silenced, and bent to his will Justice Department and FBI officials, from Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and William Barr to career public servants. He sowed public doubt in both agencies so successfully that when he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, he paid little political cost and, despite an unprecedented array of criminal indictments, easily won the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election.

"In Where Tyranny Begins, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist David Rohde investigates the strategies Trump systematically used to turn the country’s two most powerful law-enforcement agencies into his personal political weapons. Rohde also reveals how, during the Biden years, Justice Department non-partisan 1970s norms that Attorney General Merrick Garland reinforced inadvertently helped Trump, and could fail to deliver a trial and legal accountability by Election Day 2024.

"Where Tyranny Begins exposes how ill-suited both the DOJ and FBI are to serve as checks on abuses of presidential power. The rise of hyper-partisanship and the Trump and Biden presidencies have uncovered core flaws in American constitutional democracy that Trump would exploit in a second term. A round of historic reforms equivalent to the post-Watergate reforms that stabilized American democracy in the 1970s are immediately needed. A five-word warning coined by the English philosopher John Locke in 1689 captures the stakes in 2024: 'Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins.' "

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (3 ratings)
ISBN 978-0393881967 ?
The Nation That Never Was:
Reconstructing America's Story
Kermit Roosevelt III
University of Chicago Press (June 24, 2022)
No Review
Kermit Roosevelt III is a professor of constitutional law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. A former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice David Souter, he is the author of The Myth of Judicial Activism, as well as two novels, Allegiance and In the Shadow of the Law."

"Our idea of the Founders' America and its values is not true. We are not the heirs of the Founders, but we can be the heirs of Reconstruction and its vision for equality.

"There’s a common story we tell about America: that our fundamental values as a country were stated in the Declaration of Independence, fought for in the Revolution, and made law in the Constitution. But, with the country increasingly divided, this story isn’t working for us anymore—what’s more, it’s not even true. As Kermit Roosevelt argues in this eye-opening reinterpretation of the American story, our fundamental values, particularly equality, are not part of the vision of the Founders. Instead, they were stated in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and were the hope of Reconstruction, when it was possible to envision the emergence of the nation committed to liberty and equality.

"We face a dilemma these days. We want to be honest about our history and the racism and oppression that Americans have both inflicted and endured. But we want to be proud of our country, too. In The Nation That Never Was, Roosevelt shows how we can do both those things by realizing we’re not the country we thought we were. Reconstruction, Roosevelt argues, was not a fulfillment of the ideals of the Founding but rather a repudiation: we modern Americans are not the heirs of the Founders but of the people who overthrew and destroyed that political order. This alternate understanding of American identity opens the door to a new understanding of ourselves and our story, and ultimately to a better America.

"America today is not the Founders’ America, but it can be Lincoln’s America. Roosevelt offers a powerful and inspirational rethinking of our country’s history and uncovers a shared past that we can be proud to claim and use as a foundation to work toward a country that fully embodies equality for all."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (177 ratings)
ISBN 978-0226817613 ?
An American Sickness:
How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back
Elisabeth Rosenthal
Penguin Press (April 11, 2017)
No Review

"Dr. Elisabeth L. Rosenthal was appointed editor-in-chief of Kaiser Health News in 2016, after more than 2 decades with The New York Times. She received a B.S. degree in biology from Stanford University, an M.A. degree in English literature from Cambridge University, and an M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School.

"Rosenthal began her Times career as a reporter in the science department, and went on to cover the health and hospitals beat on the metro desk. In 2008, after a stint in Beijing and another in Rome, she returned to the U.S. as a New York-based Times senior writer covering environmental issues.

"Rosenthal went back to healthcare writing after being asked to cover the Affordable Care Act during the 2012 election campaign. Libby’s two-year-long New York Times series “Paying Till it Hurts” (2013-14) won many prizes for both health reporting and its creative use of digital tools. An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take it Back," her first book, grew out of her desire to help patients understand and tackle the high cost of U.S. medicine.

"Kaiser Health News is an independent, non-profit, newsroom based in D.C. focusing on health and health policy. Its stories appear in a wide range of media partners from The New York Times and the Washington Post to NPR and the Daily Beast. (It is not related to Kaiser Permanente or the Kaiser Health System.)"

"At a moment of drastic political upheaval, An American Sickness is a shocking investigation into our dysfunctional healthcare system - and offers practical solutions to its myriad problems.

"In these troubled times, perhaps no institution has unraveled more quickly and more completely than American medicine. In only a few decades, the medical system has been overrun by organizations seeking to exploit for profit the trust that vulnerable and sick Americans place in their healthcare. Our politicians have proven themselves either unwilling or incapable of reining in the increasingly outrageous costs faced by patients, and market-based solutions only seem to funnel larger and larger sums of our money into the hands of corporations. Impossibly high insurance premiums and inexplicably large bills have become facts of life; fatalism has set in. Very quickly Americans have been made to accept paying more for less. How did things get so bad so fast?

"Breaking down this monolithic business into the individual industries—the hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and drug manufacturers—that together constitute our healthcare system, Rosenthal exposes the recent evolution of American medicine as never before. How did healthcare, the caring endeavor, become healthcare, the highly profitable industry? Hospital systems, which are managed by business executives, behave like predatory lenders, hounding patients and seizing their homes. Research charities are in bed with big pharmaceutical companies, which surreptitiously profit from the donations made by working people. Patients receive bills in code, from entrepreneurial doctors they never even saw.

"The system is in tatters, but we can fight back. Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn't just explain the symptoms, she diagnoses and treats the disease itself. In clear and practical terms, she spells out exactly how to decode medical doublespeak, avoid the pitfalls of the pharmaceuticals racket, and get the care you and your family deserve. She takes you inside the doctor-patient relationship and to hospital C-suites, explaining step-by-step the workings of a system badly lacking transparency. This is about what we can do, as individual patients, both to navigate the maze that is American healthcare and also to demand far-reaching reform. An American Sickness is the frontline defense against a healthcare system that no longer has our well-being at heart."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (1,673 ratings)
ISBN 978-1594206757 ?
The Raging 2020s:
Companies, Countries, People - and the Fight for Our Future
Alec Ross
Holt Paperbacks (September 6, 2022)
No Review

"Alec Ross is a New York Times best-selling author and Distinguished Professor at the Business School of l’Universitá di Bologna. His book The Industries of the Future has been translated into 24 languages and been a best-seller on 5 continents.

"Speaking of Ross' new book The Raging 2020s, Adam Grant writes: 'Alec Ross fearlessly confronts one of the fundamental concerns of our time: fixing the broken social contract between people, business, and government. His book will challenge you to rethink some of your assumptions about democracy, capitalism, and globalization.'

"Alec Ross also serves as Board Partner at Amplo, a global venture capital firm, and sits on the board of directors for companies in the fields of technology, finance, education, human capital and cybersecurity.

He began his career as a 6th grade teacher in Baltimore, where he lives with his wife and 3 children."

"In the face of unprecedented global change, New York Times bestselling author Alec Ross proposes a new social contract to restore the balance of power between government, citizens, and business in The Raging 2020s.

"For 150 years, there has been a contract. Companies hold the power to shape our daily lives. The state holds the power to make them fall in line. And the people hold the power to choose their leaders. But now, this balance has shaken loose.

"As the market consolidates, the lines between big business and the halls of Congress have become razor-thin. Private companies have become as powerful as countries. As Walter Isaacson said about Alec Ross’s first book, The Industries of the Future, 'The future is already hitting us, and Ross shows how it can be exciting rather than frightening.'

"Through interviews with the world’s most influential thinkers and stories of corporate activism and malfeasance, government failure and renewal, and innovative economic and political models, Ross proposes a new social contract―one that resets the equilibrium between corporations, the governing, and the governed."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (201 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250848529 ?
A Right To Lie?:
Presidents, Other Liars, and the First Amendment
Catherine J. Ross
University of Pennsylvania Press (November 30, 2021)
No Review
Catherine J. Ross is the Lyle T. Alverson Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School, where she specializes in constitutional law (with particular emphasis on the First Amendment) and law concerning families and children. Her books include Lessons in Censorship: How Schools and Courts Subvert Students' First Amendment Rights and Contemporary Family Law (5th ed.), a co-authored casebook.

"In A Right to Lie?, legal scholar Catherine J. Ross addresses the urgent issue of whether the nation's highest officers, including the president, have a right to lie under the Speech Clause, no matter what damage their falsehoods cause. Does freedom of expression protect even factual falsehoods? If so, are lies by candidates and public officials protected? And is there a constitutional path, without violating the First Amendment, to stop a president whose persistent lies endanger our lives and our democracy?

"Perhaps counter-intuitively, the general answer to each question is "yes." Drawing from dramatic court cases about defamers, proponents of birtherism, braggarts, and office holders, Ross reveals the almost insurmountable constitutional and practical obstacles to legal efforts to rein in public deception. She explains the rules that govern the treatment of lies, while also demonstrating the incalculable damage presidential mendacity may lead to, as revealed in President Trump's lies about the COVID-19 pandemic and the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

"Falsehoods have been at issue in every presidential impeachment proceeding from Nixon to Trump. But, until now, no one has analyzed why public lies might be impeachable offenses, and whether the First Amendment would provide a defense. Noting that speech by public employees does not receive the same First Amendment protection as the speech of ordinary citizens, Ross proposes the constitutionally viable solution of treating presidents as public employees who work for the people. Charged with oversight of the Executive, Congress may—and should—put future presidents on notice that material lies to the public on substantial matters will be deemed a "high crime and misdemeanor" subject to censure and even impeachment. A Right to Lie? explains how this approach could work if the political will were in place."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (12 ratings)
ISBN 978-0812253252 ?
The Plot Against America:
A Novel
Philip Roth
Mariner Books (March 10, 2020)
No Review

"Philip Roth (1933–2018) won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral in 1997. In 1998 he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House and in 2002 the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction, previously awarded to John Dos Passos, William Faulkner and Saul Bellow, among others. He twice won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2005 The Plot Against America received the Society of American Historians’ prize for “the outstanding historical novel on an American theme for 2003–2004” and the W.H. Smith Award for the Best Book of the Year, making Roth the first writer in the forty-six-year history of the prize to win it twice.

"In 2005 Roth became the third living American writer to have his works published in a comprehensive, definitive edition by the Library of America. In 2011 he received the National Humanities Medal at the White House, and was later named the fourth recipient of the Man Booker International Prize. In 2012 he won Spain’s highest honor, the Prince of Asturias Award, and in 2013 he received France’s highest honor, Commander of the Legion of Honor."

"Philip Roth's bestselling alternate history—the chilling story of what happens to one family when America elects a charismatic, isolationist president—is soon to be an HBO limited series.

"In an extraordinary feat of narrative invention, Philip Roth imagines an alternate history where Franklin D. Roosevelt loses the 1940 presidential election to heroic aviator and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh. Shortly thereafter, Lindbergh negotiates a cordial 'understanding' with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism.

"For one boy growing up in Newark, Lindbergh’s election is the first in a series of ruptures that threaten to destroy his small, safe corner of America–and with it, his mother, his father, and his older brother."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (5,784 ratings)
ISBN 978-0358008811 ?
Traitor:
A History of American Betrayal from Benedict Arnold to Donald Trump
David Rothkopf
PublicAffairs (October 27, 2020)
No Review
David Rothkopf is an author and commentator who has written extensively on politics, power and national security. Recent books include Great Questions of Tomorrow, National Insecurity, Power, Inc., Superclass, and Running the World. He is a former senior official in the Clinton Administration and has taught international affairs at Columbia, Georgetown, and Johns Hopkins. He lives in New York City."

"Donald Trump is unfit in almost every respect for the high office he holds. But what distinguishes him from every other bad leader the U.S. has had is that he has repeatedly, egregiously, betrayed his country. Regardless of how Senate Republicans have let him off the hook, the facts available to the public show that Trump has met every necessary standard to define his behavior as traitorous.

"He has clearly broken faith with the people of the country he was chosen to lead, starting long before he took office, then throughout his time in the White House. And we may not yet have seen the last of his crimes. But the story we know so far is so outrageous and disturbing that it raises a question that has never before been presented in American history: is the president of the United States the greatest threat this country faces in the world?

"We also need to understand how the country has historically viewed such crimes and how it has treated them in the past to place what has happened in perspective. After his examination of traitors including Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr, and leaders of the Confederacy, David Rothkopf concludes that Donald Trump and his many abettors have committed the highest-level, greatest, most damaging betrayal in the history of the country."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (374 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250228833 ?
The Storm Is Upon Us:
How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything
Mike Rothschild
Melville House (June 22, 2021)
No Review
"Mike Rothschild is a journalist focused on the intersections between internet culture and politics as seen through the dark glass of conspiracy theories. He has specialized in an investigation of the QAnon conspiracy cult since its inception in 2018, and is one of the first journalists to reveal its connections to past conspiracy theories and scams. Rothschild’s expertise has led to his becoming a leading commentator on the subject for The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, the BBC, and elsewhere."

"Its messaging can seem cryptic, even nonsensical, yet for tens of thousands of people, it explains everything: What is QAnon, where did it come from, and is the Capitol insurgency a sign of where it’s going next?

"On October 5th, 2017, President Trump made a cryptic remark in the State Dining Room at a gathering of military officials. He said it felt like 'the calm before the storm'—then refused to elaborate as puzzled journalists asked him to explain. But on the infamous message boards of 4chan, a mysterious poster going by 'Q Clearance Patriot,' who claimed to be in 'military intelligence,' began the elaboration on their own.

"In the days that followed, Q’s wild yarn explaining Trump's remarks began to rival the sinister intricacies of a Tom Clancy novel, while satisfying the deepest desires of MAGA-America. But did any of what Q predicted come to pass? No. Did that stop people from clinging to every word they were reading, expanding its mythology, and promoting it wider and wider? No.

"Why not? Who were these rapt listeners? How do they reconcile their worldview with the America they see around them? Why do their numbers keep growing? Mike Rothschild, a journalist specializing in conspiracy theories, has been collecting their stories for years, and through interviews with QAnon converts, apostates, and victims, as well as psychologists, sociologists, and academics, he is uniquely equipped to explain the movement and its followers.

"In The Storm Is Upon Us, he takes readers from the background conspiracies and cults that fed the Q phenomenon, to its embrace by right-wing media and Donald Trump, through the rending of families as loved ones became addicted to Q’s increasingly violent rhetoric, to the storming of the Capitol, and on.

"And as the phenomenon shows no sign of calming despite Trump’s loss of the presidency—with everyone from Baby Boomers to Millennial moms proving susceptible to its messaging—and politicians starting to openly espouse its ideology, Rothschild makes a compelling case that mocking the seeming madness of QAnon will get us nowhere. Rather, his impassioned reportage makes clear it's time to figure out what QAnon really is—because QAnon and its relentlessly dark theory of everything isn’t done yet."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (374 ratings)
ISBN 978-1612199290 ?
The Color of Law:
A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Richard Rothstein
Liveright; Illustrated edition (May 2, 2017)
No Review
"Richard Rothstein, the author of The Color of Law and father to co-author Leah Rothstein, has written many books and articles on educational policy and racial inequality. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area."

"In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America’s cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation―that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation―the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments―that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.

"Through extraordinary revelations and extensive research that Ta-Nehisi Coates has lauded as 'brilliant' (The Atlantic), Rothstein comes to chronicle nothing less than an untold story that begins in the 1920s, showing how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning, as millions of African Americans moved in a great historical migration from the south to the north.

"As Jane Jacobs established in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, it was the deeply flawed urban planning of the 1950s that created many of the impoverished neighborhoods we know. Now, Rothstein expands our understanding of this history, showing how government policies led to the creation of officially segregated public housing and the demolition of previously integrated neighborhoods. While urban areas rapidly deteriorated, the great American suburbanization of the post–World War II years was spurred on by federal subsidies for builders on the condition that no homes be sold to African Americans. Finally, Rothstein shows how police and prosecutors brutally upheld these standards by supporting violent resistance to black families in white neighborhoods.

"The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited future discrimination but did nothing to reverse residential patterns that had become deeply embedded. Yet recent outbursts of violence in cities like Baltimore, Ferguson, and Minneapolis show us precisely how the legacy of these earlier eras contributes to persistent racial unrest. 'The American landscape will never look the same to readers of this important book' (Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund), as Rothstein’s invaluable examination shows that only by relearning this history can we finally pave the way for the nation to remedy its unconstitutional past."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (17,632 ratings)
ISBN 978-1612199290 ?
Resistance:
How Women Saved Democracy from Donald Trump
Jennifer Rubin
William Morrow (September 21, 2021)
No Review
Jennifer Rubin writes reported opinion for the Washington Post. She covers politics and policy, foreign and domestic, and provides insight into the conservative movement, the Republican and Democratic parties, and threats to Western democracies. Rubin, who is also an MSNBC contributor, came to the Post after three years with Commentary magazine. Prior to her career in journalism, Rubin practiced labor law for two decades, an experience that informs and enriches her work. She is a mother of two sons and lives with her husband in D.C." – Amazon biography

"In a compelling narrative, bookended by Donald Trump’s 2016 victory and his 2020 defeat, Rubin delivers an absorbing analysis of the women’s counter-Trump revolution. Resistance tracks a set of dynamic women voters, activists and politicians who rose up when Donald Trump took the White House and fundamentally changed the political landscape. From the first Women’s March the day after Trump’s inauguration to the Blue Wave in the 2018 midterms to the flood of female presidential candidates in 2020 to the inauguration of Kamala Harris, women from across the ideological spectrum entered the political arena and became energized in a way America had not witnessed in decades. They marched, they organized, they donated vast sums of cash, they ran for office, they made new alliances. And they defeated Donald Trump.

"Democratic women candidates learned that they could win in large numbers, even in red districts. Black women voters in 2020 surged in Georgia and in suburbs in key swing states. Women across the country voted in greater numbers than in any previous election, flipped the Senate, and ensured victory for the first female Vice President in the nation’s history. While Democrats recorded impressive victories, Republican women delivered critical victories of their own.

"From the White House to Congress, from activists to protesters, from liberals to conservatives, Resistance delivers the first comprehensive portrait of women’s historic political surge provoked by the horror of President Trump. This is the indelible story of how American women transformed their own lives, vanquished Trump, secured unprecedented positions of power and redefined US politics decades to come. Resistance is essential reading for understanding the most important election in American history and the role women played in redesigning modern politics."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (65 ratings)
ISBN 978-0062982131 ?
The Parasitic Mind:
How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense
Gad Saad
Regnery Publishing (October 6, 2020)
No Review

Dr. Gad Saad is Professor of Marketing at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada), and former holder of the Concordia University Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and Darwinian Consumption (2008-2018). He has held Visiting Associate Professorships at Cornell University, Dartmouth College, and the University of California–Irvine. Dr. Saad received the Faculty of Commerce’s Distinguished Teaching Award in June 2000, and was listed as one of the ‘hot’ professors of Concordia University in both the 2001 and 2002 Maclean’s reports on Canadian universities. Saad was appointed Newsmaker of the Week of Concordia University in five consecutive years (2011-2015), and is the co-recipient of the 2015 President’s Media Outreach Award-Research Communicator of the Year (International), which goes to the professor at Concordia University whose research receives the greatest amount of global media coverage.

Professor Saad has pioneered the use of evolutionary psychology in marketing and consumer behavior. His works include The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature (translated into Korean and Turkish); The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption; Evolutionary Psychology in the Business Sciences, along with 75+ scientific papers, many at the intersection of evolutionary psychology and a broad range of disciplines including consumer behavior, marketing, advertising, psychology, medicine, and economics. His Psychology Today blog (Homo Consumericus) and YouTube channel (THE SAAD TRUTH) have garnered 6.4+ million and 20.8+ million total views respectively. He recently started a podcast titled The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad, which is available on all leading podcast platforms. In addition to his scientific work, Dr. Saad is a leading public intellectual who often writes and speaks about idea pathogens that are destroying logic, science, reason, and common sense. His fourth book The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense will be released on October 6, 2020. He received a B.Sc. (1988) and an M.B.A. (1990) both from McGill University, and his M.S. (1993) and Ph.D. (1994) from Cornell University." – Amazon biography

"There's a war against truth... and if we don't win it, intellectual freedom will be a casualty. The West’s commitment to freedom, reason, and true liberalism has never been more seriously threatened than it is today by the stifling forces of political correctness.

"Dr. Gad Saad, the host of the enormously popular YouTube show THE SAAD TRUTH, exposes the bad ideas—what he calls “idea pathogens”—that are killing common sense and rational debate. Incubated in our universities and spread through the tyranny of political correctness, these ideas are endangering our most basic freedoms—including freedom of thought and speech. The danger is grave, but as Dr. Saad shows, politically correct dogma is riddled with logical fallacies. We have powerful weapons to fight back with—if we have the courage to use them.

"A provocative guide to defending reason and intellectual freedom and a battle cry for the preservation of our fundamental rights, The Parasitic Mind will be the most controversial and talked-about book of the year."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (323 ratings)
ISBN 978-1621579595 ?
Never Trump:
The Revolt of the Conservative Elites
Robert P. Saldin & Steven M. Teles
Oxford University Press (May 14, 2020)
No Review
Robert P. Saldin is Professor of Political Science and a Mansfield Center Fellow at the University of Montana. He is the author of When Bad Policy Makes Good Politics (Oxford, 2017) and War, the American State, and Politics since 1898 (2011). He is also a frequent contributor to the popular press, having written for, among others, The Washington Post, National Affairs, The American Interest, and The Washington Monthly. Steven M. Teles is Professor of Political Science at the Johns Hopkins University and a Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center. He is the author or co-author of The Captured Economy (Oxford, 2017); Prison Break (Oxford, 2016); The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement (2008);and Whose Welfare: AFDC and Elite Politics (1996). In addition, he is the co-editor of Conservatism and American Political Development (Oxford, 2009) and Ethnicity, Social Mobility and Public Policy (2005). He has also written widely in a number of general interest publications, from The Nation, Democracy, The Washington Monthly, and The American Prospect, to The Public Interest, National Review, and National Affairs." – Amazon biography

"As it became increasingly apparent that Donald Trump might actually become the Republican party's 2016 presidential nominee, alarmed conservatives coalesced behind a simple, uncompromising slogan: Never Trump. Although the movement initially included a large number of Republican office-holders, its white-hot core was always comprised of the policy experts, public intellectuals, and campaign professionals who play a critical role in the modern political party system. They saw in Trump a repudiation of longstanding conservative doctrine and, in his unprincipled appeals to voters, the kind of demagogue the founders famously warned about. Never Trumpers took their shot at denying Trump the presidency-everything from flailing attempts to coalesce around other Republican candidates and collective letters of opposition, to a desperate third party challenge and even supporting their longtime nemesis Hillary Clinton. But in their attempt to kill the king, they missed. Now on the margins of a party that has enthusiastically united around the president, Never Trumpers have been reduced to the status of a remnant, shut out from government and hoping for a day when their party awakens from its Trumpist spell.

"Based on extensive interviews with conservative opponents of the president, Robert P. Saldin and Steven M. Teles reveal why such a wide range of committed partisans chose to break with their longtime comrades in arms. Never Trump provides a window into the motivations of these conservative professionals and a guide to the long-term consequences that their unprecedented revolt holds for the Republican and Democratic parties, conservatism, and American democracy."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (24 ratings)
ISBN 978-0190880446 ?
Democracy’s Discontent:
A New Edition for Our Perilous Times
Michael J. Sandel
Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press; 2nd edition (October 28, 2022)
No Review
Michael J. Sandel is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University and author of The Tyranny of Merit. His freely available online course 'Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?' has been viewed by tens of millions of people around the world."

"A renowned political philosopher updates his classic book on the American political tradition to address the perils democracy confronts today.

"The 1990s were a heady time. The Cold War had ended, and America’s version of liberal capitalism seemed triumphant. And yet, amid the peace and prosperity, anxieties about the project of self-government could be glimpsed beneath the surface.

"So argued Michael Sandel, in his influential and widely debated book Democracy’s Discontent, published in 1996. The market faith was eroding the common life. A rising sense of disempowerment was likely to provoke backlash, he wrote, from those who would 'shore up borders, harden the distinction between insiders and outsiders, and promise a politics to ‘take back our culture and take back our country,’ to ‘restore our sovereignty’ with a vengeance.'

"Now, a quarter century later, Sandel updates his classic work for an age when democracy’s discontent has hardened into a country divided against itself. In this new edition, he extends his account of America’s civic struggles from the 1990s to the present. He shows how Democrats and Republicans alike embraced a version of finance-driven globalization that created a society of winners and losers and fueled the toxic politics of our time.

"In a work celebrated when first published as 'a remarkable fusion of philosophical and historical scholarship' (Alan Brinkley), Sandel recalls moments in the American past when the country found ways to hold economic power to democratic account. To reinvigorate democracy, Sandel argues in a stirring new epilogue, we need to reconfigure the economy and empower citizens as participants in a shared public life."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (42 ratings)
ISBN 978-0674270718 ?
It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism
Senator Bernie Sanders & John Nichols
Crown (February 21, 2023)
No Review
Bernie Sanders is serving his third term in the U.S. Senate and is the longest-serving Independent member of Congress in American history. He is the chairman of the Budget Committee, where he helped write the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, one of the most significant pieces of legislation in our modern history. In the Senate, Sanders is leading the fight for Medicare for All, for combating climate change, and for making public colleges and universities tuition free.
John Nichols is an award-winning progressive author and journalist who serves as the national affairs correspondent for The Nation." – Amazon biography

"A progressive takedown of the uber-capitalist status quo that has enriched millionaires and billionaires at the expense of the working class, and a blueprint for what transformational change would actually look like.

"It’s OK to be angry about capitalism. Reflecting on our turbulent times, Senator Bernie Sanders takes on the billionaire class and speaks blunt truths about our country’s failure to address the destructive nature of a system that is fueled by uncontrolled greed and rigidly committed to prioritizing corporate profits over the needs of ordinary Americans.

"Sanders argues that unfettered capitalism is to blame for an unprecedented level of income and wealth inequality, is undermining our democracy, and is destroying our planet. How can we accept an economic order that allows three billionaires to control more wealth than the bottom half of our society? How can we accept a political system that allows the super rich to buy elections and politicians? How can we accept an energy system that rewards the fossil fuel corporations causing the climate crisis? Sanders believes that, in the face of these overwhelming challenges, the American people must ask tough questions about the systems that have failed us and demand fundamental economic and political change. This is where the path forward begins.

"It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism presents a vision that extends beyond the promises of past campaigns to reveal what would be possible if the political revolution took place, if we would finally recognize that economic rights are human rights, and if we would work to create a society that provides a decent standard of living for all. This isn’t some utopian fantasy; this is democracy as we should know it."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (1,270 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593238714 ?
The Perfect Weapon:
War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age
David E. Sanger
Crown (June 19, 2018)
No Review
David E. Sanger is national security correspondent for the New York Times and bestselling author of The Inheritance and Confront and Conceal. He has been a member of three teams that won the Pulitzer Prize, including in 2017 for international reporting. A regular contributor to CNN, he also teaches national security policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government."

"The Perfect Weapon is the startling inside story of how the rise of cyberweapons transformed geopolitics like nothing since the invention of the atomic bomb. Cheap to acquire, easy to deny, and usable for a variety of malicious purposes, cyber is now the weapon of choice for democracies, dictators, and terrorists. Two presidents—Bush and Obama—drew first blood with Operation Olympic Games, which used malicious code to blow up Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, and yet America proved remarkably unprepared when its own weapons were stolen from its arsenal and, during President Trump’s first year, turned back on the United States and its allies. And if Obama would begin his presidency by helping to launch the new era of cyberwar, he would end it struggling unsuccessfully to defend against Russia’s broad attack on the 2016 US election.

"Moving from the White House Situation Room to the dens of Chinese government hackers to the boardrooms of Silicon Valley, New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger reveals a world coming face-to-face with the perils of technological revolution, where everyone is a target."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (925 ratings)
ISBN 978-0451497895 ?
New Cold Wars:
China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West
David E. Sanger with Mary K. Brooks
Crown (April 16, 2024)
No Review
David E. Sanger is the White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times and the bestselling author of The Inheritance, Confront and Conceal, and The Perfect Weapon. He has been a member of three teams that won the Pulitzer Prize, including in 2017 for international reporting about Russia’s effort to manipulate the presidential election. A contributor to CNN, he also teaches national security policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government."

"The fast-paced inside story of America’s plunge into a volatile rivalry with the other two great nuclear powers—Xi Jinping’s China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author of The Perfect Weapon.

"New Cold Wars—the latest from the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author of The Perfect Weapon, David E. Sanger—is a fast-paced account of America’s plunge into simultaneous confrontations with two very different adversaries. For years, the United States was confident that the newly democratic Russia and increasingly wealthy China could be lured into a Western-led order that promised prosperity and relative peace—so long as they agreed to Washington’s terms. By the time America emerged from the age of terrorism, it was clear that this had been a fantasy.

"Now the three powers are engaged in a high-stakes struggle for military, economic, political, and technological supremacy, with nations around the world pressured to take sides. Yet all three are discovering that they are maneuvering for influence in a far more turbulent world than they imagined.

"Based on a remarkable array of interviews with top officials from five presidential administrations, U.S. intelligence agencies, foreign governments, and tech companies, Sanger unfolds a riveting narrative spun around the era’s critical questions: Will the mistakes Putin made in his invasion of Ukraine prove his undoing and will he reach for his nuclear arsenal—or will the West’s famously short attention span signal Kyiv’s doom? Will Xi invade Taiwan? Will both men deepen their partnership to undercut America’s dominance? And can a politically dysfunctional America still lead the world?

"Taking readers from the battlefields of Ukraine—where trench warfare and cyberwarfare are interwoven—to the Taiwan headquarters where the world’s most advanced computer chips are produced and on to tense debates in the White House Situation Room, New Cold Wars is a remarkable first-draft history chronicling America’s return to superpower conflict, the choices that lie ahead, and what is at stake for the United States and the world."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (2 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593443590 ?
The Real Majority:
An Extraordinary Examination of the American Electorate
Richard M. Scammon & Ben J. Wattenberg
Coward-McCann; 3rd Edition (January 1, 1970)
No Review
Richard M. Scammon (1915-2001) was an American author, political scientist and elections scholar. He served as Director of the U.S. Bureau of the Census from 1961 to 1965. Afterwards, he worked for decades directing election analysis for NBC News. Ben J. Wattenberg (1933--2015) was an American author, political commentator and demographer, associated with both Republican and Democratic presidents and politicians in the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. National Affairs claimed that Wattenberg 'challenged and reshaped conventional wisdom (...) at least once a decade'. " – Wikipedia

"The Real Majority discovered and defined the middle class, a group whose values and interests were once ignored but that are now catered to by both major parties in this national election year."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (4 ratings)
ISBN 978-0-698-10308-5 ?
Crazy for God:
How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back
Frank Schaeffer
Carroll & Graf (October 5, 2007)
No Review
Frank Schaeffer was born in Switzerland to the famous American evangelical theologian and evangelist Dr. Francis Schaeffer. After a period in Hollywood as a documentary and feature film director, he became a bestselling author of both fiction and nonfiction. Schaeffer has written for USA Today, The Washington Post, Reader's Digest, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times. His previous works about the American Evangelical movement include Portofino and Zermatt. He has written the bestselling Keeping Faith: A Father-Son Story About Love and the United States Marine Corps, about his son's service in the military, which he followed with Faith of Our Sons: A Father's Wartime Diary, and AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service. Frank now resides in Boston and New York City with his wife, Genie."

"Frank Schaeffer grew up in Switzerland's L'Abri, an idealistic community founded by his parents, the American evangelicals Francis and Edith Schaeffer. By the time he was 19, his parents had achieved global fame as best-selling authors and speakers, L'Abri had become a mecca for spiritual seekers worldwide — from Barbara Bush to Timothy Leary — and Frank had joined his father on the evangelical circuit. By the age of 23, he had directed two multi-part religious documentaries and had helped instigate the marriage between the American evangelical community and the anti-abortion movement. But as he spoke before thousands in arenas around America, published his own evangelical bestseller, and worked with such figures as Pat Robertson, Jack Kemp, Jerry Falwell, and Dr. James Dobson, Schaeffer felt alienated, precipitating his own crisis of faith and eventually resulting in his departure.

"Schaeffer has since become a successful secular author. He was reduced to stealing pork chops from the grocery store in LA, rather than take on any more high-paying evangelical speaking gigs.

"With its up-close portraits of the leading figures of the American evangelical movement, Crazy for God is a uniquely revealing and powerful memoir, which tells its story with empathy, humor, and bite."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (498 ratings)
ISBN 978-0786718917 ?
Resolving Gerrymandering:
A Manageable Standard
Robert Schafer
American Bar Association (April 7, 2022)
No Review
Robert Schafer has a BS in physics from Union College, an MS in physics from Yale University, a JD from Harvard Law School, and a PhD in urban planning (with a concentration in economics) from Harvard University. He was an associate professor of city and regional planning at Harvard University. He was one of the founders of the Harvard Civil Rights–Civil Liberties Law Review in 1966 and served as its editor in chief in 1967–68. He practiced law for more than thirty years. He is the author of Inequality: Piketty’s Capital in a Nutshell and The Suburbanization of Multifamily Housing; coauthor of an early quantitative analysis of racial and gender discrimination in mortgage lending, Discrimination in Mortgage Lending; and coauthor of Housing America’s Elderly. He is a coeditor of Housing Urban America."

"This book proposes a manageable standard for resolving gerrymandering without the entanglements of justiciability and political questions. The standard focuses on the mechanism by which gerrymandering operates, not on the outcome. The precedent for this focus is the solution to disparate population counts in the one-person, one-vote cases. This focus is necessary because any remedy needs to work with other unconstitutional inequities (such as income based gerrymandering) as well as ones based on partisanship."

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 978-1639050345 ?
Right Turn:
American Life in the Reagan-Bush Era, 1980-1992
Michael Schaller
Oxford University Press (March 16, 2006)
No Review
Michael Schaller is at University of Arizona.

"An entire generation has passed since the election that installed Ronald Reagan into the White House. This brisk narrative fills a significant gap in the literature on recent U.S. history, making use of diverse memoir material, journalistic accounts, biographies, and specialized policy studies, including those produced recently. Rather than focusing solely on the Reagan and Bush administrations or presidencies, Right Turn addresses the various policy, cultural, social, economic, and technological issues that made the 1980s and early 1990s such an interesting product of the events that proceeded it—and such a vital force in American life that followed. Beginning in the late 1970s and concluding in the early 1990s, this book examines how conservative ideas and organizations reemerged from the shadows of the Great Depression and the New Deal. It describes national politics and public policies implemented by conservative Republicans, the dramatic climax of the Cold War, and the ways in which economic, legal, social, and cultural developments affected ordinary Americans in all their diversity. Featuring numerous photographs throughout and detailed guides to specialized readings at the end of each chapter, Right Turn is ideal for history and political science courses that cover post-1945 America as well as the 1980s and 1990s."

Rating by Amazon customers: 3.8 (10 ratings)
ISBN 978-0195172560 ?
White Rural Rage:
The Threat to American Democracy
Tom Schaller & Paul Waldman
Random House (February 27, 2024)
No Review
"Tom Schaller is a professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. A former columnist for The Baltimore Sun, he has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. A regular analyst of U.S. politics, he has appeared on ABC, CBS, MSNBC, and The Colbert Report. He is the author or co-author of five other books, including Common Enemies, The Stronghold, and Whistling Past Dixie. Paul Waldman is a journalist and opinion writer whose work has appeared in dozens of newspapers, magazines, and digital outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, The Week, MSNBC, and CNN. He is a former columnist at The Washington Post and the author or co-author of four previous books on media and politics, including Being Right Is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn from Conservative Success and The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists, and the Stories that Shape the Political World."

"A searing portrait and damning takedown of America’s proudest citizens—who are also the least likely to defend its core principles

"White rural voters hold the greatest electoral sway of any demographic group in the United States, yet rural communities suffer from poor healthcare access, failing infrastructure, and severe manufacturing and farming job losses. Rural voters believe our nation has betrayed them, and to some degree, they’re right. In White Rural Rage, Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman explore why rural Whites have failed to reap the benefits from their outsize political power and why, as a result, they are the most likely group to abandon democratic norms and traditions. Their rage—stoked daily by Republican politicians and the conservative media—now poses an existential threat to the United States.

"Schaller and Waldman show how vulnerable U.S. democracy has become to rural Whites who, despite legitimate grievances, are increasingly inclined to hold racist and xenophobic beliefs, to believe in conspiracy theories, to accept violence as a legitimate course of political action, and to exhibit antidemocratic tendencies. Rural White Americans’ attitude might best be described as 'I love my country, but not our country,' Schaller and Waldman argue. This phenomenon is the patriot paradox of rural America: The citizens who take such pride in their patriotism are also the least likely to defend core American principles. And by stoking rural Whites’ anger rather than addressing the hard problems they face, conservative politicians and talking heads create a feedback loop of resentments that are undermining American democracy.

"Schaller and Waldman provocatively critique both the structures that permit rural Whites’ disproportionate influence over American governance and the prospects for creating a pluralist, inclusive democracy that delivers policy solutions that benefit rural communities. They conclude with a political reimagining that offers a better future for both rural people and the rest of America."

Rating by Amazon customers: 3.3 (190 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593729144 ?
The Great Leveler:
Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century
Walter Scheidel
Princeton University Press; Reprint edition (September 18, 2018)
Part of: The Princeton Economic History of the Western World (55 books)
No Review
"Walter Scheidel is the Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History, and a Kennedy-Grossman Fellow in Human Biology at Stanford University. The author or editor of sixteen previous books, he has published widely on premodern social and economic history, demography, and comparative history. He lives in Palo Alto, California."

"How only violence and catastrophes have consistently reduced inequality throughout world history.

"Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes. Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return. The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world.

"Ever since humans began to farm, herd livestock, and pass on their assets to future generations, economic inequality has been a defining feature of civilization. Over thousands of years, only violent events have significantly lessened inequality. The 'Four Horsemen' of leveling―mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues―have repeatedly destroyed the fortunes of the rich. Scheidel identifies and examines these processes, from the crises of the earliest civilizations to the cataclysmic world wars and communist revolutions of the twentieth century. Today, the violence that reduced inequality in the past seems to have diminished, and that is a good thing. But it casts serious doubt on the prospects for a more equal future.

"An essential contribution to the debate about inequality, The Great Leveler provides important new insights about why inequality is so persistent―and why it is unlikely to decline anytime soon."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (631 ratings)
ISBN 978-0691183251 ?
Midnight in Washington:
How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could
Adam Schiff
Random House (October 12, 2021)
No Review
Adam Schiff is the United States Representative for California’s 28th Congressional District. In his role as Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Schiff led the first impeachment of Donald J. Trump. Before he served in Congress, he worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles and as a California State Senator. He and his wife, Eve, have two children, Alexa and Elijah." – Amazon biography

"In the years leading up to the election of Donald Trump, Congressman Adam Schiff had already been sounding the alarm over the resurgence of autocracy around the world, and the threat this posed to the United States. But as he led the probe into Donald Trump’s Russia and Ukraine-related abuses of presidential power, Schiff came to the terrible conclusion that the principal threat to American democracy now came from within.

"In Midnight in Washington, Schiff argues that the Trump presidency has so weakened our institutions and compromised the Republican Party that the peril will last for years, requiring unprecedented vigilance against the growing and dangerous appeal of authoritarianism. The congressman chronicles step by step just how our democracy was put at such risk, and traces his own path to meeting the crisis—from serious prosecutor, to congressman with an expertise in national security and a reputation for bipartisanship, to liberal lightning rod, scourge of the right, and archenemy of a president. Schiff takes us inside his team of impeachment managers and their desperate defense of the constitution amid the rise of a distinctly American brand of autocracy.

"Deepening our understanding of prominent public moments, Schiff reveals the private struggles, the internal conflicts, and the triumphs of courage that came with defending the republic against a lawless president—but also the slow surrender of people that he had worked with and admired to the dangerous immorality of a president engaged in an historic betrayal of his office. Schiff’s fight for democracy is one of the great dramas of our time, told by the man who became the president’s principal antagonist. It is a story that began with Trump but does not end with him, taking us through the disastrous culmination of the presidency and Schiff’s account of January 6, 2021, and how the anti-democratic forces Trump unleashed continue to define his party, making the future of democracy in America more uncertain than ever."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (5,075 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593231524 ?
The Hollow Parties:
The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics
Daniel Schlozman & Sam Rosenfeld
Princeton University Press (May 7, 2024)
Part of: Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparative Perspectives (65 books)
No Review
Daniel Schlozman is associate professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of When Movements Anchor Parties: Electoral Alignments in American History (Princeton). Sam Rosenfeld is associate professor of political science at Colgate University. He is the author of The Polarizers: Postwar Architects of Our Partisan Era."

"A major history from the Founding to our embittered present that 'explains the void' (Politico) at the center of America’s political parties.

"America’s political parties are hollow shells of what they could be, locked in a polarized struggle for power and unrooted as civic organizations. The Hollow Parties takes readers from the rise of mass party politics in the Jacksonian era through the years of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Today’s parties, at once overbearing and ineffectual, have emerged from the interplay of multiple party traditions that reach back to the Founding.

"Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld paint unforgettable portraits of figures such as Martin Van Buren, whose pioneering Democrats invented the machinery of the mass political party, and Abraham Lincoln and other heroic Republicans of that party’s first generation who stood up to the Slave Power. And they show how today’s fractious party politics arose from the ashes of the New Deal order in the 1970s. Activists in the wake of the 1968 Democratic National Convention transformed presidential nominations but failed to lay the foundations for robust, movement-driven parties. Instead, modern American conservatism hollowed out the party system, deeming it a mere instrument for power.

"Party hollowness lies at the heart of our democratic discontents. With historical sweep and political acuity, The Hollow Parties offers powerful answers to pressing questions about how the nation’s parties became so dysfunctional—and how they might yet realize their promise."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.1 (10 ratings)
ISBN 978-0691248554 ?
Donald Trump v. The United States:
Inside the Struggle to Stop a President
Michael S. Schmidt
Random House (September 1, 2020)
No Review
"Michael S. Schmidt is a two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington correspondent for The New York Times. Over his fifteen years at the Times, he has covered the investigations of the Trump presidency, the Pentagon, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the war in Iraq. He started his career at The New York Times as a clerk answering the phones on the foreign desk before becoming a sports reporter covering performance-enhancing drugs and legal issues. He is a graduate of Lafayette College." – Amazon biography

"In the early days of the Trump presidency, the people who work in the institutions that make America America saw Trump up close in the Oval Office and became convinced that they had to stand up to an unbound president. These officials faced a situation without parallel in American history: What do you do, and who do you call, if you are the only one standing between the president, his extraordinary powers, and the abyss?

"Michael S. Schmidt’s Donald Trump v. The United States tells the dramatic, high-stakes story of those who felt compelled to confront and try to contain the most powerful man in the world as he shredded norms and sought to expand his power.

"Schmidt has broken many of the major stories of the Trump era, from the news of Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email account to the report on former FBI director James Comey’s contemporaneous memos of conversations with Trump that led directly to the appointment of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Now he takes us inside the defining events of the presidency, chronicles them up close, and records the clash between an increasingly emboldened president and those around him, who find themselves trying to thwart the president they had pledged to serve, unsure whether he is acting in the interest of the country, his ego, his family business, or Russia. Through their eyes and ears, we observe an epic struggle.

"Drawing on secret FBI and White House documents and confidential sources inside federal law enforcement and the West Wing, Donald Trump v. The United States is vital journalism, recording the shocking reality of a presidency like no other, a riveting contemporary history, and a lasting account of just how fragile and vulnerable the institutions of American democracy really are."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (2,551 ratings)
ISBN 978-1984854667 ?
A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door:
The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School
Jack Schneider & Jennifer Berkshire
The New Press (November 17, 2020)
No Review
"Jack Schneider is the author of three books, a co-author (with Jennifer Berkshire) of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School (The New Press), and an award-winning education historian. He is a host of the education podcast Have You Heard and lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Jennifer Berkshire is a freelance journalist and a host of the education podcast Have You Heard. The co-author (with Jack Schneider) of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School (The New Press), she lives in Gloucester, Massachusetts." – Amazon biography

"A trenchant analysis of how public education is being destroyed in overt and deceptive ways—and how to fight back

"Across the U.S., state legislatures—often under the cover of darkness, and usually in spite of public opposition—are passing bills that channel public dollars to private schools. These voucher schemes promise to transfer billions from state treasuries to upper-income families. But that's just the start. Opponents of public schools want to dismantle the public education system entirely. Outrageous and unfounded attacks on the schools-about Critical Race Theory, 'gender ideology,' and 'grooming'-are all part of a broader strategy to sow doubt and distrust. This is the end game.

"Education historian Jack Schneider and journalist Jennifer Berkshire trace the war on public education to its origins, offering the deep backstory necessary to understand the threat presently posed to America's schools. The book also looks forward to imagine how current policy efforts will reshape the educational landscape and remake America's future. A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door offers readers a lively, accessible, yet scholarly view of a decades-long conservative cause: unmaking the system that serves over 90% of students in the U.S. Presenting a clear view of the ideology motivating this assault, the book also maps the future-outlining how current policy efforts will reshape the educational landscape and remake American democracy."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (119 ratings)
ISBN 978-1620974940 ?
The Madman Theory:
Trump Takes On the World
Jim Sciutto
Harper (August 11, 2020)
No Review
"Jim Sciutto is CNN's chief national security correspondent and anchor of CNN Newsroom. After more than two decades as a foreign correspondent stationed in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, he returned to Washington to cover the Defense Department, the State Department, and intelligence agencies for CNN. His work has earned him Emmy Awards, the George Polk Award, the Edward R. Murrow award, and the Merriman Smith Memorial Award for excellence in presidential coverage. A graduate of Yale and a Fulbright Fellow, he lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Gloria Riviera, who is a crisis communications professional and journalist for ABC News, and their three children." – Amazon biography

"Richard Nixon tried it first. Hoping to make communist bloc countries uneasy and thus unstable, Nixon let them think he was just crazy enough to nuke them. He called this 'the madman theory.' Nearly half a century later, President Trump has employed his own 'madman theory,' sometimes intentionally and sometimes not. Trump praises Kim Jong-un and their 'love notes,' admires and flatters Vladimir Putin, and gives a greenlight to Recep Tayyip Erdogan to invade Syria. Meanwhile, he attacks US institutions and officials, ignores his own advisors, and turns his back on US allies from Canada and Mexico to NATO to Ukraine to the Kurds at war with ISIS. Trump is willing to make the nation's most sensitive and consequential decisions while often ignoring the best information and intelligence available to him. He continually catches the world off guard, but is it working?

"In The Madman Theory, Jim Sciutto shows how Trump's supporters assume he has a strategy for long-term success — that he is somehow playing three-dimensional chess. Now that we are four years into his presidency, we can see his unpredictable focus on short-term headlines has in fact lead to predictably mediocre results in the short and long run. Trump's foreign policy has undermined American values and national security interests, while hurting allies who have been on our side for decades, leaving them isolated and vulnerable without American support. Meanwhile, he comforts and emboldens our enemies. The White House's revolving door of staff demonstrates that Trump has no real plan; all serious policymakers—and those who would be a check on his most destructive impulses—have been exiled or jumped ship.

"Sciutto has interviewed a wide swath of current and former administration officials to assemble the first comprehensive portrait of the impact of Trump's erratic foreign policy. Smart, authoritative, and compelling, The Madman Theory is the definitive take on Trump's calamitous legacy around the globe, showing how his proclivity for chaos is creating a world which is more unstable, violent, and impoverished than it was before."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (653 ratings)
ISBN 978-0063005686 ?
One Person, One Vote:
A Surprising History of Gerrymandering in America
Nick Seabrook
Pantheon (June 14, 2022)
No Review
"Nick Seabrook is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of North Florida. The author of Drawing the Lines: Constraints on Gerrymandering in U.S. Politics, he lives in Jacksonville, Florida."

"Gerrymandering is the manipulation of election districts for partisan and political gain. Instead of voters picking the politicians they want, politicians pick the voters they need to get the election results they’re after. Surprisingly, gerrymandering has been around since before our nation’s founding. And with technology, those drawing the redistricting lines have, now more than ever, been able to microtarget their electoral manipulations with unprecedented levels of precision.

"Nick Seabrook, an authority on constitutional and election law and an expert on gerrymandering (pronounced with a hard G!), has written an illuminating, urgently needed book on how our elections have been rigged through redistricting, beginning with the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, and extending to the twentieth century’s gerrymandering battles at the Supreme Court and today’s high-tech manipulations of election districts.

"Seabrook writes of Patrick Henry, who used redistricting to settle an old score with political foe and fellow Founding Father James Madison (almost preventing the Bill of Rights from happening). He writes of Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry, and corrects the mistaken notion of the derivation of the term 'gerrymander.' He writes of Abraham Lincoln and how his desire to preserve the Union led him to manipulate the admission of new states in order to maintain his majority in the Senate.

"And we come to understand the place of the Supreme Court in its fierce battles regarding gerrymandering throughout the twentieth century. First was Felix Frankfurter, who fought for decades to prevent the judiciary from involving itself in disputes concerning the drawing of districts. Then came the Warren Court and its series of civil rights cases culminating in the landmark decision (Reynolds v. Sims), written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, which says that state legislatures, unlike the United States Congress, must have representation in both houses based on districts containing equal populations—with redistricting as needed following each census. The result has been ever-increasing, hard-fought wrangling between the two political parties after each census.

"Seabrook explores the rise of the most partisan gerrymanders in American history, put into place by the Republican Party after the 2010 census, and how the battle has shifted to the states via REDMAP—the GOP’s successful strategy of the last decade to control state governments and rig the results of state legislative and congressional elections."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (23 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593315866 ?
We Should Have Seen It Coming:
From Reagan to Trump—A Front-Row Seat to a Political Revolution
Gerald F. Seib
Random House; Illustrated Edition (August 25, 2020)
No Review
"Gerald F. Seib is the executive Washington editor of The Wall Street Journal, where he writes the weekly "Capital Journal" column. Previously the Washington bureau chief of the Journal, he reported on the Middle East for the Journal in the early 1980s, and covered the White House from 1987 through 1992. He has moderated three presidential debates, and interviewed every president since Ronald Reagan. He won the Merriman Smith Award for coverage of the presidency, the Aldo Beckman Award for coverage of the White House, and the Gerald R. Ford Foundation Prize. He was part of a team of reporters who won the Pulitzer Prize in the breaking news category for their coverage of 9/11. In 2005, he won the William Allen White Foundation national citation, and in 2009 the National Press Club's award for political analysis. He appears as an analyst on CNBC, Fox News, PBS's Washington Week, CBS's Face the Nation and NBC's Meet the Press. With CNN's John Harwood, he wrote Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power." – Amazon biography

"In 1980, President-Elect Ronald Reagan ushered in conservatism as the most powerful political force in America. For four decades, New Deal liberalism had been the country’s dominant motif, creating such popular programs as Social Security and Medicare, but it had become creaky in the face of soaring inflation, high unemployment, and a growing sense that the United States was no longer the dominant force on the world stage. Reagan's efforts to reshape the government with tax cuts, deregulation, increased military spending, and a more conservative social policy faltered at first. But the economy roared back, and the Reagan revolution was on.

"In We Should Have Seen It Coming, veteran journalist Gerald F. Seib shows how this conservative movement came to dominate national politics, then began to evolve into the populist movement that Donald Trump rode to power. Conservative institutions including the Heritage Foundation, the National Rifle Association, Americans for Tax Reform, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News gave the conservative movement a support system, paving the way for Newt Gingrich's Contract with America and George W. Bush's compassionate conservatism. But we also see multiple warning signs, many overlooked or misread, that a populist revolution was brewing. Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, Sarah Palin, and the Tea Party—all were precursors of the Trump takeover.

"With behind-the-scenes anecdotes, Seib explains how Trump capitalized on that populist movement to victory in 2016, then began breaking from conservative orthodoxy once in office. He shows how Trump altered Republican relations with the business world, shattered conservative precepts on trade and immigration and challenged America’s long-standing alliances. This scintillating work of journalism brings new insight to the most important political story of our time."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (198 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593135150 ?
The Founding Myth:
Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American
Andrew L. Seidel
Dan Barker (Preface)
Susan Jacoby (Foreword)
Union Square & Co.; Illustrated edition (May 14, 2019)
No Review
"Andrew L. Seidel works as a constitutional attorney at the Freedom from Religion Foundation (ffrf.org), litigating cases involving religion and the Constitution. He has appeared on Fox and Friends, MSNBC, and The O'Reilly Factor; numerous radio shows; speaks and writes extensively about religious freedom; and has been profiled on BBC News, BuzzFeed, International Business Times, and more." – Amazon biography

"Do 'In God We Trust,' the Declaration of Independence, and other historical 'evidence' prove that America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles? Are the Ten Commandments the basis for American law? A constitutional attorney dives into the debate about religion’s role in America’s founding.

"In today’s contentious political climate, understanding religion’s role in American government is more important than ever. Christian nationalists assert that our nation was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, and advocate an agenda based on this popular historical claim. But is this belief true? The Founding Myth answers the question once and for all. Andrew L. Seidel, a constitutional attorney at the Freedom from Religion Foundation, builds his case point by point, comparing the Ten Commandments to the Constitution and contrasting biblical doctrine with America’s founding philosophy, showing that the Bible contradicts the Declaration of Independence’s central tenets. Thoroughly researched, this persuasively argued and fascinating book proves that America was not built on the Bible and that Christian nationalism is, in fact, un-American."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (1,342 ratings)
ISBN 978-1454933274 ?
American Crusade:
How the Supreme Court Is Weaponizing Religious Freedom
Andrew L. Seidel
Erwin Chemerinsky (Foreword)
Union Square & Co. (September 27, 2022)
No Review
"Andrew L Seidel is an author and attorney who's defended the First Amendment for more than a decade, both in and out of court. Andrew dedicated his career to challenging religious privilege and battling Christian Nationalism. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book The Founding Myth; has appeared on Fox and Friends, MSNBC, The O'Reilly Factor, and numerous radio shows; speaks and writes extensively about religious freedom; and has been profiled by BBC News, Buzzfeed, International Business Times, and more. After a decade as a constitutional attorney and director with the Freedom From Religion Foundation, he joined Americans United for Separation of Church and State. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
Erwin Chemerinsky is Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, and President of the Association of American Law Schools. He is a contributing writer for the Opinion section of the Los Angeles Times, and writes regular columns for the Sacramento Bee, the ABA Journal, and the Daily Journal, and frequent op-eds in newspapers across the country. He frequently argues appellate cases, including in the Supreme Court. He was named the most influential person in legal education in the United States by National Jurist magazine in 2017." – Amazon biography

"Is a fight against equality and for privilege a fight for religious supremacy? Andrew L. Seidel, a constitutional attorney and author of the critically acclaimed book The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American, dives into the debate on religious liberty, the modern attempt to weaponize religious freedom, and the Supreme Court's role in that 'crusade.'

"Seidel examines some of the key Supreme Court cases of the last thirty years—including Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (a bakery that refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple), Trump v. Hawaii (the anti-Muslim travel ban case), American Legion v. American Humanist Association (related to a group maintaining a 40-foot Christian cross on government-owned land), and Tandon v. Newsom (a Santa Clara Bible group exempted from Covid health restrictions), as well as the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade—and how a hallowed legal protection, freedom of religion, has been turned into a tool to advance privilege and impose religion on others. This is a meticulously researched and deeply insightful account of our political landscape with a foreword provided by noted constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, author of The Case Against the Supreme Court.

"The issue of church versus state is more relevant than ever in today’s political climate and with the conservative majority status of the current Supreme Court. This book is a standout on the shelf for fans of Michelle Alexander, Bob Woodward, and Christopher Hitchens. Readers looking for critiques of the rise of Christian nationalism, like Jesus and John Wayne, and examinations like How Democracies Die will devour Seidel's analysis."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (118 ratings)
ISBN 978-1454943921 ?
The Cruelty Is the Point:
The Past, Present, and Future of Trump's America
Adam Serwer
One World (June 29, 2021)
No Review
"Adam Serwer has written for The Atlantic since 2016, focusing on contemporary politics while often viewing it through the lens of history. Serwer was a Spring Fellow at the Shorenstein Center at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University as well as the Ira Lipman Fellow at the Columbia University School of Journalism. He is the recipient of the 2019 Hillman Prize for opinion journalism. He lives in San Antonio, Texas, with his family." – Amazon biography

"Trump summoned the most treacherous forces in American history and conducted them with the ease of a grand maestro.

"Like many of us, Adam Serwer didn’t know that Donald Trump would win the 2016 election. But over the four years that followed, the Atlantic staff writer became one of our most astute analysts of the Trump presidency and the volatile powers it harnessed. The shock that greeted Trump’s victory, and the subsequent cruelty of his presidency, represented a failure to confront elements of the American past long thought vanquished.

"In this searing collection, Serwer chronicles the Trump administration not as an aberration but as an outgrowth of the inequalities the United States was founded on. Serwer is less interested in the presidential spectacle than in the ideological and structural currents behind Trump’s rise—including a media that was often blindsided by the ugly realities of what the administration represented and how it came to be.

"While deeply engaged with the moment, Serwer’s writing is also haunted by ghosts of an unresolved American past, a past that torments the present. In bracing new essays and previously published works, he explores white nationalism, myths about migration, the political power of police unions, and the many faces of anti-Semitism. For all the dynamics he examines, cruelty is the glue, the binding agent of a movement fueled by fear and exclusion. Serwer argues that rather than pretending these four years didn’t happen or dismissing them as a brief moment of madness, we must face what made them possible. Without acknowledging and confronting these toxic legacies, the fragile dream of American multiracial democracy will remain vulnerable to another ambitious demagogue."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (782 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593230800 ?
The Midnight Kingdom:
A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis
Jared Yates Sexton
Dutton (January 17, 2023)
No Review
"Jared Yates Sexton is the author of American Rule, The Man They Wanted Me to Be, and The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore. His political writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The New Republic, Politico, and Salon.com. Sexton is also the host of TheMuckrake podcast, the author of three collections of fiction, and an associate professor of creative writing at Georgia Southern University." – Amazon biography

"In his 2020 book American Rule, Jared Yates Sexton took a hard look at our nation’s history: namely, the abuses committed by those in power, and the comforting myths that provided them with cover and shaped the way we view ourselves up to the present. His approach and the narrative he uncovered proved worryingly relevant, as Americans struggle with an identity crisis in an increasingly divided public square.

"Now in The Midnight Kingdom, Sexton applies this lens on a global scale. Starting in ancient Rome and working its way to modern times, the history focuses on three intertwined forces, all foundational to the concept of “the West”: political power, religious indoctrination, and economic dominance. Along the way, Sexton exposes the hypocrisy and conspiratorial thinking that informed Western society’s self-image and inspired its many conquests. He examines those societies throughout history that took a more egalitarian approach to gender, religion, and community—and were subjugated and exploited in return. Perhaps most important, he tugs at the threads connecting the mythic past to the complexities of today: the ascent of imperialism, the terrible power of capital, and the rise of political and religious extremism that now threaten our freedoms and very lives.

"Bracing and compulsively readable, The Midnight Kingdom takes a critical look at the forces that have shaped humanity for centuries—and invites us to seek a radically different future."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (54 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593185230 ?
Broken:
Can the Senate Save Itself and the Country?
Ira Shapiro
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (January 15, 2018)
No Review
"Ira Shapiro, author of The Last Great Senate: Courage and Statesmanship in Times of Crisis (Public Affairs, 2012) has worked in senior positions in the U.S. Senate and served as a leading U.S. trade negotiator, ultimately earning the rank of ambassador. He resides in Potomac, Maryland."

"While the hyper-partisanship in Washington that has stunned the world has been building for decades, Ira Shapiro argues that the U.S. Senate has suffered most acutely from the loss of its political center.

"In Broken, Ira Shapiro, a former senior Senate staffer and author of the critically-acclaimed book The Last Great Senate, offers an expert’s account of some of the most prominent battles of the past decade and lays out what must be done to restore the Senate’s lost luster. Shapiro places the Senate at 'ground zero for America’s political dysfunction"—the institution that has failed the longest and the worst. Because the Senate, at its best, represented the special place where the Democrats and Republicans worked together to transcend ideological and regional differences and find common ground, its decline has intensified the nation’s polarization, by institutionalizing it at the highest level. Shapiro documents this decline and evaluates the prospects of restoration that could provide a way out of the polarized morass that has engulfed Congress.

"With a narrative that runs right through the first year of the Trump presidency, Broken will be essential reading for all concerned about the state of American politics and the future of our country."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (14 ratings)
ISBN 978-1538105825 ?
The Betrayal:
How Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans Abandoned America
Ira Shapiro
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (May 17, 2022)
No Review
"Ira Shapiro's forty-five year Washington career has focused on American politics and international trade. Mr. Shapiro served twelve years in senior staff positions in the U.S. Senate, working for a series of distinguished senators: Jacob Javits, Gaylord Nelson, Abraham Ribicoff, Thomas Eagleton, Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller. He served in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative during the Clinton administration, first as General Counsel and then chief negotiator with Japan and Canada, with the rank of ambassador. From 2012 to 2017, he was the chairman of the National Association of Japan-America Societies (NAJAS) and received a Commendation from the Foreign Minister of Japan. He is the author of two previous critically-acclaimed books about the Senate: The Last Great Senate: Courage and Statesmanship in Times of Crisis (2012) and Broken: Can the Senate Save Itself and the Country? (2018). His articles have appeared in The New York Times, U.S. Today, cnn.com, The Hill, Bloomberg, The Daily Caller, Newsmax, and several local newspapers around the country. Ira currently resides in Bethesda, Maryland." – Amazon biography

"In two previous highly regarded books on the U.S. Senate, Ira Shapiro chronicled the institution from its apogee in the 1970s through its decline in the decades since. Now, Shapiro turns his gaze to how the Senate responded to the challenges posed by the Trump administration and its prospects under President Biden. The Founding Fathers gave the US Senate many functions, but it had one fundamental responsibility—its raison d’etre: to provide the check against a dangerous president who threatened our democracy. Two hundred and thirty years later, when Donald Trump, a potential authoritarian, finally reached the White House, the Senate should have served as both America’s first and last lines of defense. Instead, we had the nightmare scenario: today’s Senate, reduced through a long period of decline to a hyper-partisan, gridlocked shadow of its former self, was unable to meet its fundamental responsibility. Shapiro documents the pivotal challenges facing the Senate during the Trump administration, arguing that the body’s failure to provide leadership represents the most catastrophic failure of government in American history. The last section covers the Senate’s performance during President Biden’s first year in office and looks forward to the 2022 Senate elections and beyond."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (234 ratings)
ISBN 978-1538163979 ?
The Family:
The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
Jeff Sharlet
Harper (May 20, 2008)
No Review
"Jeff Sharlet is a visiting research scholar at New York University's Center for Religion and Media. He is a contributing editor for Harper's and Rolling Stone, the coauthor, with Peter Manseau, of Killing the Buddha, and the editor of TheRevealer.org. He lives in Brooklyn, New York." – Amazon biography

"They are the Family—fundamentalism's avant-garde, waging spiritual war in the halls of American power and around the globe. They consider themselves the new chosen—congressmen, generals, and foreign dictators who meet in confidential cells, to pray and plan for a 'leadership led by God,' to be won not by force but through 'quiet diplomacy.' Their base is a leafy estate overlooking the Potomac in Arlington, Virginia, and Jeff Sharlet is the only journalist to have reported from inside its walls.

"The Family is about the other half of American fundamentalist power—not its angry masses, but its sophisticated elites. Sharlet follows the story back to Abraham Vereide, an immigrant preacher who in 1935 organized a small group of businessmen sympathetic to European fascism, fusing the far right with his own polite but authoritarian faith. From that core, Vereide built an international network of fundamentalists who spoke the language of establishment power, a 'family' that thrives to this day. In public, they host Prayer Breakfasts; in private, they preach a gospel of 'biblical capitalism,' military might, and American empire. Citing Hitler, Lenin, and Mao as leadership models, the Family's current leader, Doug Coe, declares, 'We work with power where we can, build new power where we can't.'

"Sharlet's discoveries dramatically challenge conventional wisdom about American fundamentalism, revealing its crucial role in the unraveling of the New Deal, the waging of the cold war, and the no-holds-barred economics of globalization. The question Sharlet believes we must ask is not 'What do fundamentalists want?' but 'What have they already done?'

"Part history, part investigative journalism, The Family is a compelling account of how fundamentalism came to be interwoven with American power, a story that stretches from the religious revivals that have shaken this nation from its beginning to fundamentalism's new frontiers. No other book about the right has exposed the Family or revealed its far-reaching impact on democracy, and no future reckoning of American fundamentalism will be able to ignore it."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (874 ratings)
ISBN 978-0060559793 ?
The Undertow:
Scenes from a Slow Civil War
Jeff Sharlet
W. W. Norton & Company (March 21, 2023)
No Review
"Jeff Sharlet is the New York Times best-selling author or editor of eight books, including The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, adapted into a Netflix documentary series, and This Brilliant Darkness. His reporting on LGBTIQ+ rights around the world has received the National Magazine Award, the Molly Ivins Prize, and Outright International’s Outspoken Award. His writing and photography have appeared in many publications, including Vanity Fair, for which he is a contributing editor; the New York Times Magazine; GQ; Esquire; Harper’s; and VQR, for which he is an editor at large. He is the Frederick Sessions Beebe ’35 Professor in the Art of Writing at Dartmouth College, where he lives in the woods with many animals." – Amazon biography

"An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies―sometimes realities―of violence.

"Across the country, men 'of God' glorify materialism, a gluttony of the soul, while citing Scripture and preparing for civil war―a firestorm they long for as an absolution and exaltation. Lies, greed, and glorification of war boom through microphones at hipster megachurches that once upon a time might have preached peace and understanding. Political rallies are as aflame with need and giddy expectation as religious revivals. At a conference for incels, lonely single men come together to rage against women. On the Far Right, everything is heightened―love into adulation, fear into vengeance, anger into white-hot rage. Here, in the undertow, our forty-fifth president, a vessel of conspiratorial fears and fantasies, continues to rise to sainthood, and the insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, killed on January 6 at the Capitol, is beatified as a martyr of white womanhood.

"Framing this dangerous vision, Sharlet remembers and celebrates the courage of those who sing a different song of community, and of an America long dreamt of and yet to be fully born, dedicated to justice and freedom for all.

"Exploring a geography of grief and uncertainty in the midst of plague and rising fascism, The Undertow is a necessary reckoning with our precarious present that brings to light a decade of American failures as well as a vision for American possibility."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (34 ratings)
ISBN 978-1324006497 ?
What Went Wrong with Capitalism
Ruchir Sharma
Simon & Schuster (June 11, 2024)
No Review
"Ruchir Sharma is chairman of Rockefeller International and founder and chief investment officer of Breakout Capital, an investment firm focused on emerging markets. He moved to Rockefeller in 2022 after a twenty-five-year career at Morgan Stanley, where he was head of emerging markets and chief global strategist. Based in New York, he is a contributing editor at the Financial Times and a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times. His work has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and Foreign Policy. He is the author of four books, the international bestseller Breakout Nations, the New York Times bestseller The Rise and Fall of Nations, Democracy on the Road, and The 10 Rules of Successful Nations."

"An 'eye-opening' (The New York Times), 'absolutely fascinating' (Fareed Zakaria, CNN host and commentator) look at a how a century of expanding government has distorted financial markets, stoked massive inequality, and soaked America in debt.

"Capitalism didn’t fail, it was ruined…

"What went wrong with capitalism? Ruchir Sharma’s account is not like any you will have heard before. He says progressives are right, in part, when they mock modern capitalism as 'socialism for the rich.' For a century, governments have expanded in just about every measurable dimension, from spending to regulation and the scale of financial rescues when the economy wobbles. The result is expensive state guarantees for everyone—bailouts for the rich, entitlements for the middle class, welfare for the poor.

"Taking you back to the 19th century, Sharma shows how completely the reflexes of government have changed: from hands-off to hands-on, from doing too little to help anyone in hard times to today trying to prevent anyone suffering any economic pain, ever. Trading sins of omission and indifference for excesses of spending and meddling, governments from the United States to Europe and Japan have pumped so much money into their economies that financial markets can no longer invest all that capital efficiently.

"Inadvertently, they have fueled the rise of monopolies, 'zombie' firms, and billionaires. They have made capitalism less fair and less efficient, which is slowing economic growth and fueling popular anger. The first step to a cure is a correct diagnosis of the problem. Capitalism has been badly distorted by constant government intervention and the relentless spread of a bailout culture. Building an even bigger state will only double down on what ruined capitalism in the first place.

"What Went Wrong with Capitalism is a 'superbly written (The Wall Street Journal), 'fresh and accessible' (Robert Rubin, former Secretary of the Treasury and chairman of Citigroup) look at the issues confronting our capitalistic society and will ultimately reshape how you think about world."

Blaming government for the excesses of capitalism is like blaming Trilby for Zvengali's depredations.

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (172 ratings)
ISBN 978-1668008263 ?
Rigged:
America, Russia, and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference
David Shimer
Knopf (June 30, 2020)
No Review
"David Shimer is a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and an Associate Fellow at Yale University. His reporting and analysis have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and Foreign Affairs. He received his doctorate in international relations from the University of Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and his undergraduate and master's degrees in history from Yale University." – Amazon biography

"Russia's interference in the 2016 elections marked only the latest chapter of a hidden and revelatory history. In Rigged, David Shimer tells the sweeping story of covert electoral interference past and present. He exposes decades of secret operations—by the KGB, the CIA, and Vladimir Putin's Russia—to shape electoral outcomes, melding deep historical research with groundbreaking interviews with more than 130 key players, from leading officials in both the Trump and Obama administrations to CIA and NSA directors to a former KGB general. Throughout history and in 2016, both Russian and American operations achieved their greatest success by influencing the way voters think, rather than tampering with actual vote tallies.

"Understanding 2016 as one battle in a much longer war is essential to comprehending the critical threat currently posed to America's electoral sovereignty and how to defend against it. Illuminating how the lessons of the past can be used to protect our democracy in the future, Rigged is an essential book for readers of every political persuasion."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (222 ratings)
ISBN 978-0525659006 ?
The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump:
30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity
Ronald J. Sider (Editor)
Cascade Books (June 1, 2020)
No Review
"Ronald J. Sider is President emeritus, Evangelicals for Social Action, Distinguished Professor emeritus of Theology, Holistic Ministry and Public Policy at Palmer Seminary at Eastern University. His book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger was listed as one of the 100 most influential books in religion in the 20th century. He has a blog at https://ronsiderblog.substack.com/ " – Amazon biography

"What should Christians think about Donald Trump? His policies, his style, his personal life? Thirty evangelical Christians wrestle with these tough questions. They are Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. They don't all agree, but they seek to let Christ be the Lord of their political views. They seek to apply biblical standards to difficult debates about our current political situation. Vast numbers of white evangelicals enthusiastically support Donald Trump. Do biblical standards on truth, justice, life, freedom, and personal integrity warrant or challenge that support? How does that support of President Trump affect the image of Christianity in the larger culture? Around the world? Many younger evangelicals today are rejecting evangelical Christianity, even Christianity itself. To what extent is that because of widespread evangelical support for Donald Trump? Don't read this book to find support for your views. Read it to be challenged—with facts, reason, and biblical principles.

"With contributions from: Michael W. Austin Randall Balmer Vicki Courtney Daniel Deitrich Samuel Escobar John Fea Irene Fowler Mark Galli J. Colin Harris Stephen R. Haynes Matt Henderson Christopher A. Hutchinson Bandy X. Lee David S. Lim David C. Ludden Ryan McAnnally-Linz Steven Meyer Napp Nazworth D. Zac Niringiye Christopher Pieper Reid Ribble Ronald J. Sider Edward G. Simmons James R. Skillen James W. Skillen Julia K. Stronks Chris Thurman Miroslav Volf Peter Wehner George Yancey""

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (631 ratings)
ISBN 978-1725271784 ?
The Bitter End:
The 2020 Presidential Campaign and the Challenge to American Democracy
John Sides, Chris Tausanovitch & Lynn Vavreck
Princeton University Press (September 20, 2022)
No Review
"John Sides is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. Twitter @johnmsides Chris Tausanovitch is associate professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Twitter @ctausanovitch Lynn Vavreck is the Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics and Public Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles. Twitter @vavreck Sides and Vavreck are the coauthors of The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election and, with Michael Tesler, of Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America (both Princeton)."

"What an intensely divisive election means for American politics.

"The year 2020 was a tumultuous time in American politics. It brought a global pandemic, protests for racial justice, and a razor-thin presidential election outcome. It culminated in an attack on the U.S. Capitol that attempted to deny Joe Biden’s victory. The Bitter End explores the long-term trends and short-term shocks that shaped this dramatic year and what these changes could mean for the future.

"John Sides, Chris Tausanovitch, and Lynn Vavreck demonstrate that Trump’s presidency intensified the partisan politics of the previous decades and the identity politics of the 2016 election. Presidential elections have become calcified, with less chance of big swings in either party’s favor. Republicans remained loyal to Trump and kept the election close, despite Trump’s many scandals, a recession, and the pandemic. But in a narrowly divided electorate even small changes can have big consequences. The pandemic was a case in point: when Trump pushed to reopen the country even as infections mounted, support for Biden increased. The authors explain that, paradoxically, even as Biden’s win came at a time of heightened party loyalty, there remained room for shifts that shaped the election’s outcome. Ultimately, the events of 2020 showed that instead of the country coming together to face national challenges―the pandemic, George Floyd’s murder, and the Capitol riot―these challenges only reinforced divisions.

"Expertly chronicling the tensions of an election that came to an explosive finish, The Bitter End presents a detailed account of a year of crises and the dangerous direction in which the country is headed."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (14 ratings)
ISBN 978-0691213453 ?
The President of Good and Evil:
The Ethics of George W. Bush
Peter Singer
Dutton (March 8, 2004)
No Review
"Peter Singer's many books include Practical Ethics; Animal Liberation; and most recently Pushing Time Away: My Grandfather and the Tragedy of Jewish Vienna. He appears in the print media frequently, and has been on shows such as The O'Reilly Factor and the Today show. He is a professor of bioethics at Princeton University's Center for Human Values."

"The ethicist and author of Animal Liberation offers a provocative look at moral failure of President George W. Bush, revealing a pattern of ethical confusion and self-contradiction when speaking out on such controversial issues as stem-cell research, tax cuts, the war in Iraq, and America as a global power."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (35 ratings)
ISBN 978-0525948131 ?
American Exceptionalism and American Innocence:
A People's History of Fake News―From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror
Roberto Sirvent & Danny Haiphong
Ajamu Baraka (Foreword)
Glen Ford (Afterword)
Skyhorse (April 2, 2019)
No Review
"Roberto Sirvent, Ph.D., J.D., is a Professor of Political and Social Ethics at Hope International University in Fullerton, California. Danny Haiphong is an activist and a regular contributor to The Black Agenda Report." – Amazon biography

"According to Robert Sirvent and Danny Haiphong, Americans have been exposed to fake news throughout our history—news that slavery is a thing of the past, that we don’t live on stolen land, that wars are fought to spread freedom and democracy, that a rising tide lifts all boats, that prisons keep us safe, and that the police serve and protect. Thus, the only “news” ever reported by various channels of U.S. empire is the news of American exceptionalism and American innocence. And, as this book will hopefully show, it’s all fake.

"Did the U.S. really 'save the world' in World War II? Should black athletes stop protesting and show more gratitude for what America has done for them? Are wars fought to spread freedom and democracy? Or is this all fake news?

"American Exceptionalism and American Innocence examines the stories we’re told that lead us to think that the U.S. is a force for good in the world, regardless of slavery, the genocide of indigenous people, and the more than a century’s worth of imperialist war that the U.S. has wrought on the planet. Sirvent and Haiphong detail just what Captain America’s shield tells us about the pretensions of U.S. foreign policy, how Angelina Jolie and Bill Gates engage in humanitarian imperialism, and why the Broadway musical Hamilton is a monument to white supremacy."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (177 ratings)
ISBN 978-1510742369 ?
A Common Sense Manifesto
(With a Nod to Thomas Paine, Not Karl Marx)
Max J. Skidmore
Westphalia Press (January 27, 2020)
No Review
"Max J. Skidmore is Curators' Professor of Political Science and Thomas Jefferson Fellow at University of Missouri-Kansas City, USA." – Amazon biography

"The (sic) Common Sense Manifesto provides an examination, both broad and deep, into the current political situation in America, and how it came to be. It chronicles the disturbing deterioration of the Republican Party into an extreme and corrupt mechanism ready to receive and incorporate a destructive force that it welcomed wholeheartedly when it appeared in the bombastic, and completely self-centered, form of Donald Trump. Calling for a 'blue tsunami,' the Manifesto outlines the way forward, out of the insanity. It notes political realities and thus accepts the need to work within the two-party system. It argues for a rational and comprehensive 'Modern Political Economy' that recognizes environmental imperatives, corrects severe income and political inequality, expands Social Security, implements universal health care, protects the rights and dignity of all the people, improves America's sagging infrastructure and transportation up to world-class and responsible standards, and ensures full participation in the national bounty in ways that protect the world and all its current and future inhabitants."

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 978-1633914933 ?
Presidents, Pandemics, and Politics
Max J. Skidmore
Palgrave Macmillan (October 28, 2016)
No Review
"Max J. Skidmore is Curators' Professor of Political Science and Thomas Jefferson Fellow at University of Missouri-Kansas City, USA." – Amazon biography

"This book is an examination of the manner in which American presidents respond to pandemics and other public health crises. Skidmore argues that presidential performance in dealing with emergencies and pandemics varies, but those who are informed, focused, and confident that government can work are most likely to be successful. As an example, Gerald Ford's 'Swine Flu program' is widely derided as incompetent and politically motivated. Closer examination, however, suggests the contrary, demonstrating the potential of government to act quickly and effectively against public health emergencies, even when facing formidable obstacles. The American government has a mixed record ranging from excellent to unacceptable, even counterproductive, in dealing with emergency threats to life and health. Despite ideological arguments to the contrary, however, governments are important to effective responses, and in the American setting, presidential action is essential."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (4 ratings)
ISBN 978-1349949922 ?
The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism
Theda Skocpol & Vanessa Williamson
Oxford University Press (January 2, 2012)
No Review
"Theda Skocpol is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and past president of the American Political Science Association. Vanessa Williamson is a PhD candidate in Government and Social Policy at Harvard University. Previously, she served as the Policy Director for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America." – Amazon biography

"On February 19, 2009, CNBC commentator Rick Santelli delivered a dramatic rant against Obama administration programs to shore up the plunging housing market. Invoking the Founding Fathers and ridiculing 'losers' who could not pay their mortgages, Santelli called for 'Tea Party' protests. Over the next two years, conservative activists took to the streets and airways, built hundreds of local Tea Party groups, and weighed in with votes and money to help right-wing Republicans win electoral victories in 2010.

"In this penetrating new study, Harvard University's Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson go beyond images of protesters in Colonial costumes to provide a nuanced portrait of the Tea Party. What they find is sometimes surprising. Drawing on grassroots interviews and visits to local meetings in several regions, they find that older, middle-class Tea Partiers mostly approve of Social Security, Medicare, and generous benefits for military veterans. Their opposition to 'big government' entails reluctance to pay taxes to help people viewed as undeserving 'freeloaders' - including immigrants, lower income earners, and the young. At the national level, Tea Party elites and funders leverage grassroots energy to further longstanding goals such as tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation of business, and privatization of the very same Social Security and Medicare programs on which many grassroots Tea Partiers depend. Elites and grassroots are nevertheless united in hatred of Barack Obama and determination to push the Republican Party sharply to the right.

"The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism combines fine-grained portraits of local Tea Party members and chapters with an overarching analysis of the movement's rise, impact, and likely fate."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (96 ratings)
ISBN 978-0199832637 ?
Preventable:
The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and Selfishness Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response
Andy Slavitt
St. Martin's Press (March 16, 2021)
No Review
"Andy Slavitt served as the Acting Administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President Obama from 2015 to 2017. He is the host of the podcast #IntheBubble, a top-ranked podcast on life during the global pandemic. Slavitt is currently Board Chair of United States of Care, a national non-profit health advocacy organization he founded, as well as a founding partner of Town Hall Ventures, a healthcare investment firm that serves underrepresented communities. He is co-chair of a national initiative on the future of health care at the Bipartisan Policy Center. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Business School, he lives in Minnesota with his wife and two sons." – Amazon bios

"From former head of Obamacare Andy Slavitt, Preventable is the definitive inside account of the United States' failed response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Slavitt chronicles what he saw and how much could have been prevented — an unflinching investigation of the cultural, political, and economic drivers that led to unnecessary loss of life.

"With unparalleled access to the key players throughout the government on both sides of the aisle, the principal public figures, as well as the people working on the frontline involved in fighting the virus, Slavitt brings you into the room as fateful decisions are made and focuses on the people at the center of the political system, health care system, patients, and caregivers. The story that emerges is one of a country in which — despite the heroics of many — bad leadership, political and cultural fractures, and an unwillingness to sustain sacrifice light a fuse that is difficult to extinguish.

"Written in the tradition of The Big Short, Preventable continues Andy Slavitt’s important work of addressing the uncomfortable realities that brought America to this place. And, he puts forth the solutions that will prevent us from being here again, ensuring a better, stronger country for everyone."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (115 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250770165 ?
The Sing Sing Files:
One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a Twenty-Year Fight for Justice
Dan Slepian
Celadon Books (September 10, 2024)
No Review
"Dan Slepian is an award-winning journalist at NBC News and a veteran producer of its signature newsmagazine, Dateline. Over more than two decades at NBC, Slepian has spearheaded dozens of documentaries and hidden-camera investigations, and is known for his in-depth reporting about the criminal legal system and, specifically, wrongful convictions. He has received three Edward R. Murrow Awards, more than a dozen Emmys, and has been recognized by multiple justice organizations across the country. Slepian was the host of Letters from Sing Sing, a podcast that was #1 on Apple's true crime charts and a finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in audio reporting."

"An NBC Dateline producer's cinematic account of his two-decade journey navigating the broken criminal justice system to help free six innocent men.

"In 2002, Dan Slepian, a veteran producer for NBC’s Dateline, received a tip from a Bronx homicide detective that two men were serving twenty-five years to life in prison for a 1990 murder they did not commit.

"Haunted by what the detective had told him, Slepian began an investigation of the case that eventually resulted in freedom for the two men and launched Slepian on a two-decade personal and professional journey into a deeply flawed justice system fiercely resistant to rectifying―or even acknowledging―its mistakes and their consequences.

"The Sing Sing Files: One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a Twenty-Year Fight for Justice is Slepian’s account of challenging that system. The story follows Slepian on years of prison visits, court hearings, and street reporting that led to a series of powerful Dateline episodes and eventually to freedom for four other men and to an especially deep and lasting friendship with one of them, Jon-Adrian 'JJ' Velazquez. From his cell in Sing Sing, JJ aided Slepian in his investigations until his own release in 2021 after decades in prison.

"Like Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, The Sing Sing Files is a deeply personal account of wrongful imprisonment and the flaws in our justice system, and a powerful argument for reckoning and accountability. Slepian’s extraordinary book, at once painful and full of hope, shines a light on an injustice whose impact the nation has only begun to confront."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (134 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250897701 ?
A Great Disordeer:
National Myth and the Battle for America
Richard Slotkin
Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press (March 5, 2024)
No Review
"Richard Slotkin is the Olin Professor of English and American Studies, Emeritus, at Wesleyan University, best known for his award-winning trilogy on the Myth of the Frontier, two volumes of which, Regeneration Through Violence and Gunfighter Nation, were finalists for the National Book Award. Winner of the Shaara Award for Civil War fiction, he regularly contributes to media projects on gun violence, racism, the Civil War, and the West."

"As culture wars pit us against each other, A Great Disorder looks to the myths that have shaped American identity and reveals how they have brought us to the brink of an existential crisis.

"Red America and Blue America are so divided they could be two different countries, with wildly diverging views of why government exists and who counts as American. Their ideologies are grounded in different versions of American history, endorsing irreconcilable visions of patriotism and national identity.

"A Great Disorder is a bold, urgent work that helps us make sense of today’s culture wars through a brilliant reconsideration of America’s foundational myths and their use in contemporary politics. Famous for his trilogy on the Myth of the Frontier, Richard Slotkin identifies five myths, born of different eras, that have shaped our conception of what it means to be American: the myths of the Frontier, the Founding, the Civil War (which he breaks into two opposing camps, Emancipation and the Lost Cause), and the Good War, embodied by the multiethnic platoon fighting for freedom. His argument is that while Trump and his MAGA followers have played up a frontier-inspired hostility to the federal government and rallied around Confederate symbols to champion a racially exclusive definition of American nationality, Blue America, taking its cue from the protest movements of the 1960s, envisions a limitlessly pluralistic country in which the federal government is the ultimate enforcer of rights and opportunities. American history―and the foundations of our democracy―have become a battleground. It is not clear at this time which vision will prevail."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (5 ratings)
ISBN 978-0674292383 ?
How the Word Is Passed:
A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
Clint Smith
Little, Brown and Company (December 27, 2022)
No Review
"Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of the narrative nonfiction book How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller and one of the New York Times Top Ten Books of 2021. He is also the author of the poetry collection Counting Descent. The book won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He has received fellowships from New America, the Emerson Collective, the Art For Justice Fund, Cave Canem, and the National Science Foundation. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Born and raised in New Orleans, he received his B.A. in English from Davidson College and his Ph.D. in Education from Harvard University."

"Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves.

"It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving more than four hundred people. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. It is the story of Angola, a former plantation-turned-maximum-security prison in Louisiana that is filled with Black men who work across the 18,000-acre land for virtually no pay. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers.

"A deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country's most essential stories are hidden in plain view—whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods like downtown Manhattan, where the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women, and children has been deeply imprinted.

"Informed by scholarship and brought to life by the story of people living today, Smith's debut work of nonfiction is a landmark of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in making sense of our country and how it has come to be."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (4,678 ratings)
ISBN 978-0316492928 ?
Foxocracy:
Inside the Network's Playbook of Tribal Warfare
Tobin Smith
Diversion Books (October 29, 2019)
No Review
"Tobin Smith appeared in more than 2,000 opinion panel segments on Fox News during his tenure as a paid Fox News Channel Contributor and Guest Anchor. Contractually obligated to be at Fox News’ New York City studios at least 48 weeks a year, he was the only fulltime right-wing panelist always in the New York City studios, constantly asked by segment producers to play the role of the “hitman”―or the panel member counted on to make the final right wing argument for the right wing audience at home. He also guest hosted more than sixty episodes of Fox News and Fox Business Network programming from 2000-2013. While working with producers inside Fox News in New York City and socializing with Fox News staff at favorite watering holes after work, he learned never-before revealed strategies used to rig the outcomes of FNC opinion debate segments. Smith is also a New York Times bestselling author whose books include ChangeWave Investing 2.0 and Billion Dollar Green." – Amazon biography

"Fox News did not start America's culture war—but they did have the manipulative and destructive genius to exploit it for billions of dollars. For the first time, a Fox News veteran exposes and diagrams the toxic strategies and tactics within the Fox News playbook that liberal and progressive candidates will be fighting against in 2020 and beyond. It is the very same playbook that Fox News used to move twelve percent of Independents to vote for Donald Trump in 2016 to produce Republican wins in the previous Democrat (sic) strongholds of Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

"Author Tobin Smith takes readers behind the scenes of the actual production of the "fair and balanced" opinion panel segments that feed a ravenous audience. How are these productions rigged so that right-wing pundits always win? What techniques does Fox News use in manipulating its viewers' tribal instincts: to addict them; to activate a hatred toward partisan enemies; and to hook them on ego-gratifying feelings of intellectual and cultural superiority?

"Foxocracy is filled with never-revealed conversations with Fox News executives—including the late Roger Ailes—and opinion programming producers. It breaks down the real and often heartbreaking collateral damage among friends and family caused by the waging of an endless culture war. And it brings incendiary proof from an insider and on-air talent of Fox News's predatory audience manipulation psychology and production tactics. And perhaps even more frightening, this book reveals how that playbook is now being insidiously upgraded for maximum effect—white tribal-identity activation—on all forms of social media and means of content delivery."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (45 ratings)
ISBN 978-1635766615 ?
Holding the Line:
Inside Trump's Pentagon with Secretary Mattis
Guy M. Snodgrass
Sentinel (October 29, 2019)
No Review
"Guy M. Snodgrass recently served as director of communications and chief speechwriter to Secretary of Defense James Mattis. A former naval aviator and F/A-18 pilot, he served as a commanding officer of a fighter squadron based in Japan, a TOPGUN instructor, and a combat pilot over the skies of Iraq as part of his twenty-year navy career. Today he is the founder and CEO of Defense Analytics, a strategic consulting and advisory firm." – Amazon biography

"For nearly two years as Trump's Secretary of Defense, General James Mattis maintained a complicated relationship with the President. A lifelong Marine widely considered to be one of America's greatest generals, Mattis was committed to keeping America safe. Yet he served a President whose actions were frequently unpredictable and impulsive with far-reaching consequences.

"Often described as the administration's 'adult in the room,' Mattis has said very little about his difficult role, and since his resignation has kept his views of the President and his policies private. Now, Mattis's former chief speechwriter and communications director, Guy M. Snodgrass, brings readers behind that curtain. Drawing on his seventeen months working with Mattis, Snodgrass reveals how one of the nation's greatest generals walked a political tightrope while leading the world's most powerful military."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (362 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593084373 ?
Democratic Justice:
Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court, and the Making of the Liberal Establishment
Brad Snyder
W. W. Norton & Company (August 23, 2022)
No Review
"Brad Snyder is a professor of constitutional law and twentieth-century American legal history at Georgetown University Law Center. In addition to his legal scholarship, he has written for Politico, Slate, and the Washington Post. He lives on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC."

"The definitive biography of Felix Frankfurter, Supreme Court justice and champion of twentieth-century American liberal democracy.

"The conventional wisdom about Felix Frankfurter―Harvard law professor and Supreme Court justice―is that he struggled to fill the seat once held by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Scholars have portrayed Frankfurter as a judicial failure, a liberal lawyer turned conservative justice, and the Warren Court’s principal villain. And yet none of these characterizations rings true.

"A pro-government, pro-civil rights liberal who rejected shifting political labels, Frankfurter advocated for judicial restraint―he believed that people should seek change not from the courts but through the democratic political process. Indeed, he knew American presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson, advised Franklin Roosevelt, and inspired his students and law clerks to enter government service.

"Organized around presidential administrations and major political and world events, this definitive biography chronicles Frankfurter’s impact on American life. As a young government lawyer, he befriended Theodore Roosevelt, Louis Brandeis, and Holmes. As a Harvard law professor, he earned fame as a civil libertarian, Zionist, and New Deal power broker. As a justice, he hired the first African American law clerk and helped the Court achieve unanimity in outlawing racially segregated schools in Brown v. Board of Education.

"In this sweeping narrative, Brad Snyder offers a full and fascinating portrait of the remarkable life and legacy of a long misunderstood American figure. This is the biography of an Austrian Jewish immigrant who arrived in the United States at age eleven speaking not a word of English, who by age twenty-six befriended former president Theodore Roosevelt, and who by age fifty was one of Franklin Roosevelt’s most trusted advisers. It is the story of a man devoted to democratic ideals, a natural orator and often overbearing justice, whose passion allowed him to amass highly influential friends and helped create the liberal establishment."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (53 ratings)
ISBN 978-1324004875 ?
On Tyranny:
Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Timothy Snyder
Crown (February 28, 2017)
No Review
"Timothy Snyder is one of the world’s leading historians, and a prominent public intellectual in the United States and Europe. An expert on eastern Europe and on the Second World War, he has written acclaimed and prize-winning books about twentieth-century European history, as well as political manifestos and analyses about the rise of tyranny in the contemporary world. His work has been translated into more than forty languages, and has inspired protest, art, and music. He serves as the Levin Professor of History and Public Affairs at Yale University and is the faculty advisor of the Fortunoff Archive for Holocaust Video Testimonies. He is also a permanent fellow of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna."

"The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.

"On Tyranny is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (29,071 ratings)
ISBN 978-0804190114 ?
The Road To Unfreedom:
Russia, Europe, America
Timothy Snyder
Crown; Reprint edition (April 9, 2019)
No Review
"Timothy Snyder is one of the world’s leading historians, and a prominent public intellectual in the United States and Europe. An expert on eastern Europe and on the Second World War, he has written acclaimed and prize-winning books about twentieth-century European history, as well as political manifestos and analyses about the rise of tyranny in the contemporary world. His work has been translated into more than forty languages, and has inspired protest, art, and music. He serves as the Levin Professor of History and Public Affairs at Yale University and is the faculty advisor of the Fortunoff Archive for Holocaust Video Testimonies. He is also a permanent fellow of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna."

"From the author of On Tyranny comes a stunning new chronicle of the rise of authoritarianism from Russia to Europe and America.

"With the end of the Cold War, the victory of liberal democracy seemed final. Observers declared the end of history, confident in a peaceful, globalized future. This faith was misplaced. Authoritarianism returned to Russia, as Vladimir Putin found fascist ideas that could be used to justify rule by the wealthy. In the 2010s, it has spread from east to west, aided by Russian warfare in Ukraine and cyberwar in Europe and the United States.

"Russia found allies among nationalists, oligarchs, and radicals everywhere, and its drive to dissolve Western institutions, states, and values found resonance within the West itself. The rise of populism, the British vote against the EU, and the election of Donald Trump were all Russian goals, but their achievement reveals the vulnerability of Western societies.

"In this forceful and unsparing work of contemporary history, based on vast research as well as personal reporting, Snyder goes beyond the headlines to expose the true nature of the threat to democracy and law. To understand the challenge is to see, and perhaps renew, the fundamental political virtues offered by tradition and demanded by the future. By revealing the stark choices before us—between equality or oligarchy, individuality or totality, truth and falsehood—Snyder restores our understanding of the basis of our way of life, offering a way forward in a time of terrible uncertainty."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (2,993 ratings)
ISBN 978-0525574477 ?
On Freedom
Timothy Snyder
Crown (September 17, 2024)
No Review
"Timothy Snyder is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. His books, which have been published in over forty languages, include Bloodlands, Black Earth, On Tyranny, Road to Unfreedom, Our Malady, and On Freedom. His work has inspired poster campaigns and exhibitions, sculptures, a punk rock song, a rap song, a play, and an opera, and he has appeared in over fifty films and documentaries. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut."

"A brilliant exploration of freedom—what it is, how it’s been misunderstood, and why it’s our only chance for survival—by the acclaimed Yale historian and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller On Tyranny.

"Timothy Snyder has been called 'the leading interpreter of our dark times.' As a historian, he has given us startling reinterpretations of political collapse and mass killing. As a public intellectual, he has turned that knowledge toward counsel and prediction, working against authoritarianism here and abroad. His book On Tyranny has inspired millions around the world to fight for freedom. Now, in this tour de force of political philosophy, he helps us see exactly what we’re fighting for.

"Freedom is the great American commitment, but as Snyder argues, we have lost sight of what it means—and this is leading us into crisis. Too many of us look at freedom as the absence of state power: We think we're free if we can do and say as we please, and protect ourselves from government overreach. But true freedom isn’t so much freedom from as freedom to—the freedom to thrive, to take risks for futures we choose by working together. Freedom is the value that makes all other values possible.

"On Freedom takes us on a thrilling intellectual journey. Drawing on the work of philosophers and political dissidents, conversations with contemporary thinkers, and his own experiences coming of age in a time of American exceptionalism, Snyder identifies the practices and attitudes—the habits of mind—that will allow us to design a government in which we and future generations can flourish. We come to appreciate the importance of traditions (championed by the right) but also the role of institutions (the purview of the left). Intimate yet ambitious, this book helps forge a new consensus rooted in a politics of abundance, generosity, and grace."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (22 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593728727 ?
Separated:
Inside an American Tragedy
Jacob Soboroff
Custom House (July 7, 2020)
No Review
"Jacob Soboroff is a correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC. For his reporting on the child-separation policy, he received the 2019 Walter Cronkite Award for Individual Achievement by a National Journalist and the 2019 Hillman Prize for Broadcast Journalism. He has appeared on Today, Morning Joe, The Rachel Maddow Show, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and numerous other programs. He co-presented (with Katy Tur) the four-part event docuseries American Swamp on MSNBC. He lives in Los Angeles." – Amazon biography

"In June 2018, Donald Trump's most notorious decision as president had secretly been in effect for months before most Americans became aware of the astonishing inhumanity being perpetrated by their own government. Jacob Soboroff was among the first journalists to expose this reality after seeing firsthand the living conditions of the children in custody. His influential series of reports ignited public scrutiny that contributed to the president reversing his own policy and earned Soboroff the Cronkite Award for Excellence in Political Broadcast Journalism and, with his colleagues, the 2019 Hillman Prize for Broadcast Journalism.

"But beyond the headlines, the complete, multilayered story lay untold. How, exactly, had such a humanitarian tragedy—now deemed 'torture' by physicians—happened on American soil? Most important, what has been the human experience of those separated children and parents?

"Soboroff has spent the past two years reporting the many strands of this complex narrative, developing sources from within the Trump administration who share critical details for the first time. He also traces the dramatic odyssey of one separated family from Guatemala, where their lives were threatened by narcos, to seek asylum at the U.S. border, where they were separated—the son ending up in Texas, and the father thousands of miles away, in the Mojave desert of central California. And he joins the heroes who emerged to challenge the policy, and who worked on the ground to reunite parents with children.

"In this essential reckoning, Soboroff weaves together these key voices with his own experience covering this national issue—at the border in Texas, California, and Arizona; with administration officials in Washington, D.C., and inside the disturbing detention facilities. Separated lays out compassionately, yet in the starkest of terms, its human toll, and makes clear what is at stake in the 2020 presidential election."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (2,589 ratings)
ISBN 978-0062992192 ?
Trust the Plan:
The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America
Will Sommer
Harper (February 21, 2023)
No Review
"Will Sommer is a politics reporter for the Daily Beast and the cohost of the podcast Fever Dreams. He previously worked as a campaign editor at The Hill and as a political columnist for Washington City Paper. His work covering QAnon and other conspiracy theories has been featured in multiple documentaries, including HBO’s Q: Into the Storm."

"The definitive book on QAnon from the reporter knows them best; Will Sommer explains what it is, how it has gained a mainstream following among Republican lawmakers and ordinary citizens, the threat it poses to democracy, and how we can reach those who have embraced the conspiracy and are disseminating its lies.

"The Storm is Coming. Trust the Plan. WWG1WGA. You’ve seen the letter Q on TV and in the news – it’s been everywhere from Trump rallies to the January 6th insurrection. “QAnon” used to sound vaguely familiar, somewhat ominous, but not quite mainstream. But what was once a fringe conspiracy theory has now become a household name and its symbols recognizable around the world. How did this happen, who is actually involved, what do they believe, and what do they want?

"Daily Beast reporter Will Sommer has been on the ground with Q’s followers since day one, and in Trust the Plan Sommer has written the definitive book on the movement—who started it and who grew it, what they really believe is going on, and what they want to see 'the Storm' accomplish on the day of its reckoning. At once a character study and a journalistic exposé, Sommer lets his cast of characters do the talking as he visits them around the world, from their makeshift compounds to the rallies they are still holding.

"The great tragedy of this story is ultimately the legitimization of this ideology by mainstream politicians eager to gain access to a large and growing cohort of voters. Though 2020 brought the end of Trump’s presidency, his following within the QAnon community has simply pivoted and grown stronger. Trust the Plan shows us in granular detail who we’ll be up against for years to come, in the US and abroad. Understanding why and how something like Q happens is an indispensable exercise, and in showing us how we got here we can chart a path out."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (349 ratings)
ISBN 978-0063114487 ?
Remaking America:
Democracy and Public Policy in an Age of Inequality
Joe Soss, Jacob S. Hacker & Suzanne Mettler (Editors)
Russell Sage Foundation (November 8, 2007)
No Review
"Joe Soss is the Cowles Professor for the Study of Public Service at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota. Jacob S. Hacker is professor of political science at Yale University and resident fellow of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies. Suzanne Mettler is Clinton Rossiter Professor of American Institutions in the Government Department at Cornell University."

"Over the past three decades, the contours of American social, economic, and political life have changed dramatically. The post-war patterns of broadly distributed economic growth have given way to stark inequalities of income and wealth, the GOP and its allies have gained power and shifted U.S. politics rightward, and the role of government in the lives of Americans has changed fundamentally. Remaking America explores how these trends are related, investigating the complex interactions of economics, politics, and public policy. Remaking America explains how the broad restructuring of government policy has both reflected and propelled major shifts in the character of inequality and democracy in the United States.

"The contributors explore how recent political and policy changes affect not just the social standing of Americans but also the character of democratic citizenship in the United States today. Lawrence Jacobs shows how partisan politics, public opinion, and interest groups have shaped the evolution of Medicare, but also how Medicare itself restructured health politics in America. Kimberly Morgan explains how highly visible tax policies created an opportunity for conservatives to lead a grassroots tax revolt that ultimately eroded of the revenues needed for social-welfare programs. Deborah Stone explores how new policies have redefined participation in the labor force―as opposed to fulfilling family or civic obligations―as the central criterion of citizenship. Frances Fox Piven explains how low-income women remain creative and vital political actors in an era in which welfare programs increasingly subject them to stringent behavioral requirements and monitoring. Joshua Guetzkow and Bruce Western document the rise of mass incarceration in America and illuminate its unhealthy effects on state social-policy efforts and the civic status of African-American men.

"For many disadvantaged Americans who used to look to government as a source of opportunity and security, the state has become increasingly paternalistic and punitive. Far from standing alone, their experience reflects a broader set of political victories and policy revolutions that have fundamentally altered American democracy and society. Empirically grounded and theoretically informed, Remaking America connects the dots to provide insight into the remarkable social and political changes of the last three decades."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (5 ratings)
ISBN 978-0871543516 ?
Whistleblowers:
Honesty in America from Washington to Trump
Allison Stanger
Yale University Press (September 24, 2019)
No Review
"Allison Stanger is Russell Leng ‘60 Professor of International Politics and Economics at Middlebury College, New America Cybersecurity Fellow, and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. She is the author of One Nation Under Contract." – Amazon biography

"Misconduct by those in high places is always dangerous to reveal. Whistleblowers thus face conflicting impulses: by challenging and exposing transgressions by the powerful, they perform a vital public service—yet they always suffer for it. This episodic history brings to light how whistleblowing, an important but unrecognized cousin of civil disobedience, has held powerful elites accountable in America.

"Analyzing a range of whistleblowing episodes, from the corrupt Revolutionary War commodore Esek Hopkins (whose dismissal led in 1778 to the first whistleblower protection law) to Edward Snowden, to the dishonesty of Donald Trump, Allison Stanger reveals the centrality of whistleblowing to the health of American democracy. She also shows that with changing technology and increasing militarization, the exposure of misconduct has grown more difficult to do and more personally costly for those who do it—yet American freedom, especially today, depends on it."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (21 ratings)
ISBN 978-0300186888 ?
How Fascism Works:
The Politics of Us and Them
Jason Stanley
Random House; Illustrated edition (September 4, 2018)
No Review
"Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He is the author of five books, including How Propaganda Works, winner of the Prose Award in Philosophy from the Association of American Publishers, and How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, about which Citizen author Claudia Rankine states: “No single book is as relevant to our present moment.” Stanley serves on the board of the Prison Policy Initiative and writes frequently about propaganda, free speech, mass incarceration, democracy, and authoritarianism for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Boston Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Guardian."

"As the child of refugees of World War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason Stanley has a deep understanding of how democratic societies can be vulnerable to fascism: Nations don’t have to be fascist to suffer from fascist politics. In fact, fascism’s roots have been present in the United States for more than a century. Alarmed by the pervasive rise of fascist tactics both at home and around the globe, Stanley focuses here on the structures that unite them, laying out and analyzing the ten pillars of fascist politics—the language and beliefs that separate people into an “us” and a “them.” He knits together reflections on history, philosophy, sociology, and critical race theory with stories from contemporary Hungary, Poland, India, Myanmar, and the United States, among other nations. He makes clear the immense danger of underestimating the cumulative power of these tactics, which include exploiting a mythic version of a nation’s past; propaganda that twists the language of democratic ideals against themselves; anti-intellectualism directed against universities and experts; law and order politics predicated on the assumption that members of minority groups are criminals; and fierce attacks on labor groups and welfare. These mechanisms all build on one another, creating and reinforcing divisions and shaping a society vulnerable to the appeals of authoritarian leadership.

"By uncovering disturbing patterns that are as prevalent today as ever, Stanley reveals that the stuff of politics—charged by rhetoric and myth—can quickly become policy and reality. Only by recognizing fascists' politics, he argues, may we resist its most harmful effects and return to democratic ideals."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (1,952 ratings)
ISBN 978-0525511830 ?
Erasing History:
How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future
Jason Stanley
Atria/One Signal Publishers (September 10, 2024)
No Review
"Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He is the author of six books, including How Fascism Works and How Propaganda Works. Stanley is a member of the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School and serves on the advisory board of the Prison Policy Initiative. He writes frequently about authoritarianism, democracy, propaganda, free speech, and mass incarceration for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Project Syndicate, and many other publications."

"From the bestselling author of How Fascism Works, a searing confrontation with the far right’s efforts to rewrite history and undo a century of progress on race, gender, sexuality, and class.

"The human race finds itself again under threat of a rising global fascist movement. In the United States, democracy is under attack by an authoritarian movement that has found fertile ground among the country’s conservative politicians and voters, but similar movements have found homes in the hearts and minds of people all across the globe. To understand the shape, form, and stakes of this assault, we must go back to extract lessons from our past.

"Democracy requires a common understanding of reality, a shared view of what has happened, that informs ordinary citizens’ decisions about what should happen, now and in the future. Authoritarians target this shared understanding, seeking to separate us from our own history to destroy our self-understanding and leave us unmoored, resentful, and confused. By setting us against each other, authoritarians represent themselves as the sole solution.

"In authoritarian countries, critical examination of those nations’ history and traditions is discouraged if not an outright danger to those who do it. And it is no accident that local and global institutions of education have become a battleground, the authoritarian right’s tip of the spear, where learning and efforts to upend a hierarchal status quo can be put to end by coercion and threats of violence. Democracies entrust schools and universities to preserve a common memory of positive change, generated by protests, social movements, and rebellions. The authoritarian right must erase this history, and, along with it, the very practice of critical inquiry that has so often been the engine of future progress.

"In Erasing History, Yale professor of philosophy Jason Stanley exposes the true danger of the authoritarian right’s attacks on education, identifies their key tactics and funders, and traces their intellectual roots. He illustrates how fears of a fascist future have metastasized, from hypothetical threat to present reality. And he shows that hearts and minds are won in our schools and universities—places, he explains, that democratic societies across the world are now ill-prepared to defend against the fascist assault currently underway.

"Deeply informed and urgently needed, Erasing History is a global call to action for those who wish to preserve democracy—in America and abroad—before it is too late."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (60 ratings)
ISBN 978-1668056912 ?
Remedy and Reaction:
The Peculiar American Struggle over Health Care Reform
Paul Starr
Yale University Press; Revised edition (June 4, 2013)
No Review
"Paul Starr is professor of sociology and public affairs, Princeton University, and cofounder and coeditor of The American Prospect. His 1984 book The Social Transformation of American Medicine won the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction and the Bancroft Prize in American history. A senior advisor on health policy in the Clinton White House, he writes frequently on national politics." – Amazon biography

"In no other country has health care served as such a volatile flashpoint of ideological conflict. America has endured a century of rancorous debate on health insurance, and despite the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, the battle is not yet over. This book is a history of how and why the United States became so stubbornly different in health care, presented by an expert with unsurpassed knowledge of the issues.

"Tracing health-care reform from its beginnings to its current uncertain prospects, Paul Starr argues that the United States ensnared itself in a trap through policies that satisfied enough of the public and so enriched the health-care industry as to make the system difficult to change.

"He reveals the inside story of the rise and fall of the Clinton health plan in the early 1990s—and of the Gingrich counterrevolution that followed. And he explains the curious tale of how Mitt Romney’s reforms in Massachusetts became a model for Democrats and then follows both the passage of those reforms under Obama and the explosive reaction they elicited from conservatives. Writing concisely and with an even hand, the author offers exactly what is needed as the debate continues—a penetrating account of how health care became such treacherous terrain in American politics."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (57 ratings)
ISBN 978-0300189155 ?
Parliamentary America:
The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy
Maxwell L. Stearns
Johns Hopkins University Press (March 5, 2024)
No Review
"Maxwell L. Stearns (BALTIMORE, MD) is the Venable, Baetjer & Howard Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law. He has authored dozens of articles and several books on the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and the economic analysis of law."

"Can a parliamentary democracy end America's constitutional crisis?

"Americans face increasingly stark choices each presidential election and a growing sense that our government can't solve the nation's most urgent challenges. Our eighteenth-century system is ill suited to our twenty-first-century world. Information-age technology has undermined our capacity to face common problems together and turned our democracy upside down, with gerrymanders letting representatives choose voters rather than voters choosing them. In Parliamentary America, Maxwell L. Stearns argues that the solution to these complex problems is a parliamentary democracy.

"Stearns considers such leading alternatives as ranked choice voting, the national popular vote, and congressional term limits, showing why these can't solve our constitutional crisis. Instead, three amendments―expanding the House of Representatives, having House party coalitions choose the president, and letting the House end a failing presidency based on no confidence―will produce a robust multiparty democracy. These amendments hold an essential advantage over other proposals: by leaving every member of the House and Senate as incumbents in their districts or states, the amendments provide a pressure-release valve against reforms threatening that status.

"Stearns takes readers on a world tour―England, France, Germany, Israel, Taiwan, Brazil, and Venezuela―showing what works in government, what doesn't, and how to make the best features our own. Genuine party competition and governing coalitions, commonplace across the globe, may seem like a fantasy in the United States. But we can make them a reality. This rare book offers an optimistic vision, explaining in accessible terms how to transform our troubled democracy into a thriving parliamentary America."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (11 ratings)
ISBN 978-1421448336 ?
Hoax:
Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth
Brian Stelter
Atria/One Signal Publishers (August 25, 2020)
No Review
"Brian Stelter is the chief media correspondent for CNN Worldwide and anchor of 'Reliable Sources,' which examines the world's top media stories every Sunday. Stelter also reports for CNN Business and writes a nightly newsletter. Prior to joining CNN in 2013, Stelter was a media reporter at The New York Times. His first book, New York Times bestseller Top of the Morning, inspired Apple's drama The Morning Show. Stelter is a consulting producer on the series. He is also the executive producer of the HBO documentary After Truth: Disinformation and the Cost of Fake News. He lives in New York with his wife and two children." – Amazon biography

"While other leaders were marshaling resources to combat the greatest pandemic in modern history, President Donald Trump was watching TV. Trump watches over six hours of Fox News a day, a habit his staff refers to as 'executive time.' In January 2020, when Fox News began to downplay COVID-19, the President was quick to agree. In March, as the deadly virus spiraled out of control, Sean Hannity mocked 'coronavirus hysteria' as a 'new hoax' from the left. Millions of Americans took Hannity and Trump's words as truth—until some of them started to get sick.

"In Hoax, CNN anchor and chief media correspondent Brian Stelter tells the twisted story of the relationship between Donald Trump and Fox News. From the moment Trump glided down the golden escalator to announce his candidacy in the 2016 presidential election to his acquittal on two articles of impeachment in early 2020, Fox hosts spread his lies and smeared his enemies. Over the course of two years, Stelter spoke with over 250 current and former Fox insiders in an effort to understand the inner workings of Rupert Murdoch's multibillion-dollar media empire. Some of the confessions are alarming. 'We don't really believe all this stuff,' a producer says. 'We just tell other people to believe it.'

"At the center of the story lies Sean Hannity, a college dropout who, following the death of Fox News mastermind Roger Ailes, reigns supreme at the network that pays him $30 million a year. Stelter describes the raging tensions inside Fox between the Trump loyalists and the few remaining journalists. He reveals why former chief news anchor Shep Smith resigned in disgust in 2019; why a former anchor said 'if I stay here I'll get cancer;' and how Trump has exploited the leadership vacuum at the top to effectively seize control of the network.

"Including never before reported details, Hoax exposes the media personalities who, though morally bankrupt, profit outrageously by promoting the President's propaganda and radicalizing the American right. It is a book for anyone who reads the news and wonders: How did this happen?"

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (5,118 ratings)
ISBN 978-1982142445 ?
Network of Lies:
The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for American Democracy
Brian Stelter
Atria/One Signal Publishers (November 14, 2023)
No Review
"Brian Stelter is the chief media correspondent for CNN Worldwide and anchor of 'Reliable Sources,' which examines the world's top media stories every Sunday. Stelter also reports for CNN Business and writes a nightly newsletter. Prior to joining CNN in 2013, Stelter was a media reporter at The New York Times. His first book, New York Times bestseller Top of the Morning, inspired Apple's drama The Morning Show. Stelter is a consulting producer on the series. He is also the executive producer of the HBO documentary After Truth: Disinformation and the Cost of Fake News. He lives in New York with his wife and two children." – Amazon biography

"Fox News paid almost a billion dollars in legal settlements to bury the contents of this explosive account of the network’s blatant attempts to manipulate the truth, mislead the public, and influence our elections—from the New York Times bestselling author of Hoax.

"The ongoing criminal trials of Donald Trump are also a trial for the nation he once led. We are undergoing a stress test of American democracy, the rule of law, and the very notion of a shared political reality. Can we achieve accountability for premeditated assaults on democracy and what forms should accountability take?

"In Network of Lies, New York Times bestselling author Brian Stelter answers these questions by weaving together private texts, unpublished emails, depositions, and other primary sources to tell the chilling story of Trump’s alleged conspiracy to steal the 2020 election, and the right-wing media’s mission to put him back in office in 2024.

"Trump couldn’t have convinced millions of Americans of the Big Lie without Fox News. From the moment Joe Biden became president-elect in 2020, Fox hosts fueled a fire of misinformation and violence by spreading Trump’s tales of election fraud and suppressing the truth. Come January, Sean Hannity insisted Trump needed to stop listening to 'crazy people' who swore he could stay in power, but it was too late—thousands of Trump’s deluded followers had stormed the Capitol and Trump operatives had breached Dominion Voting Systems’ voting machines in Georgia.

"Now the 2020 lies are at the center of numerous indictments and his reelection campaign, but Trump is not the only one under fire. The once-untouchable Rupert Murdoch has been held accountable. Dominion’s legal war, chronicled in-depth for the first time here, revealed that the ninety-two-year-old Fox chairman knew Trump’s lies were dangerous but he allowed the lies to fill Fox’s airwaves because, as his 'pain sponge' Suzanne Scott admitted, telling the truth was 'bad for business.'

"Network of Lies goes inside the chat rooms, board rooms, and court rooms where the pro-Trump media’s greed and selfishness were exposed. Featuring Stelter’s 'thorough and damning' (The New York Times) investigative prowess and direct quotations so shocking they read like fiction, Network of Lies is the definitive origin story of Trump’s attempt to tear down the guardrails of American democracy, and an urgent plea to learn from past mistakes as we head into 2024’s pivotal presidential election."

Rating by Amazon customers: 3.5 (71 ratings)
ISBN 978-1668046906 ?
Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate:
How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination
Alexandra Minna Stern
Beacon Press (July 16, 2019)
No Review
"Alexandra Minna Stern is the author of the award-winning Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America and Telling Genes: The Story of Genetic Counseling in America. She has contributed her insight into eugenics, ethnicity, and social movements to dozens of scholarly essays and interviews. Stern is the Carroll Smith-Rosenberg Collegiate Professor of American Culture, History, and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan, where she leads the acclaimed Sterilization and Social Justice Lab. Connect with her on her website minnastern.com"

"What is the alt-right? What do they believe, and how did they take center stage in the American social and political consciousness?

"Historian Alexandra Minna Stern excavates the alt-right memes that have erupted online and digs to the root of the far right’s motivations: their deep-seated fear of an oncoming 'white genocide' that can only be remedied through aggressive action to reclaim white power. The alt-right has expanded significantly throughout America’s cultural, political, and digital landscapes: racist, sexist, and homophobic beliefs that were previously unspeakable have become commonplace, normalized, and accepted—endangering American democracy and society as a whole. When asked to address the Proud Boys and growing far right violence, President Trump directed the group to 'stand back and stand by;' and just two weeks before President Joe Biden’s inauguration, a white supremacist mob breached the US Capitol—earning praise from the Proud Boys leader amongst threats of future violence. In order to dismantle the destructive movement that has invaded our public consciousness and threatens American democracy, we must first understand the core beliefs that drive the alt-right.

"Through careful analysis, Stern brings awareness to the underlying concepts that guide the alt-right and its overlapping forms of racism, xenophobia, and transphobia. She explains the key ideas of 'red-pilling,' strategic trolling, gender essentialism, and the alt-right’s ultimate fantasy: a future where minorities have been 'cleansed' from the body politic and a white ethnostate is established in the United States. By unearthing the hidden mechanisms that power white nationalism, Stern reveals just how pervasive the far right truly is."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.0 (115 ratings)
ISBN 978-0807063361 ?
It Was All a Lie:
How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump
Stuart Stevens
Knopf (August 4, 2020)
My Review
"Stuart Stevens is the author of seven previous books, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Esquire, and Outside, among other publications. He has written extensively for television shows, including Northern Exposure, Commander in Chief, and K Street. For twenty-five years, he was the lead strategist and media consultant for some of the nation's toughest political campaigns. He attended Colorado College; Pembroke College, Oxford; Middlebury College; and UCLA film school. He is a former fellow of the American Film Institute." – Amazon biography

"Stuart Stevens spent decades electing Republicans at every level, from presidents to senators to local officials. He knows the GOP as intimately as anyone in America, and in this new book he offers a devastating portrait of a party that has lost its moral and political compass.

"This is not a book about how Donald J. Trump hijacked the Republican Party and changed it into something else. Stevens shows how Trump is in fact the natural outcome of five decades of hypocrisy and self-delusion, dating all the way back to the civil rights legislation of the early 1960s. Stevens shows how racism has always lurked in the modern GOP's DNA, from Goldwater's opposition to desegregation to Ronald Reagan's welfare queens and states' rights rhetoric. He gives an insider's account of the rank hypocrisy of the party's claims to embody "family values," and shows how the party's vaunted commitment to fiscal responsibility has been a charade since the 1980s. When a party stands for nothing, he argues, it is only natural that it will be taken over by the loudest and angriest voices in the room.

"It Was All a Lie is not just an indictment of the Republican Party, but a candid and often lacerating mea culpa. Stevens is not asking for pity or forgiveness; he is simply telling us what he has seen firsthand. He helped to create the modern party that kneels before a morally bankrupt con man and now he wants nothing more than to see what it has become burned to the ground."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (3,288 ratings)
ISBN 978-0525658450 ?
The Conspiracy To End America:
Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy
Stuart Stevens
Twelve (October 10, 2023)
My Review
"Stuart Stevens is the author of eight previous books, most recently, the bestselling It Was All a Lie, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Esquire, and Outside, among other publications. He has written extensively for television shows, including Northern Exposure, Commander in Chief, and K Street. For twenty-five years, he was the lead strategist and media consultant for some of the nation's toughest political campaigns."

"Former chief Republican strategist, Lincoln Project adviser, and bestselling author of It Was All a Lie, Stuart Stevens offers an ominous warning that the GOP is dragging our country toward autocracy—and if we don’t wake up to the crisis in our system, 2024 may well be our last free and fair election.

"Today’s Republican party is not a 'normal' political party in the American tradition. It has become an autocratic movement masquerading as a political party. As Stuart Stevens argues in The Conspiracy To End America, if we look away from that truth, we greatly increase the likelihood that the America we love will slip away, never to return.

"Whenever a democracy slides into autocracy, there are five critical elements at work: financers, propagandists, party support, legal theories to legitimize, and shock troops. The Conspiracy To End America examines each of these driving forces on the Right and makes clear how they are working in concert to end our democracy as we know it.

"In the tradition of It Can’t Happen Here and On Tyranny, The Conspiracy To End America is a blinking red distress call about the dark intentions lurking within Stevens’ old party and a rallying cry to beat back this perilous threat and save the Republic."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (3,288 ratings)
ISBN 978-0525658450 ?
Just Mercy:
A Story of Justice and Redemption
Bryan Stevenson
One World; Reprint edition (August 18, 2015)
No Review

"Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a human rights organization in Montgomery, Alabama. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aiding children prosecuted as adults.

"Mr. Stevenson has argued and won multiple cases at the United States Supreme Court, including a 2019 ruling protecting condemned prisoners who suffer from dementia and a landmark 2012 ruling that banned mandatory life-imprisonment-without-parole sentences for all children seventeen or younger. Mr. Stevenson and his staff have won reversals, relief, or release from prison for over 140 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row and won relief for hundreds of others wrongly convicted or unfairly sentenced.

"Mr. Stevenson has initiated major new anti-poverty and anti-discrimination efforts that challenge inequality in America. He led the creation of EJI’s highly acclaimed Legacy Sites, including the Legacy Museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. These new national landmark institutions chronicle the legacy of slavery, lynching, and racial segregation, and the connection to mass incarceration and contemporary issues of racial bias."

"A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time.

"Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship—and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.

"Just Mercy is at once an unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted young lawyer’s coming of age, a moving window into the lives of those he has defended, and an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (39,380 ratings)
ISBN 978-0812984965 ?
The Power Worshippers:
Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism
Katherine Stewart
Bloomsbury Publishing (March 3, 2020)
No Review
"Katherine Stewart is the author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. She writes about politics, policy, and religion for The New York Times, Washington Post, NBC, and The New Republic. Her previous book The Good News Club was an examination of the religious right and public education." – Amazon biography

"For too long the Religious Right has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage. In her deeply reported investigation, Katherine Stewart reveals a disturbing truth: this is a political movement that seeks to gain power and to impose its vision on all of society. America’s religious nationalists aren’t just fighting a culture war, they are waging a political war on the norms and institutions of American democracy.

"Stewart pulls back the curtain on the inner workings and leading personalities of a movement that has turned religion into a tool for domination. She exposes a dense network of think tanks, advocacy groups, and pastoral organizations embedded in a rapidly expanding community of international alliances and united not by any central command but by a shared, anti-democratic vision and a common will to power. She follows the money that fuels this movement, tracing much of it to a cadre of super-wealthy, ultraconservative donors and family foundations. She shows that today’s Christian nationalism is the fruit of a longstanding antidemocratic, reactionary strain of American thought that draws on some of the most troubling episodes in America’s past. It forms common cause with a globe-spanning movement that seeks to destroy liberal democracy and replace it with nationalist, theocratic and autocratic forms of government around the world. Religious nationalism is far more organized and better funded than most people realize. It seeks to control all aspects of government and society. Its successes have been stunning, and its influence now extends to every aspect of American life, from the White House to state capitols, from our schools to our hospitals.

"The Power Worshippers is a brilliantly reported book of warning and a wake-up call. Stewart’s probing examination demands that Christian nationalism be taken seriously as a significant threat to the American republic and our democratic freedoms."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (901 ratings)
ISBN 978-1635573435 ?
The Price of Inequality:
How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future
Joseph E. Stiglitz
Bloomsbury Publishing (March 3, 2020)
No Review
"Joseph E. Stiglitz is a Nobel Prize–winning economist and the best-selling author of People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent; Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited: Anti-Globalization in the Age of Trump; The Price of Inequality; and Freefall. He was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton, chief economist of the World Bank, named by Time as one of the 100 most influential individuals in the world, and now teaches at Columbia University and is chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute."

"A forceful argument against America's vicious circle of growing inequality by the Nobel Prize–winning economist.

"The top 1 percent of Americans control some 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. But as Joseph E. Stiglitz explains in this best-selling critique of the economic status quo, this level of inequality is not inevitable. Rather, in recent years well-heeled interests have compounded their wealth by stifling true, dynamic capitalism and making America no longer the land of opportunity that it once was. They have made America the most unequal advanced industrial country while crippling growth, distorting key policy debates, and fomenting a divided society. Stiglitz not only shows how and why America’s inequality is bad for our economy but also exposes the effects of inequality on our democracy and on our system of justice while examining how monetary policy, budgetary policy, and globalization have contributed to its growth. With characteristic insight, he diagnoses our weakened state while offering a vision for a more just and prosperous future."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (901 ratings)
ISBN 978-1635573435 ?
Broken News:
Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America and How to Fight Back
Chris Stirewalt
Center Street (August 23, 2022)
No Review
"Chris Stirewalt is a political columnist, author and former political editor for the Fox News Channel, where he served on the election night decision desk, helped coordinate political coverage across the network, and frequently provided on-air analysis. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on American politics, public opinion, and the media. He is a contributing editor and columnist for The Dispatch and co-hosts a media criticism podcast, Ink Stained Wretches. He is the author of Every Man a King: A Short, Colorful History of American Populists (Twelve Books, 2018), in which he looks at American populism through the lives of seven famous populists." – Amazon biography

"A former Fox News political editor reveals how news organizations have succumbed to the temptation of “rage revenue” through slanted coverage that drives political division and rewards outrageous conduct.

"Rage revenue-addicted news companies are plagued by shoddy reporting, sensationalism, groupthink, and brain-dead partisan tribalism. Newsrooms rely on emotion-driven blabber to entrance conflict-addled super users.

"In Broken News, Chris Stirewalt, celebrated as one of America’s sharpest political analysts in print and on television, employs his trademark wit and insight to give readers an inside look at these problems. He explains that these companies don’t reward bad journalism because they like it, but because it is easy and profitable.

"Take it from Stirewalt: As a top editor and election forecaster on Fox News’ decision desk during the 2020 election, he knows firsthand what happens when viewers (including the president of the United States) become more accustomed to flattery and less willing to hear news that punctures their bubbles.

"Broken News is a fascinating, deeply researched, conversation-provoking study of how the news is made and how it must be repaired, with surprising takeaways about who’s to blame. Stirewalt goes deep inside the history of the industry to explain how today’s media divides America for profit. And he offers practical advice for how everyday readers, listeners and viewers can (and should) become better news consumers for the sake of the republic. This is a book for those who care about our country—and want the news to do the news again."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (119 ratings)
ISBN 978-1546002635 ?
Generations
William Strauss & Neil Howe
Quill; Reprint edition (September 30, 1992)
No Review
"William Strauss (February 5, 1947 – December 18, 2007) was an American author, historian, playwright, theater director, and lecturer. As a historian, he is known for his work with Neil Howe on social generations and for the Strauss–Howe generational theory. He is also well known as the co-founder and director of the satirical musical theater group the Capitol Steps, and as the co-founder of the Cappies, a critics and awards program for high school theater students. Neil Howe is a historian, economist, and demographer who writes and speaks frequently on generational change in American history and on long-term fiscal policy. He is cofounder of LifeCourse Associates, a marketing, HR, and strategic planning consultancy serving corporate, government, and nonprofit clients. He has coauthored six books with William Strauss, including Generations (1991), 13th Gen (1993), The Fourth Turning (1997), and Millennials Rising (2000). His other coauthored books include On Borrowed Time (1988) and more recently Millennials Go to College (2007), and Millennials in the Workplace (2010). He is also a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he helps lead the CSIS 'Global Aging Initiative,' and a senior advisor to the Concord Coalition. He holds graduate degrees in history and economics from Yale University. He lives in Great Falls, Virginia."

"The seminal work on generations from acclaimed authors William Strauss and Neil Howe of The Fourth Turning, and Howe's The Fourth Turning Is Here. The Strauss-Howe generational theory explains how generations evolve, and how they affect our society—from hundreds of years in the past to decades in the future.

"William Strauss and Neil Howe posit the history of America as a succession of generational biographies, beginning in 1584 and encompassing everyone through the children of today. Their bold theory is that each generation belongs to one of four types, and that these types repeat sequentially in a fixed pattern. The vision of Generations allows us to plot a recurring cycle in American history—a cycle of spiritual awakenings and secular crises—from the founding colonists through the present day and well into this millennium.

"Generations is at once a refreshing historical narrative and a thrilling intuitive leap that reorders not only our history books but also our expectations for the twenty-first century."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (1,014 ratings)
ISBN 978-0688119126 ?
The Fourth Turning:
An American Prophecy - What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny
William Strauss & Neil Howe
Crown; Reprint edition (December 29, 1997)
No Review
"William Strauss (February 5, 1947 – December 18, 2007) was an American author, historian, playwright, theater director, and lecturer. As a historian, he is known for his work with Neil Howe on social generations and for the Strauss–Howe generational theory. He is also well known as the co-founder and director of the satirical musical theater group the Capitol Steps, and as the co-founder of the Cappies, a critics and awards program for high school theater students. Neil Howe is a historian, economist, and demographer who writes and speaks frequently on generational change in American history and on long-term fiscal policy. He is cofounder of LifeCourse Associates, a marketing, HR, and strategic planning consultancy serving corporate, government, and nonprofit clients. He has coauthored six books with William Strauss, including Generations (1991), 13th Gen (1993), The Fourth Turning (1997), and Millennials Rising (2000). His other coauthored books include On Borrowed Time (1988) and more recently Millennials Go to College (2007), and Millennials in the Workplace (2010). He is also a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he helps lead the CSIS 'Global Aging Initiative,' and a senior advisor to the Concord Coalition. He holds graduate degrees in history and economics from Yale University. He lives in Great Falls, Virginia."

"First comes a High, a period of confident expansion. Next comes an Awakening, a time of spiritual exploration and rebellion. Then comes an Unraveling, in which individualism triumphs over crumbling institutions. Last comes a Crisis—the Fourth Turning—when society passes through a great and perilous gate in history.

"William Strauss and Neil Howe will change the way you see the world—and your place in it. With blazing originality, The Fourth Turning illuminates the past, explains the present, and reimagines the future. Most remarkably, it offers an utterly persuasive prophecy about how America’s past will predict what comes next.

"Strauss and Howe base this vision on a provocative theory of American history. The authors look back five hundred years and uncover a distinct pattern: Modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting about the length of a long human life, each composed of four twenty-year eras—or 'turnings'—that comprise history’s seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and rebirth. Illustrating this cycle through a brilliant analysis of the post–World War II period, The Fourth Turning offers bold predictions about how all of us can prepare, individually and collectively, for this rendezvous with destiny."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (5,228 ratings)
ISBN 978-0767900461 ?
Newsroom Confidential:
Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life
Margaret Sullivan
St. Martin's Press (October 18, 2022)
No Review
"Margaret Sullivan is currently the media columnist for the Washington Post and has been a journalist for over four decades. She has served on four Pulitzer Prize juries, including as a chairwoman for the Commentary jury, and was a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board from 2011 to 2012. A faculty member of Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, she has also taught journalism in the graduate schools at Columbia University and City University of New York. She was the first woman editor of her hometown paper, the Buffalo News, and she was also the first woman public editor of The New York Times. She won the 2021 Bart Richards Award for Media Criticism for her Washington Post columns, with the judges saying her work 'sets the standard' for American media criticism. She is the author of Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy. She lives in New York City." – Amazon biography

"Over her four decades of working in newsrooms big and small, Margaret Sullivan has become a trusted champion and critic of the American news media. In this bracing memoir, Sullivan traces her life in journalism and how trust in the mainstream press has steadily eroded.

"Sullivan began her career at the Buffalo News, where she rose from summer intern to editor in chief. In Newsroom Confidential she chronicles her years in the trenches battling sexism and throwing elbows in a highly competitive newsroom. In 2012, Sullivan was appointed the public editor of The New York Times, the first woman to hold that important role. She was in the unique position of acting on behalf of readers to weigh the actions and reporting of the paper's staff, parsing potential lapses in judgment, unethical practices, and thorny journalistic issues. Sullivan recounts how she navigated the paper’s controversies, from Hillary Clinton's emails to Elon Musk's accusations of unfairness to the need for greater diversity in the newsroom. In 2016, having served the longest tenure of any public editor, Sullivan left for the Washington Post, where she had a front-row seat to the rise of Donald Trump in American media and politics.

"With her celebrated mixture of charm, sharp-eyed observation, and nuanced criticism, Sullivan takes us behind the scenes of the nation's most influential news outlets to explore how Americans lost trust in the news and what it will take to regain it."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (119 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250281906 ?
Why Societies Need Dissent
Cass R. Sunstein
Harvard University Press (September 26, 2003)
No Review
"Cass R. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School, where he is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy. He is by far the most cited law professor in the United States. From 2009 to 2012 he served in the Obama administration as Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He has testified before congressional committees, appeared on national television and radio shows, been involved in constitution-making and law reform activities in a number of nations, and written many articles and books, including Simpler: The Future of Government and Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter." – Amazon biography

"In this timely book, Cass R. Sunstein shows that organizations and nations are far more likely to prosper if they welcome dissent and promote openness. Attacking 'political correctness' in all forms, Sunstein demonstrates that corporations, legislatures, even presidents are likely to blunder if they do not cultivate a culture of candor and disclosure. He shows that unjustified extremism, including violence and terrorism, often results from failure to tolerate dissenting views. The tragedy is that blunders and cruelties could be avoided if people spoke out.

"Sunstein casts new light on freedom of speech, showing that a free society not only forbids censorship but also provides public spaces for dissenters to expose widely held myths and pervasive injustices. He provides evidence about the effects of conformity and dissent on the federal courts. The evidence shows not only that Republican appointees vote differently from Democratic appointees but also that both Republican and Democratic judges are likely to go to extremes if unchecked by opposing views. Understanding the need for dissent illuminates countless social debates, including those over affirmative action in higher education, because diversity is indispensable to learning.

"Dissenters are often portrayed as selfish and disloyal, but Sunstein shows that those who reject pressures imposed by others perform valuable social functions, often at their own expense. This is true for dissenters in boardrooms, churches, unions, and academia. It is true for dissenters in the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court. And it is true during times of war and peace."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.9 (18 ratings)
ISBN 978-0674012684 ?
Impeachment:
A Citizen's Guide
Cass R. Sunstein
Harvard University Press (October 30, 2017)
No Review
"Cass R. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard, where he is founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy. He is the most cited law professor in the United States and probably the world. He has served as Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and as a member of the President's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies. Winner of the 2018 Holberg Prize, Sunstein is a columnist for Bloomberg View and a frequent adviser to governments all over the world. His many books include the bestseller Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (with Richard H. Thaler), Simpler: The Future of Government, and Republic.com." – Amazon biography

"Cass R. Sunstein provides a succinct citizen's guide to an essential tool of self-government. He illuminates the constitutional design behind impeachment and emphasizes the people's role in holding presidents accountable. Despite intense interest in the subject, impeachment is widely misunderstood. Sunstein identifies and corrects a number of misconceptions. For example, he shows that the Constitution, not the House of Representatives, establishes grounds for impeachment, and that the president can be impeached for abuses of power that do not violate the law. Even neglect of duty counts among the 'high crimes and misdemeanors' delineated in the republic's foundational document. Sunstein describes how impeachment helps make sense of our constitutional order, particularly the framers' controversial decision to install an empowered executive in a nation deeply fearful of kings."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (52 ratings)
ISBN 978-0674983793 ?
Can it Happen Here?:
Authoritarianism in America
Cass R. Sunstein
Dey Street Books; Illustrated edition (March 6, 2018)
No Review
"Cass R. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard, where he is founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy. He is the most cited law professor in the United States and probably the world. He has served as Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and as a member of the President's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies. Winner of the 2018 Holberg Prize, Sunstein is a columnist for Bloomberg View and a frequent adviser to governments all over the world. His many books include the bestseller Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (with Richard H. Thaler), Simpler: The Future of Government, and Republic.com." – Amazon biography

"With the election of Donald J. Trump, many people on both the left and right feared that America’s 240-year-old grand experiment in democracy was coming to an end, and that Sinclair Lewis’ satirical novel, It Can’t Happen Here, written during the dark days of the 1930s, could finally be coming true. Is the democratic freedom that the United States symbolizes really secure? Can authoritarianism happen in America?

"Acclaimed legal scholar, Harvard Professor, and New York Times bestselling author Cass R. Sunstein queried a number of the nation’s leading thinkers. In this thought-provoking collection of essays, these distinguished thinkers and theorists explore the lessons of history, how democracies crumble, how propaganda works, and the role of the media, courts, elections, and 'fake news' in the modern political landscape—and what the future of the United States may hold."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (74 ratings)
ISBN 978-0062696199 ?
Civil War by Other Means:
America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy
Jeremi Suri
PublicAffairs (October 18, 2022)
No Review
"Jeremi Suri holds the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a professor in the university’s Department of History and the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Dr. Suri is the author and editor of eleven books on contemporary politics and foreign policy, most recently The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America’s Highest Office. His other books include Henry Kissinger and the American Century, Liberty’s Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama, and Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente. He writes widely for many publications and is also the host of the podcast This Is Democracy." – Amazon biography

"In 1865, the Confederacy was comprehensively defeated, its economy shattered, its leaders in exile or in jail. Yet in the years that followed, Lincoln’s vision of a genuinely united country never took root. Apart from a few brief months, when the presence of the Union army in the South proved liberating for newly freed Black Americans, the military victory was squandered. Old white supremacist efforts returned, more ferocious than before.

"In Civil War by Other Means, Jeremi Suri shows how resistance to a more equal Union began immediately. From the first postwar riots to the return of Confederate exiles, to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, to the highly contested and consequential election of 1876, Suri explores the conflicts and questions Americans wrestled with as competing visions of democracy, race, and freedom came to a vicious breaking point.

"What emerges is a vivid and at times unsettling portrait of a country striving to rebuild itself, but unable to compromise on or adhere to the most basic democratic tenets. What should have been a moment of national renewal was ultimately wasted, with reverberations still felt today. The recent shocks to American democracy are rooted in this forgotten, urgent history."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (23 ratings)
ISBN 978-1541758544 ?
How the Right Lost Its Mind
Charles J. Sykes
St. Martin's Press (October, 2017)
No Review
"Charles J. Sykes is the author of several books on current affairs and education, including Fail U., A Nation of Victims, and Profscam. He has written pieces for the Wall Street Journal and Time.com among others, and in 2016 was featured for his critiques of Donald Trump and conservative media in articles on the front page of The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, and NPR. A longtime host of the #1 conservative talk-radio show in Wisconsin, he resigned that position and is now a regular contributor to MSNBC." – Amazon biography

"Once at the center of the American conservative movement, bestselling author and radio host Charles Sykes is a fierce opponent of Donald Trump and the right-wing media that enabled his rise.

"In How the Right Lost Its Mind, Sykes presents an impassioned, regretful, and deeply thoughtful account of how the American conservative movement came to lose its values. How did a movement that was defined by its belief in limited government, individual liberty, free markets, traditional values, and civility find itself embracing bigotry, political intransigence, demagoguery, and outright falsehood? How the Right Lost Its Mind addresses:

  • Why are so many voters so credulous and immune to factual information reported by responsible media?
  • Why did conservatives decide to overlook, even embrace, so many of Trump’s outrages, gaffes, conspiracy theories, falsehoods, and smears?
  • Can conservatives govern? Or are they content merely to rage?
  • How can the right recover its traditional values and persuade a new generation of their worth?"
Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (522 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250147172 ?
The Violent Take It by Force:
The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy
Matthew D. Taylor
Broadleaf Books (October 1, 2024)
No Review
"Matthew D. Taylor is a religious studies scholar and expert in independent charismatic Christianity and Christian nationalism. He is the creator, writer, and narrator of the Charismatic Revival Fury audio-documentary series on the Straight White American Jesus podcast and author of Scripture People. Taylor holds a PhD in religious studies and Muslim-Christian relations from Georgetown University and an MA in theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. He has served on the faculty of Georgetown University and of George Washington University, and is currently a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore."

"A propulsive account of the network of charismatic Christians that consolidated support for Donald Trump and is reshaping religion and politics in the US.

"Over the last decade, the Religious Right has evolved. Some of the more extreme beliefs of American evangelicalism have begun to take hold in the mainstream. Scholar Matthew D. Taylor pulls back the curtain on a little-known movement of evangelical Christians who see themselves waging spiritual battles on a massive scale. Known as the New Apostolic Reformation, this network of leaders and believers emerged only three decades ago but now yields (sic) colossal influence, galvanizing support for Trump and far-right leaders around the world. In this groundbreaking account, Taylor explores the New Apostolic Reformation from its inception in the work of a Fuller Seminary professor, to its immense networks of apostles and prophets, to its role in the January 6 riot. Charismatic faith provided righteous fuel to the fire that day, where symbols of spiritual warfare blazed: rioters blew shofars, worship music blared, and people knelt in prayer. This vision of charismatic Christianity now animates millions, lured by Spirit-filled revival and visions of Christian supremacy.

"Taylor's unprecedented access to the movement's leaders, archives, internal conference calls, and correspondence gives us an insider account of the connection between charismatic evangelicalism and hard-right rhetoric. Taylor delves into prophetic memes like the Seven Mountains Mandate, the Appeal to Heaven flag, and the Cyrus Anointing; Trump's spiritual advisor Paula White's call for 'angelic reinforcements'; and Sean Feucht and Bethel Music's titanic command of worship styles across America. Throughout, Taylor maps a movement of magnetic leaders and their uncompromising beliefs—and where it might be headed next. When people long to conquer a nation for God, democracy can be brought to the brink."

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 978-1506497785 ?
Blowback:
A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump
Miles Taylor
Atria Books (July 18, 2023)
No Review
"Miles Taylor is a national security expert who works in Washington, DC. Taylor previously served as chief of staff at the US Department of Homeland Security, where he published an “Anonymous” essay in The New York Times, blowing the whistle on presidential misconduct. He later published the #1 national bestseller A Warning, revealed himself to be the author, and launched a campaign of ex-officials to oppose Donald Trump’s reelection. He’s worked as an advisor in the George W. Bush administration, on Capitol Hill, as a CNN contributor, and is the cofounder of a DC-based charter school and multiple democracy-reform groups. Taylor received his MPhil in international relations from Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar and BA from Indiana University as a Harry S. Truman scholar."

"Donald Trump will be president again, whether he is on the ballot or not. That is because Trumpism is overtaking the Republican Party and will mount a vigorous comeback, potentially in the hands of a savvier successor—The Next Trump.

"This prophecy will come true, according to Miles Taylor, if we do not learn the lessons of the recent past.

"With the 2024 election approaching, the formerly 'Anonymous' official is back with bombshell revelations and a sobering national forecast. Through interviews with dozens of ex-Trump aides and government leaders, Taylor predicts what could happen inside 'Trump 2.0,' the White House of a more competent and more formidable copycat.

"What sounds like a political thriller—from shadowy presidential powers and CIA betrayals to angry henchmen and assassination plots—is instead America’s political reality, as Taylor uses untold stories to shed light on the ex-President’s unfulfilled plans, the dark forces haunting our civic lives, and how we can thwart the rise of extremism in the United States.

"Blowback is also a surprisingly emotional and self-critical portrait of a dissenter, whose own unmasking provides a vivid warning about what happens when we hide the truth from others and, most importantly, ourselves."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (85 ratings)
ISBN 978-1668015988 ?
Where Have All the Democrats Gone?:
The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes
Ruy Teixeira & John B. Judis
Henry Holt and Co. (November 7, 2023)
No Review
"Ruy Teixeira is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and a contributing columnist at the Washington Post. He is the coauthor of The Emerging Democratic Majority and America’s Forgotten Majority, as well as the author of The Optimistic Left, among other titles. Teixeira holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. John B. Judis serves as editor at large at Talking Points Memo. Previously, Judis worked as a senior writer at the National Journal and a senior editor at The New Republic. His books include The Emerging Democratic Majority, which he cowrote with Ruy Teixeira, as well as The Populist Explosion, The Folly of Empire, and more. Judis received his BA and MA degrees in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley."

"For decades, American politics has been plagued by a breakdown between the Democratic and Republican parties, in which victory has inevitably led to defeat and vice versa. Both parties have lost sight of the people at the center of the American electorate, leading to polarization and paralysis. In Where Have All the Democrats Gone?, John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira reveal the tectonic changes shaping the country’s current political landscape that both pundits and political scientists have missed.

"The Democratic Party, once the preserve of small towns as well as big cities and of the industrial working class and the newly immigrated, has abandoned and even actively alienated many of these voters. In this clarion call and essential argument for common sense and common ground, Judis and Teixeira reveal the transformation of American politics and provide a razor-sharp critique of where the Democrats have gone awry and how they can avoid political disaster in the days ahead."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (5 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250877499 ?
The People's Justice:
Clarence Thomas and the Constitutional Stories that Define Him
by Amul Thapar
Regnery Gateway (June 20, 2023)
No Review
"Amul Thapar, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, grew up in Toledo, Ohio, the son of immigrants from India. A graduate of Boston College and the University of California at Berkeley Law School, he served as a U.S. attorney and district court judge before his appointment to the appellate court in 2017. He and his wife have three children and live in Covington, Kentucky." – Amazon biography

"For thirty years, Clarence Thomas has been denounced as the 'cruelest justice,' a betrayer of his race, an ideologue, and the enemy of the little guy. In this compelling study of the man and the jurist, Amul Thapar demolishes that caricature.

"Every day, Americans go to court. Invoking the Constitution, they fight for their homes, for a better education for their children, and to save their cities from violence. Recounting the stories of a handful of these ordinary Americans whose struggles for justice reached the Supreme Court, Thapar shines new light on the heart and mind of Clarence Thomas.

"A woman in debilitating pain whose only effective medication has been taken away by the government, the motherless children of a slain police officer, victims of sexual assault— read their eye-opening stories, stripped of legalese, and decide for yourself whether Thomas’s originalist jurisprudence delivers equal justice under law.

"'Finding the right answer,' Justice Thomas has observed, 'is often the least difficult problem.' What is needed is 'the courage to assert that answer and stand firm in the face of the constant winds of protest and criticism.'

"That courage—along with wisdom and compassion—shines out from every page of The People’s Justice. At the heart of this book is the question: Would you want to live in Justice Thomas’s America? After reading these stories, even his critics might be surprised by their answer."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (55 ratings)
ISBN 978-1684514526 ?
A More Beautiful and Terrible History:
The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History
Jeanne Theoharis
Beacon Press (January 30, 2018)
No Review
"Jeanne Theoharis is the author of The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (Beacon Press, 2013) and a professor of political science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. She received an AB in Afro-American studies from Harvard College and a PhD in American culture from the University of Michigan. She is the author or coauthor of four books and articles on the black freedom struggle and the contemporary politics of race in the United States."

"The civil rights movement has become national legend, lauded by presidents from Reagan to Obama to Trump, as proof of the power of American democracy. This fable, featuring dreamy heroes and accidental heroines, has shuttered the movement firmly in the past, whitewashed the forces that stood in its way, and diminished its scope. And it is used perniciously in our own times to chastise present-day movements and obscure contemporary injustice. In A More Beautiful and Terrible History, award-winning historian Jeanne Theoharis dissects this national myth-making, teasing apart the accepted stories to show them in a strikingly different light.

"We see Rosa Parks not simply as a bus lady but a lifelong criminal justice activist and radical; Martin Luther King, Jr. as not only challenging Southern sheriffs but Northern liberals, too; and Coretta Scott King not only as a 'helpmate' but a lifelong economic justice and peace activist who pushed her husband’s activism in these directions.

"Moving from 'the histories we get' to 'the histories we need,' Theoharis challenges nine key aspects of the fable to reveal the diversity of people, especially women and young people, who led the movement; the work and disruption it took; the role of the media and 'polite racism' in maintaining injustice; and the immense barriers and repression activists faced. Theoharis makes us reckon with the fact that far from being acceptable, passive or unified, the civil rights movement was unpopular, disruptive, and courageously persevering. Activists embraced an expansive vision of justice—which a majority of Americans opposed and which the federal government feared.

"By showing us the complex reality of the movement, the power of its organizing, and the beauty and scope of the vision, Theoharis proves that there was nothing natural or inevitable about the progress that occurred. A More Beautiful and Terrible History will change our historical frame, revealing the richness of our civil rights legacy, the uncomfortable mirror it holds to the nation, and the crucial work that remains to be done."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (196 ratings)
ISBN 978-0807075876 ?
Anti-Science and the Assault on Democracy:
Defending Reason in a Free Society
Michael J. Thompson & Gregory R. Smulewicz-Zucker (Editors)
Prometheus (December 11, 2018)
No Review
"Michael J. Thompson is Professor of Political Science at William Paterson University. He is the author of Twilight of the Self: The Decline of the Individual in Late Capitalism (2022). Gregory R. Smulewicz-Zucker is managing editor of Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture. He is the editor of seven books, his most recent being Anti-Science and the Assault on Democracy (with Michael J. Thompson) and The Political Thought of African Independence. He has published in Salon, Democratic Left, Dissent, New Politics, and elsewhere."

"Defending the role that science must play in democratic society—science defined not just in terms of technology but as a way of approaching problems and viewing the world. In this collection of original essays, experts in political science, the hard sciences, philosophy, history, and other disciplines examine contemporary anti-science trends, and make a strong case that respect for science is essential for a healthy democracy. The editors note that a contradiction lies at the heart of modern society. On the one hand, we inhabit a world increasingly dominated by science and technology. On the other, opposition to science is prevalent in many forms—from arguments against the teaching of evolution and the denial of climate change to the promotion of alternative medicine and outlandish claims about the effects of vaccinations. Adding to this grass-roots hostility toward science are academics espousing postmodern relativism, which equates the methods of science with regimes of 'power-knowledge.' While these cultural trends are sometimes marketed in the name of 'democratic pluralism,' the contributors contend that such views are actually destructive of a broader culture appropriate for a democratic society. This is especially true when facts are degraded as 'fake news' and scientists are dismissed as elitists. Rather than enhancing the capacity for rational debate and critical discourse, the authors view such anti-science stances on either the right or the left as a return to premodern forms of subservience to authority and an unwillingness to submit beliefs to rational scrutiny. Beyond critiquing attitudes hostile to science, the essays in this collection put forward a positive vision for how we might better articulate the relation between science and democracy and the benefits that accrue from cultivating this relationship."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (13 ratings)
ISBN 978-1633884748 ?
The Barn:
The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi
Wright Thompson
Penguin Press (September 24, 2024)
No Review
"Wright Thompson is the bestselling author of Pappyland and The Cost of These Dreams. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his family."

"A shocking and revelatory account of the murder of Emmett Till that lays bare how forces from around the world converged on the Mississippi Delta in the long lead-up to the crime, and how the truth was erased for so long.

"Wright Thompson’s family farm in Mississippi is 23 miles from the site of one of the most notorious and consequential killings in American history, yet he had to leave the state for college before he learned the first thing about it. To this day, fundamental truths about the crime are widely unknown, including where it took place and how many people were involved. This is no accident: the cover-up began at once, and it is ongoing.

"In August 1955, two men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were charged with the torture and murder of the 14-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi. After their inevitable acquittal in a mockery of justice, they gave a false confession to a journalist, which was misleading about where the long night of hell took place and who was involved. In fact, Wright Thompson reveals, at least eight people can be placed at the scene, which was inside the barn of one of the killers, on a plot of land within the six-square-mile grid whose official name is Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, fabled in the Delta of myth as the birthplace of the blues on nearby Dockery Plantation.

"Even in the context of the racist caste regime of the time, the four-hour torture and murder of a Black boy barely in his teens for whistling at a young white woman was acutely depraved; Till’s mother Mamie Till-Mobley’s decision to keep the casket open seared the crime indelibly into American consciousness. Wright Thompson has a deep understanding of this story—the world of the families of both Emmett Till and his killers, and all the forces that aligned to place them together on that spot on the map. As he shows, the full horror of the crime was its inevitability, and how much about it we still need to understand. Ultimately this is a story about property, and money, and power, and white supremacy. It implicates all of us. In The Barn, Thompson brings to life the small group of dedicated people who have been engaged in the hard, fearful business of bringing the truth to light. Putting the killing floor of the barn on the map of Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, and the Delta, and America, is a way of mapping the road this country must travel if we are to heal our oldest, deepest wound."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (368 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593299821 ?
Getting Jefferson Right:
Fact Checking Claims About Thomas Jefferson
Warren Throckmorton PhD & Michael Coulter PhD
Salem Grove Press (November 1, 2023)
No Review
"Warren Throckmorton taught psychology at Grove City College (PA) for 29 years before he retired in 2023. He enjoys history and writing and has been blogging since 2005. Along with Michael Coulter, he wrote Getting Jefferson Right: Fact-Checking Claims About Thomas Jefferson (first edition in 2012; second edition in 2023) and The Messenger series of books for children. You can find some of his music under the label Throckmorton Initiative on Amazon Music.

"Nearly two centuries after his death, Thomas Jefferson continues to be the subject of competing claims about his public policy and his private beliefs.

"In Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims About Thomas Jefferson, two conservative scholars examine key claims frequently made by religious conservatives about Thomas Jefferson. Using Jefferson's correspondence, accounts of Jefferson's contemporaries, and other primary sources, Throckmorton and Coulter separate fact from fiction.

"In the first edition, the authors focused on claims made by David Barton in his book The Jefferson Lies. That book was subsequently pulled from publication by Christian publisher Thomas Nelson due to historical errors. However, The Jefferson Lies was subsequently republished and took issue with the conclusions of Getting Jefferson Right. In this second edition of Getting Jefferson Right, Throckmorton and Coulter respond to the second edition of The Jefferson Lies as well as claims about Jefferson in a new book by Stephen Wolfe titled The Case for Christian Nationalism.

"To address these Christian nationalist claims, Throckmorton and Coulter take on the following questions and much more:

  • Did Jefferson really believe in the separation of church and state?
  • Did Jefferson and other Founders finance a Bible in 1798 to get the Word of God to America's Families?
  • Did Jefferson found the Virginia Bible Society?
  • Was Jefferson an orthodox Christian, who only rarely expressed questions about orthodox Christian doctrine?
  • Did Jefferson approve laws providing federal funds to evangelize Indians?
  • Did Jefferson edit the Gospels of the New Testament to remove sections he disagreed with?
  • Did Virginia law keep Jefferson from freeing his slaves?
  • Did Jefferson father children with Sally Hemings?
  • Did Jefferson attempt to influence the construction of the Bill of Rights?

"The aim of the authors is to get Jefferson right."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (2 ratings)
ISBN 978-0974670652 ?
The Color of Compromise:
The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism
Jemar Tisby
Lecrae Moore (Foreword)
Zondervan (January 7, 2020)
No Review
"Jemar Tisby (BA, University of Notre Dame; MDiv, Reformed Theological Seminary) is CEO of The Witness, Inc., an organization dedicated to Black uplift. He is also cohost of the Pass the Mic podcast and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Color of Compromise. He has spoken nationwide at conferences, and his writing has been featured by the Washington Post, CNN, and The Atlantic. Jemar is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Mississippi studying race, religion, and social movements in the twentieth century." – Amazon biography

"The Color of Compromise is both enlightening and compelling, telling a history we either ignore or just don't know. Equal parts painful and inspirational, it details how the American church has helped create and maintain racist ideas and practices. You will be guided in thinking through concrete solutions for improved race relations and a racially inclusive church.

"The Color of Compromise:

  • Takes you on a historical, sociological, and religious journey: from America's early colonial days through slavery and the Civil War
  • Covers the tragedy of Jim Crow laws, the victories of the Civil Rights era, and the strides of today's Black Lives Matter movement
  • Reveals the cultural and institutional tables we have to flip in order to bring about meaningful integration
  • Charts a path forward to replace established patterns and systems of complicity with bold, courageous, immediate action
  • Is a perfect book for pastors and other faith leaders, students, non-students, book clubs, small group studies, history lovers, and all lifelong learners

"The Color of Compromise is not a call to shame or a platform to blame white evangelical Christians. It is a call from a place of love and desire to fight for a more racially unified church that no longer compromises what the Bible teaches about human dignity and equality. A call that challenges black and white Christians alike to standup now and begin implementing the concrete ways Tisby outlines, all for a more equitable and inclusive environment among God's people. Starting today."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (3,781 ratings)
ASIN ‏: ‎0310113601 ?
After the Empire:
The Breakdown of the American Order
Emmanuel Todd
C. Jon Delogu (Translator)
Michael Lind (Foreword)
Part of: European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism (102 books)
Columbia University Press (September 26, 2006)
No Review
"Emmanuel Todd is a researcher at the French National Institute for Demographic Studies. He is the author of numerous books, including The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere and The Making of Modern France: Ideology, Politics, and Culture. C. Jon Delogu is a full professor of English at the Université Jean Moulin, Lyon III. Michael Lind is the Whitehead Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation. He is the author of Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics and, with Ted Halstead, The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics."

"Widely reviewed and critically praised, Emmanuel Todd's After the Empire predicts that the United States is forfeiting its superpower status as it moves away from traditional democratic values of egalitarianism and universalism, lives far beyond its means economically, and continues to anger foreign allies and enemies alike with its military and ideological policies. As America's global dominance evaporates, Todd foresees the emergence of a Eurasian alliance bringing together Europe, Russia, Japan, and the Arab-Islamic world.

"Todd calmly and straightforwardly takes stock of many negative trends, including America's weakened commitment to the socio-economic integration of African Americans, a bulimic economy that increasingly relies on smoke and mirrors and the goodwill of foreign investors, and a foreign policy that squanders the country's reserves of 'soft power' while its militaristic arsonist-fireman behavior is met with increasing resistance. Written by a demographer and historian who foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union, this original and daring book cannot be ignored."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (76 ratings)
978-0231131032 ?
Homegrown:
Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism
Jeffrey Toobin
Simon & Schuster (May 2, 2023)
No Review
"Jeffrey Toobin is a staff writer at The New Yorker, senior legal analyst at CNN, and the bestselling author of The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court, The Nine, Too Close to Call, A Vast Conspiracy, The Run of His Life and Opening Arguments. A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, he lives with his family in New York.

"The definitive account of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the enduring legacy of Timothy McVeigh, leading to the January 6 insurrection—from acclaimed journalist Jeffrey Toobin.

"Timothy McVeigh wanted to start a movement.

Speaking to his lawyers days after the Oklahoma City bombing, the Gulf War veteran expressed no regrets: killing 168 people was his patriotic duty. He cited the Declaration of Independence from memory: 'Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.' He had obsessively followed the siege of Waco and seethed at the imposition of President Bill Clinton’s assault weapons ban. A self-proclaimed white separatist, he abhorred immigration and wanted women to return to traditional roles. As he watched the industrial decline of his native Buffalo, McVeigh longed for when America was great.

"New York Times bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin traces the dramatic history and profound legacy of Timothy McVeigh, who once declared, 'I believe there is an army out there, ready to rise up, even though I never found it.' But that doesn’t mean his army wasn’t there. With news-breaking reportage, Toobin details how McVeigh’s principles and tactics have flourished in the decades since his death in 2001, reaching an apotheosis on January 6 when hundreds of rioters stormed the Capitol. Based on nearly a million previously unreleased tapes, photographs, and documents, including detailed communications between McVeigh and his lawyers, as well as interviews with such key figures as Bill Clinton, Homegrown reveals how the story of Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing is not only a powerful retelling of one of the great outrages of our time, but a warning for our future."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (679 ratings)
978-1668013571 ?
American Psychosis:
How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System
E. Fuller Torrey
Oxford University Press (October 1, 2013)
No Review
"E. Fuller Torrey, M.D. is a research psychiatrist specializing in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. He is the executive director of the Stanley Medical Research Institute, the founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center, a professor of psychiatry at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and the author of twenty books. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland."

"In 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered an historic speech on mental illness and retardation. He described sweeping new programs to replace 'the shabby treatment of the many millions of the mentally disabled in custodial institutions' with treatment in community mental health centers. This movement, later referred to as 'deinstitutionalization,' continues to impact mental health care. Though he never publicly acknowledged it, the program was a tribute to Kennedy's sister Rosemary, who was born mildly retarded and developed a schizophrenia-like illness. Terrified she'd become pregnant, Joseph Kennedy arranged for his daughter to receive a lobotomy, which was a disaster and left her severely retarded.

"Fifty years after Kennedy's speech, E. Fuller Torrey's book provides an inside perspective on the birth of the federal mental health program. On staff at the National Institute of Mental Health when the program was being developed and implemented, Torrey draws on his own first-hand account of the creation and launch of the program, extensive research, one-on-one interviews with people involved, and recently unearthed audiotapes of interviews with major figures involved in the legislation. As such, this book provides historical material previously unavailable to the public. Torrey examines the Kennedys' involvement in the policy, the role of major players, the responsibility of the state versus the federal government in caring for the mentally ill, the political maneuverings required to pass the legislation, and how closing institutions resulted not in better care - as was the aim - but in underfunded programs, neglect, and higher rates of community violence. Many now wonder why public mental illness services are so ineffective. At least one-third of the homeless are seriously mentally ill, jails and prisons are grossly overcrowded, largely because the seriously mentally ill constitute 20 percent of prisoners, and public facilities are overrun by untreated individuals. As Torrey argues, it is imperative to understand how we got here in order to move forward towards providing better care for the most vulnerable."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (171 ratings)
ISBN 978-0199988716 ?
To End a Presidency:
The Power of Impeachment
Laurence Tribe & Joshua Matz
Basic Books (May 15, 2018)
No Review
"Laurence Tribe is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and a professor of constitutional law at Harvard. One of America's foremost constitutional scholars, he is the coauthor of Uncertain Justice (with Joshua Matz) and numerous other books and articles. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. Joshua Matz, a graduate of Harvard Law School and a constitutional lawyer, is the publisher of Take Care, which provides legal analysis of the Trump presidency. He lives in Washington, DC." – Amazon biography

"To End a Presidency addresses one of today's most urgent questions: when and whether to impeach a president. Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz provide an authoritative guide to impeachment's past and a bold argument about its proper role today. In an era of expansive presidential power and intense partisanship, we must rethink impeachment for the twenty-first century."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (373 ratings)
ISBN 978-1541644885 ?
Silencing the Past:
Power and the Production of History
Michel-Rolph Trouillot
Beacon Press; 2nd Revised edition (March 17, 2015)
No Review
"Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1949–2012) was one of the most prominent Haitian scholars working in the United States. He was the director of the Institute for Global Studies in Culture, Power, and History and Krieger/Eisenhower Distinguished Professor in anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. Hazel V. Carby is the Charles C. and Dorothea S. Dilley Professor of African American Studies, professor of American studies, and director of the Initiative on Race, Gender and Globalization at Yale University."

"Now part of the HBO docuseries Exterminate All the Brutes, written and directed by Raoul Peck.

"The 20th anniversary edition of a pioneering classic that explores the contexts in which history is produced—now with a new foreword by renowned scholar Hazel Carby.

"Placing the West’s failure to acknowledge the Haitian Revolution—the most successful slave revolt in history—alongside denials of the Holocaust and the debate over the Alamo, Michel-Rolph Trouillot offers a stunning meditation on how power operates in the making and recording of history.

"This modern classic resides at the intersection of history, anthropology, Caribbean, African-American, and post-colonial studies, and has become a staple in college classrooms around the country. In a new foreword, Hazel Carby explains the book’s enduring importance to these fields of study and introduces a new generation of readers to Trouillot’s brilliant analysis of power and history’s silences."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (852 ratings)
ISBN 978-0807080535 ?
Segregation by Design:
Local Politics and Inequality in American Cities
Jessica Trounstine
Cambridge University Press (November 15, 2018)
No Review
"Jessica Trounstine is Associate Professor of Political Science at University of California, Merced. She is the author of Political Monopolies in American Cities: The Rise and Fall of Bosses and Reformers (2008), which won the American Political Science Association's (APSA) Prize for Best Book on Urban Politics. Trounstine served as President of the Urban and Local Politics Section of APSA from 2014–2015. Her research examines subnational politics and the process and quality of representation." – Amazon biography

"Segregation by Design draws on more than 100 years of quantitative and qualitative data from thousands of American cities to explore how local governments generate race and class segregation. Starting in the early twentieth century, cities have used their power of land use control to determine the location and availability of housing, amenities (such as parks), and negative land uses (such as garbage dumps). The result has been segregation - first within cities and more recently between them. Documenting changing patterns of segregation and their political mechanisms, Trounstine argues that city governments have pursued these policies to enhance the wealth and resources of white property owners at the expense of people of color and the poor. Contrary to leading theories of urban politics, local democracy has not functioned to represent all residents. The result is unequal access to fundamental local services - from schools, to safe neighborhoods, to clean water."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (177 ratings)
ISBN 978-1108429955 ?
The Reckoning:
Our Nation's Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal
Mary L. Trump Ph.D.
St. Martin's Press (August 17, 2021)
My Review
"Mary L. Trump is the author of the international #1 bestseller Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man. Mary Trump holds a Ph.D from the Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University, and has taught graduate courses in trauma, psychopathology, and developmental psychology." – Amazon biography

"The Reckoning will examine America’s national trauma, rooted in our history but dramatically exacerbated by the impact of current events and the Trump administration’s corrupt and immoral policies. Our failure to acknowledge this trauma, let alone root it out, has allowed it to metastasize. Whether it manifests itself in rising levels of rage and hatred, or hopelessness and apathy, the stress of living in a country we no longer recognize has affected all of us. America is suffering from PTSD―a new leader alone cannot fix us.

"An enormous amount of healing must be done to rebuild our faith in leadership, and our hope for this nation. It starts with The Reckoning."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (2,899 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250278456 ?
Twitter and Tear Gas:
The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest
Zeynep Tufekci
Yale University Press; Reprint edition (April 24, 2018)
No Review
"Zeynep Tufekci is a New York Times opinion columnist, a contributing opinion writer for The Atlantic, associate professor at the University of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science, and a faculty associate at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society."

"From New York Times opinion columnist Zeynep Tufekci, an firsthand account and incisive analysis of the role of social media in modern protest

"To understand a thwarted Turkish coup, an anti–Wall Street encampment, and a packed Tahrir Square, we must first comprehend the power and the weaknesses of using new technologies to mobilize large numbers of people. An incisive observer, writer, and participant in today’s social movements, Zeynep Tufekci explains in this accessible and compelling book the nuanced trajectories of modern protests—how they form, how they operate differently from past protests, and why they have difficulty persisting in their long-term quests for change.

"Tufekci speaks from direct experience, combining on-the-ground interviews with insightful analysis. She describes how the internet helped the Zapatista uprisings in Mexico, the necessity of remote Twitter users to organize medical supplies during Arab Spring, the refusal to use bullhorns in the Occupy Movement that started in New York, and the empowering effect of tear gas in Istanbul’s Gezi Park. These details from life inside social movements complete a moving investigation of authority, technology, and culture—and offer essential insights into the future of governance."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (302 ratings)
ISBN 978-0274756650 ?
The Republican Reversal:
Conservatives and the Environment from Nixon to Trump
James Morton Turner & Andrew C. Isenberg
Harvard University Press (November 12, 2018)
No Review
"James Morton Turner is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Wellesley College. His first book, The Promise of Wilderness: American Environmental Politics since 1964, received the Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Book Award for the best book in conservation history by the Forest History Society in 2013. Turner has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation in support of his research in environmental history, politics, and policy. Turner has also been active in local sustainability initiatives in Massachusetts. Andrew C. Isenberg is the Hall Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of Kansas and the author of many books about the American West and the environment. He has been a Fulbright Scholar, an inaugural fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich, and a contributor to documentaries, including America before Columbus and the award-winning Facing the Storm: Story of the American Bison and American Experience: Wyatt Earp." – Amazon biography

"Not long ago, Republicans could take pride in their party's tradition of environmental leadership. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the GOP helped to create the Environmental Protection Agency, extend the Clean Air Act, and protect endangered species. Today, as Republicans denounce climate change as a 'hoax' and seek to dismantle the environmental regulatory state they worked to build, we are left to wonder: What happened?

"In The Republican Reversal, James Morton Turner and Andrew C. Isenberg show that the party's transformation began in the late 1970s, with the emergence of a new alliance of pro-business, libertarian, and anti-federalist voters. This coalition came about through a concerted effort by politicians and business leaders, abetted by intellectuals and policy experts, to link the commercial interests of big corporate donors with states'-rights activism and Main Street regulatory distrust. Fiscal conservatives embraced cost-benefit analysis to counter earlier models of environmental policy making, and business tycoons funded think tanks to denounce federal environmental regulation as economically harmful, constitutionally suspect, and unchristian, thereby appealing to evangelical views of man's God-given dominion of the Earth.

"As Turner and Isenberg make clear, the conservative abdication of environmental concern stands out as one of the most profound turnabouts in modern American political history, critical to our understanding of the GOP's modern success. The Republican reversal on the environment is emblematic of an unwavering faith in the market, skepticism of scientific and technocratic elites, and belief in American exceptionalism that have become the party's distinguishing characteristics."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (6 ratings)
ISBN 978-0674979970 ?
Free Speech for Some:
How the Supreme Court Is Weaponizing the First Amendment to Empower Corporations and the Religious Right
William Bennett Turner
Roaring Forties Press (September 10, 2019)
No Review
"William Bennett Turner has published dozens of articles in various magazines, newspapers, online sites, and law reviews. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Politico, Wired, San Francisco Chronicle, Harvard Magazine, Threepenny Review, and many other outlets. A lawyer for 45 years, he served as legal affairs correspondent for KQED television, winning numerous awards for news and documentaries on legal subjects. He was legal consultant to the PBS series We the People on the Constitution. He is the author of Figures of Speech: First Amendment Heroes and Villains and Free Speech: Supreme Court Opinions from the Beginning to the Roberts Court. As a San Francisco lawyer, Turner specialized in unusual litigation, including constitutional law. He argued three cases before the United States Supreme Court (including two First Amendment cases). He has taught First Amendment courses at the University of California at Berkeley for more than three decades." – Amazon biography

"Has the First Amendment become a tool to promote the conservative agenda?

"On June 27, 2018, Justice Elena Kagan, dissenting from the Supreme Court's decision in a free speech case, accused the Roberts Court majority of 'weaponizing the First Amendment'—of 'turning the First Amendment into a sword' and using it to serve a conservative political agenda. The U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., has decided more free speech cases than any previous court in history. The decisions have mostly favored free speech claims. But the court increasingly has found First Amendment protection not for dissidents and minorities but for businesses and conservative religious interests. The court has taken free speech principles developed decades ago to shield and empower oppressed minorities and applied them to shield and empower corporations and the religious right. The book critically examines how the Roberts Court has decided the key cases, changed the rules on free speech, engineered outcomes, and become the willing vehicle for advancing the conservative agenda. Justice Kagan was right."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (5 ratings)
ISBN 978-1938901881 ?
Den of Spies:
Reagan, Carter, and the Secret History of the Treason That Stole the White House
Craig Unger
Mariner Books (October 1, 2024)
No Review

"Craig Unger is the New York Times bestselling author of five books on the Republican Party’s assault on democracy. The former editor in chief of Boston Magazine, he was also a contributing editor for Vanity Fair where he covered national security and foreign affairs. His work has appeared in many other publications including New York Magazine, The New Yorker, Esquire, The Guardian, The New York Times, Washington Post, and The New Republic. He lives in Brooklyn, New York."

"The explosive inside story of the October Surprise conspiracy, a stunning act of treason that changed American history. New York Times bestselling author Craig Unger reveals his thirty-year investigation into the secret collusion between Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign and Iran, raising urgent questions about what happens when foreign meddling in our elections goes unpunished and what gets remembered when the political price for treason is victory.

"It was a tinderbox of an accusation. In April 1991, the New York Times ran an op-ed alleging that Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign had conspired with the Iranian government to delay the release of 52 American hostages until after the 1980 election. The Iranian hostage crisis was President Jimmy Carter’s largest political vulnerability, and his lack of success freeing them ultimately sealed his fate at the ballot box. In return for keeping Americans in captivity until Reagan assumed the oath of office, the Republicans had secretly funneled arms to Iran. Treasonous and illegal, the operation—planned and executed by Reagan’s campaign manager Bill Casey—amounted to a shadow foreign policy run by private citizens that ensured Reagan’s victory.

"Investigative journalist Craig Unger was one of the first reporters covering the October Surprise—initially for Esquire and then Newsweek—and while attempting to unravel the mystery, he was fired, sued, and ostracized by the Washington press corps, as a counter narrative took hold: The October Surprise was a hoax. Though Unger later recovered his name and became a bestselling author on Republican abuses of power, the October Surprise remained his white whale, the project he—as well as legendary investigative journalist, the late Robert Parry—worked on late at night and between assignments.

In Den of Spies, Unger reveals the definitive story of the October Surprise, going inside his three-decade reporting odyssey, along with Parry’s never-before-seen archives, and sharing startling truths about what really happened in 1980. The result is a real-life political thriller filled with double agents, CIA operatives, slippery politicians, KGB documents, wealthy Republicans, and dogged journalists. A timely and provocative history that presages our Trump-era political scandals, Den of Spies demonstrates the stakes of allowing the politics of the moment to obscure the writing of our history."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (14 ratings)
ISBN 978-0063330603 ?
Dissent and the Supreme Court:
Its Role in the Court's History and the Nation's Constitutional Dialogue
Melvin I. Urofsky
Pantheon (October 13, 2015)
No Review
"Melvin I. Urofsky is a professor emeritus of history at Virginia Commonwealth University and was the chair of its history department. He is the editor (with David W. Levy) of the five-volume collection of Louis Brandeis’s letters, as well as the author of American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust and Louis D. Brandeis. He lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland." – Amazon biography

"Urofsky writes of the necessity of constitutional dialogue as one of the ways in which we as a people reinvent and reinvigorate our democratic society. In Dissent and the Supreme Court, he explores the great dissents throughout the Court’s 225-year history. He discusses in detail the role the Supreme Court has played in helping to define what the Constitution means, how the Court’s majority opinions have not always been right, and how the dissenters, by positing alternative interpretations, have initiated a critical dialogue about what a particular decision should mean. This dialogue is sometimes resolved quickly; other times it may take decades before the Court adjusts its position. Louis Brandeis’s dissenting opinion about wiretapping became the position of the Court four decades after it was written. The Court took six decades to adopt the dissenting opinion of the first Justice John Harlan in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)—that segregation on the basis of race violated the Constitution—in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

"Urofsky shows that the practice of dissent grew slowly but steadily and that in the nineteenth century dissents became more frequent. In the (in)famous case of Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), Chief Justice Roger Taney’s opinion upheld slavery, declaring that blacks could never be citizens. The justice received intense condemnations from several of his colleagues, but it took a civil war and three constitutional amendments before the dissenting view prevailed and Dred Scott was overturned.

"Urofsky looks as well at the many aspects of American constitutional life that were affected by the Earl Warren Court—free speech, race, judicial appointment, and rights of the accused—and shows how few of these decisions were unanimous, and how the dissents in the earlier cases molded the results of later decisions; how with Roe v. Wade—the Dred Scott of the modern era—dissent fashioned subsequent decisions, and how, in the Court, a dialogue that began with the dissents in Roe has shaped every decision since.

"Urofsky writes of the rise of conservatism and discusses how the resulting appointments of more conservative jurists to the bench put the last of the Warren liberals—William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall—in increasingly beleaguered positions, and in the minority. He discusses the present age of incivility, in which reasoned dialogue seems less and less possible. Yet within the Marble Palace, the members of the Supreme Court continue to hear arguments, vote, and draft majority opinions, while the minority continues to 'respectfully dissent.' The Framers understood that if a constitution doesn’t grow and adapt, it atrophies and dies, and if it does, so does the democratic society it has supported. Dissent—on the Court and off, Urofsky argues—has been a crucial ingredient in keeping the Constitution alive and must continue to be so."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (61 ratings)
ISBN 978-0307379405 ?
Justice Is Coming:
How Progressives Are Going to Take Over the Country and America Is Going to Love It
Cenk Uygur
St. Martin's Press (September 19, 2023)
No Review
"Cenk Uygur is the host, founder and CEO of The Young Turks, the largest online news show in the world. He co-founded the Justice Democrats, a political action committee that has helped launch the careers of several major progressive politicians. He was previously the host of MSNBC 'Live,' and has appeared as a commentator on CNN, ABC News, NPR, Headline News, Al Jazeera, and Fox, among others. He graduated from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia Law School."

"A manifesto that outlines the progressive vision, recent history and worldview―by the founder of The Young Turks and co-founder of Justice Democrats.

"The media can't stop talking about the gridlock in Washington, as if a handful of stubborn Republicans are the only thing standing between us and a fully-functional democracy. The reality is that our government was taken over by big business and their allies in both political parties. The getaway driver in this heist was corporate media. The good news is that the American people are very progressive. And soon progressives will take over Washington as well! And when they do, the great majority of Americans will love it.

"In Justice Is Coming, Cenk Uygur presents two central ideas that counter everything we hear from pundits and politicians on a daily basis: one, progressives are correct on all of the issues, and two, America is actually a very progressive country. Millions of us know that we are not isolated individuals―we are a part of something larger, a movement that is already transforming Washington.

"This compulsively readable manifesto seeks to apply the momentum we have already built to a concrete progressive agenda that activists, voters, and citizens can all rally around. It looks beyond Trump to the larger historical forces that have given us this unique political moment, and explains why we should fight, how we should fight, and how we will win.

"Sharp-witted, persuasive, and inspiring, calling out toxic Republicans, politely-ineffectual Democrats, and mealy-mouthed media mavens in equal measure, Justice Is Coming will give heart to Democrats and progressives who seek to change our politics and society for the better."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (164 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250272799 ?
Here, Right Matters:
An American Story
Alexander Vindman
Harper (August 3, 2021)
No Review

"Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman (Ret.) was most recently the director for European Affairs on the White House's National Security Council. Prior to retiring from the U.S. Army, he served as a foreign area officer with assignments in U.S. Embassies in Kyiv, Ukraine and Moscow, Russia and for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a Political-Military Affairs Officer. He is currently a doctoral student and Foreign Policy Institute Fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, a Pritzker Military Fellow at the Lawfare Institute, a board member of the Renew Democracy Initiative nonprofit, and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Perry World House."

"Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who found himself at the center of a firestorm for his decision to report the infamous phone call that led to presidential impeachment, tells his own story for the first time. Here, Right Matters is a stirring account of Vindman's childhood as an immigrant growing up in New York City, his career in service of his new home on the battlefield and at the White House, and the decisions leading up to, and fallout surrounding, his exposure of President Trump's abuse of power.

"0900, Thursday, July 25, 2019: President Trump called Ukraine’s President Zelensky, supposedly to congratulate him on his recent victory. In the months that followed, the American public would only learn what happened on that call because Alexander Vindman felt duty-bound to report it up the chain of command: that the President of the United States had extorted a foreign ally to damage a political challenger at home. Vindman’s actions and subsequent testimony before congress would lead to Trump’s impeachment and affirm Vindman's belief that he had done the right thing in the face of intense pressure to stay silent. But it would come at an enormous cost, straining relationships with colleagues, superiors, and even his own father, and eventually end his decorated career in the US Army, by a Trump administration intent on retribution.

"Here, Right Matters is Vindman’s proud, passionate, and candid account of his family, his career, and the moment of truth he faced for his nation. As an immigrant, raised by a father who fled the Soviet Union in pursuit of a better life for his children, Vindman learned about respect for truth throughout his education and military service. As this memoir makes clear, his decision to speak up about the July 25th call was never a choice: it was Vindman’s duty, as a naturalized citizen and member of the armed forces. In the wake of his testimony, he would endure furious partisan attacks on his record and his loyalty. But far louder was the extraordinary chorus of support from citizens who were collectively intent on reaffirming an abiding American commitment to integrity.

"In the face of a sure-fire career derailment and public excoriation, Vindman heeded the lessons from the people and institutions who instilled in him the moral compass and the courage to act decisively. Like so many other American immigrant families, the Vindmans had to learn to build a life from scratch and take big risks to achieve important goals. Here, Right Matters is about the quiet heroes who keep us safe; but, above all, it is a call to arms for those who refuse to let America betray its true self."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (3,162 ratings)
ISBN 978-0063079427 ?
Electable:
Why America Hasn't Put a Woman in the White House . . . Yet
Ali Vitali
Dey Street Books (August 23, 2022)
No Review

"Ali Vitali is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for NBC News. She covered the 2016 and 2020 presidential contests from primary to inauguration—on the ground and with the candidates—as well as the 2018 and 2022 midterms, from across the country and in the nation's capital."

"The political landscape was shaken to its core when President Joe Biden announced he would be stepping down from re-election. Not only was the announcement unprecedented, it thrust Vice President Kamala Harris into the spotlight as the presumptive Democratic nominee, marking the second time Republican candidate Donald Trump will face off against a female candidate. The road to the Election Day is long, but this time can a woman finally break the glass ceiling and win the White House?

"Opening with the moment when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were finally declared the winners of the 2020 race—the long, drawn-out journey towards who would next inhabit the White House from former MSNBC 'Road Warrior' and now NBC Capitol Hill correspondent Ali Vitali, Electable is a sweeping look at a lingering question from that Presidential race. Why, when we saw more women run for President of the United States than ever before in our history, did we still not cross that final hurdle?

"Following the 2020 race minute by minute as the reporter embedded with Elizabeth Warren, Ali Vitali witnessed up-close the way that our most recent election was unique—not simply for the way in which the incumbent conducted himself, but for the ways in which the field, rich with Democrats from all kinds of backgrounds, was both modern but also more of the same. With more female candidates than ever before, this was a history-making race, and yet these women—most of them incredibly qualified with decades of public service on their resumes—dealt once again with a different level of scrutiny than their male counterparts. Woven throughout is close examination of the treatment of Hillary Clinton, Geraldine Ferraro, Shirley Chisholm, and those on the right as well. Grappling with ideas around the 'likeability' and 'electability' issues, as well as fundraising hurdles many female candidates face, Vitali asks the same questions she and so many have been grappling with for decades, but especially since Hillary Clinton’s devastating defeat in 2016: Why is it so hard for a woman to be taken seriously as a presidential contender? What will it take for men and women to be held to the same standard? What happens next?

"Electable tackles these questions, with specific, behind-the-scenes, play-by-play detail."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (102 ratings)
ISBN 978-0063058637 ?
The Shadow Docket:
How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic
Stephen Vladeck
Basic Books (May 16, 2023)
No Review

"Stephen Vladeck holds the Charles Alan Wright Chair in Federal Courts at the University of Texas School of Law. His work has been published in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Slate. He has argued before the Supreme Court and has been CNN's Supreme Court Analyst since 2013. Vladeck lives in Austin, Texas."

"The Supreme Court has always had the authority to issue emergency rulings in exceptional circumstances. But since 2017, the Court has dramatically expanded its use of the behind-the-scenes 'shadow docket,' regularly making decisions that affect millions of Americans without public hearings and without explanation, through cryptic late-night rulings that leave lawyers—and citizens—scrambling.

"The Court’s conservative majority has used the shadow docket to green-light restrictive voting laws and bans on abortion, and to curtail immigration and COVID vaccine mandates. But Americans of all political stripes should be worried about what the shadow docket portends for the rule of law, argues Supreme Court expert Stephen Vladeck. In this rigorous yet accessible book, he issues an urgent call to bring the Court back into the light."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (66 ratings)
ISBN 978-1541602632 ?
Fight:
How Gen Z Is Channeling Their Fear and Passion to Save America
John Della Volpe
David Hogg (Introduction)
St. Martin's Press (January 18, 2022)
No Review
"John Della Volpe is the Director of Polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, where he has led the institute’s polling initiatives on understanding American youth since 2000. The Washington Post referred to John as one of the world’s leading authorities on global sentiment, opinion and influence especially among Millennials and in the age of digital and social media. John appears regularly on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and his insights on the Millennial generation are found in national media outlets in the U.S. and abroad, including the Daily Show with Trevor Noah." – Amazon biography

"9/11. The war on terror. Hurricane Katrina. The 2008 financial crisis. The housing crisis. The opioid epidemic. Mass school shootings. Global warming. The Trump presidency. COVID-19.

"Since they were born, Generation Z (also known as "zoomers")―those born from the late 1990s to early 2000s―have been faced with an onslaught of turmoil, destruction and instability unprecedented in modern history. And it shows: they are more stressed, anxious, and depressed than previous generations, a phenomenon John Della Volpe has documented heavily through decades of meeting with groups of young Americans across the country.

"But Gen Z has not buckled under this tremendous weight. On the contrary, they have organized around issues from gun control to racial and environmental justice to economic equity, becoming more politically engaged than their elders, and showing a unique willingness to disrupt the status quo.

"In Fight: How Gen Z Is Channeling Their Passion and Fear to Save America, Della Volpe draws on his vast experience to show the largest forces shaping zoomers' lives, the issues they care most about, and how they are―despite older Americans' efforts to label Gen Z as overly sensitive, lazy, and entitled―rising to the unprecedented challenges of their time to take control of their country and our future."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (64 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250260468 ?
The Fight to Vote
Michael Waldman
Simon & Schuster (February 23, 2016)
My Review
"Michael Waldman is president of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, a nonpartisan law and policy institute that focuses on improving the systems of democracy and justice. He was director of speechwriting for President Bill Clinton from 1995 to 1999 and is the author of The Fight to Vote, My Fellow Americans, POTUS Speaks, and three other books. Waldman is a graduate of Columbia College and NYU School of Law. He comments widely in the media on law and policy."

"From the president of NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice and the author of The Second Amendment, the history of the long struggle to win voting rights for all citizens.

"In The Second Amendment, Michael Waldman traced the ongoing argument on gun rights from the Bill of Rights to the current day. Now, in The Fight to Vote, Michael Waldman takes a succinct and comprehensive look at a crucial American struggle: the drive to define and defend government based on 'the consent of the governed.' From the beginning, and at every step along the way, as Americans sought to right to vote, others have fought to stop them. This is the first book to trace the full story from the founders’ debates to today’s challenges: a wave of restrictive voting laws, partisan gerrymanders, the flood of campaign money unleashed by Citizens United. Americans are proud of our democracy. But today that system seems to be under siege, and the right to vote has become the fight to vote.

"In fact, that fight has always been at the heart of our national story, and raucous debates over how to expand democracy have always been at the center of American politics. At first only a few property owners could vote. Over two centuries, working class white men, former slaves, women, and finally all Americans won the right to vote. The story goes well beyond voting rules to issues of class, race, political parties, and campaign corruption. It's been raw, rowdy, a fierce, and often rollicking struggle for power. Waldman’s The Fight to Vote is a compelling story of our struggle to uphold our most fundamental democratic ideals."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (67 ratings)
ISBN 978-1501116483 ?
The Supermajority:
How the Supreme Court Divided America
Michael Waldman
Simon & Schuster (June 6, 2023)
No Review
"Michael Waldman is president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, a nonpartisan law and policy institute that works to revitalize the nation’s systems of democracy and justice. He was director of speechwriting for President Bill Clinton from 1995 to 1999 and is the author of The Second Amendment: A Biography and The Fight to Vote. Waldman was a member of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court. A graduate of Columbia College and NYU School of Law, he comments widely in the media on law and policy." – Amazon biography

"An incisive analysis of how the Supreme Court’s new conservative supermajority is overturning decades of law and leading the country in a dangerous political direction

"In The Supermajority, Michael Waldman explores the tumultuous 2021-2022 Supreme Court term. He draws deeply on history to examine other times the Court veered from the popular will, provoking controversy and backlash. And he analyzes the most important new rulings and their implications for the law and for American society. Waldman asks: What can we do when the Supreme Court challenges the country?

"Over three days in June 2022, the conservative supermajority overturned the constitutional right to abortion, possibly opening the door to reconsider other major privacy rights, as Justice Clarence Thomas urged. The Court sharply limited the authority of the EPA, reducing the prospects for combatting climate change. It radically loosened curbs on guns amid an epidemic of mass shootings. It fully embraced legal theories such as 'originalism' that will affect thousands of cases throughout the country. These major decisions—and the next wave to come—will have enormous ramifications for every American.

"It was the most turbulent term in memory—with the leak of the opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, the first Black woman justice sworn in, and the justices turning on each other in public, Waldman previews the 2022–2023 term and how the brewing fights over the Supreme Court and its role that already have begun to reshape politics.

"The Supermajority is a revelatory examination of the Supreme Court at a time when its dysfunction—and the demand for reform—are at the center of public debate."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (153 ratings)
ISBN 978-1668006061 ?
The Truce:
Progressives, Centrists, and the Future of the Democratic Party
Hunter Walker & Luppe B. Luppen
W. W. Norton & Company (January 23, 2024)
No Review
Hunter Walker is an investigative reporter and author from Brooklyn, New York. Luppe B. Luppen is a lawyer and a writer in New York City. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he graduated from Stanford University (2005) and Washington & Lee School of Law (2008).

"An inside story of the Democratic Party at a moment of great peril.

"Even before the cataclysmic 2016 election, the Democratic Party had long been at war with itself―yet Joe Biden’s narrow victory in 2020 bridged the divide. Facing the dire threat of a second Trump administration, Democrats forged an unlikely but effective coalition that stalled Trumpism at the ballot box and enacted a raft of consequential legislation. But how long can the uneasy peace hold, and can Biden win again?

"The Truce is a definitive history of a half-decade of upheaval in the Democratic Party in which a new generation aggressively pursued their progressive ideals while the powerful, centrist establishment adapted to remain in command. Journalists Hunter Walker and Luppe B. Luppen illuminate this story of backroom maneuvering and political strategy with new revelations about pivotal events and exclusive, on-the-record comments from activists, campaign operatives, and members of Congress.

"The Truce explores the major fault lines that define Democratic politics today and asks big questions about the future of the party. Will economic or social justice hold primacy at the top of the Democratic agenda? Who will lead the major wings of the party after two defining figures, Biden and Sanders, exit the stage? The Truce surveys the major shifts underway, from the rise of the Squad and new Democratic leadership in the House to a complete overhaul of the primary process. By digging into the divide between left and center, Walker and Luppen expose the creeping generational and political tensions that Biden has―for the moment―kept at bay.

"An engrossing work, and a surprising page-turner, The Truce grapples with the dangers that threaten American democracy and the complicated cast of characters who are trying to save it."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (12 ratings)
ISBN 978-1324020387 ?
The False White Gospel:
Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy
Jim Wallis
Eddie Glaude (Foreword)
St. Martin's Essentials (April 2, 2024)
No Review
"Jim Wallis is Georgetown University’s inaugural holder of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Chair in Faith and Justice, and the Director of its new Center on Faith and Justice. He served on President Obama’s first White House Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and is the author of multiple New York Times bestselling books, including God’s Politics. In 2022 and 2023, Washingtonian magazine named Wallis one of the 500 most influential people shaping policy in DC. Wallis is also the founder of Sojourners."

"A major new work by the New York Times bestselling author, arguing that the answer to bad religion is true faith that will help refound democracy.

"It is time says Jim Wallis, to call out genuine faith―specifically the “Christian” in White Christian Nationalism―inviting all who can be persuaded to reject and help dismantle a false gospel that propagates white supremacy and autocracy. We need–to raise up the faith of all of us, and help those who are oblivious, stuck, and captive to the ideology and idolatry of White Christian Nationalism that is leading us to such great danger. Wallis turns our attention to six iconic texts at the heart of what genuine biblical faith means and what Jesus, in the gospels, has called us to do. It is time to ask anew: do we believe these teachings or not?

"This book isn’t only for Christians but for all faith traditions, and even those with no faith at all. When we see a civic promotion of fear, hate, and violence for the trajectory of our politics, we need a civic faith of love, healing, and hope to defeat it. And that must involve all of us–religious or not. Learning to practice a politics of neighbor love will be central to the future of democracy in America. And more than ever, the words of Jesus ring, 'You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free'."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (236 ratings)
ISBN 978-1250291899 ?
Taking America Back:
The Conservative Movement and the Far Right
David Austin Walsh
Yale University Press (April 16, 2024)
No Review
"David Austin Walsh is a postdoctoral associate at the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism and a College Fellow at the University of Virginia. He splits his time between New Haven, CT, and Charlottesville, VA."

"A provocative look at the relationship between the far right and the American conservative movement from the 1930s to the end of the Cold War.

"Since 2016, many commentators have expressed shock at the so-called rise of the far right in America at the expense of 'responsible' and 'respectable' conservatism. But is the far right an aberration in conservative politics?

"As David Austin Walsh shows, the mainstream conservative movement and the far right have been intertwined for nearly a century, and both were born out of a 'right-wing popular front' linking racists, anti-Semites, and fascists in a broad coalition opposed to socialism, communism, and New Deal liberalism.

"Far from being outliers in the broader conservative coalition, these extremist elements were foundational in the creation of a right‑wing political culture centered around shared political enemies, a penchant for conspiracy theories, and a desire to restore America to its 'authentic' pre–New Deal values.

"The popular front included Merwin Hart, a New York business lobbyist active in far-right circles who became a lobbyist for the Franco regime in Spain, the original 'America First' movement, the movement to prevent Jewish immigration to the United States after World War II, the John Birch Society, the American Nazi Party, the George Wallace presidential campaign of 1968, the fight over the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Pat Buchanan’s support of Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk during the Reagan Administration. And connecting this disparate coalition was William F. Buckley, Jr., the editor of National Review and America’s leading 'responsible conservative'."

Rating by Amazon customers: 3.6 (7 ratings)
ISBN 978-0300260977 ?
How Civil Wars Start:
And How To Stop Them
Barbara F. Walter
Crown (January 11, 2022)
No Review
"Barbara F. Walter is the Rohr Professor of International Relations at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Walter helps to run the award-winning blog Political Violence at a Glance and has written for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Reuters, and Foreign Affairs." – Amazon biography

"Political violence rips apart several towns in southwest Texas. A far-right militia plots to kidnap the governor of Michigan and try her for treason. An armed mob of Trump supporters and conspiracy theorists storms the U.S. Capitol. Are these isolated incidents? Or is this the start of something bigger? Barbara F. Walter has spent her career studying civil conflict in places like Iraq and Sri Lanka, but now she has become increasingly worried about her own country.

"Perhaps surprisingly, both autocracies and healthy democracies are largely immune from civil war; it’s the countries in the middle ground that are most vulnerable. And this is where more and more countries, including the United States, are finding themselves today. Over the last two decades, the number of active civil wars around the world has almost doubled. Walter reveals the warning signs—where wars tend to start, who initiates them, what triggers them—and why some countries tip over into conflict while others remain stable. Drawing on the latest international research and lessons from over twenty countries, Walter identifies the crucial risk factors, from democratic backsliding to factionalization and the politics of resentment. A civil war today won’t look like America in the 1860s, Russia in the 1920s, or Spain in the 1930s. It will begin with sporadic acts of violence and terror, accelerated by social media. It will sneak up on us and leave us wondering how we could have been so blind.

"In this urgent and insightful book, Walter redefines civil war for a new age, providing the framework we need to confront the danger we now face—and the knowledge to stop it before it’s too late."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (1,437 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593137789 ?
The Internationalists:
The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy After Trump
Alexander Ward
Portfolio (February 20, 2024)
No Review
"Alexander Ward is a national security reporter at Politico. Previously, Ward was the White House and national security reporter at Vox. He was an associate director on the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He has won multiple prestigious awards for his reporting and was a part of a team that was a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Washington, D.C."

"The inside story of Biden’s foreign policy team and their struggle to restore America’s global influence in the aftermath of Trump.

"When Joe Biden assumed the United States presidency, he brought with him a team of all-star talent, perhaps the most experienced ensemble of policy experts in modern U.S. history. Their mission: repair America’s damaged reputation abroad and decide the course of its global future.

"The challenges and risks could not have been greater. Around the world, adversaries were consolidating power, allies were drifting away, wars were raging, and climate change was accelerating, all while Russia was disrupting democracies and China was seeking to replace the U.S. as the world’s preeminent power. Now for the first time since World War II, the United States risked falling from its unrivaled position. If Biden and his team failed, it would likely mark the end of an American era and the rise of a fractured and autocratic world order.

"In The Internationalists, acclaimed national security reporter Alexander Ward takes us behind the scenes to reveal the struggle to enact a coherent and effective set of policies in a time of global crisis. Against the failure of Afghanistan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Biden’s all-star team-of-rivals must band together against incredible odds. Their successes, and their failures, will decide not just Biden’s presidency. They will decide the very course of America’s global future.

"As The Best and The Brightest chronicled the smoke-filled rooms of the Kennedy Administration, and The Rise of The Vulcans detailed the inner workings of George Bush's war machine, The Internationalists takes readers behind the scenes as Joe Biden and his cabinet embark on some of the most ambitious foreign policy initiatives of any president since Richard M. Nixon.

"Thanks to rigorous reporting and sources in the rooms where it happened, Ward delivers the first draft of history, the first definitive, unvarnished account of the Biden Doctrine, from the Fall of Kabul to the Rise of Kiev."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (16 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593539071 ?
Testimony:
Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation
Jon Ward
Brazos Press (April 18, 2023)
No Review
"Jon Ward is the chief national correspondent at Yahoo! News. He has covered American politics and culture for two decades, including as a White House correspondent traveling aboard Air Force One and as a national affairs correspondent writing about two presidential campaigns. He is the author of Camelot's End: Kennedy vs. Carter and the Fight That Broke the Democratic Party and hosts The Long Game podcast. Ward has written for the Washington Post, the New Republic, Politico, Vanity Fair, HuffPost, and the Washington Times and lives in Washington, DC." – Amazon biography

"Jon Ward's life is divided in half: two decades inside the evangelical Christian bubble and two decades outside of it.

"In Testimony, Ward tells the engaging story of his upbringing in, and eventual break from, an influential evangelical church in the 1980s and 1990s. Ward sheds light on the evangelical movement's troubling political and cultural dimensions, tracing the ways in which the Jesus People movement was seduced by materialism and other factors to become politically captive rather than prophetic.

"A respected journalist, Ward asks uncomfortable but necessary questions, calling those inside and outside conservative Christian circles to embrace truth, complexity, and nuance. He recounts his growing alarm and grief over the last several years as evangelical conservatives attacked truth, rejected personal character, and embraced authoritarianism and conspiracism. He shares his search for a faith that embodies the values he was taught as a child.

"Ward's experience and reflections will resonate with many readers who grew up in the evangelical movement as well as all those who have an interest in the health of the church and its impact on American life."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (33 ratings)
ISBN 978-1587435775 ?
The Death of Politics:
How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump
Peter Wehner
HarperOne (June 4, 2019)
No Review
"Peter Wehner is a New York Times contributing Op-Ed writer covering American politics and conservative thought and a popular media commentator on politics. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and veteran of three White House administrations." – Amazon biography

"The New York Times opinion writer, media commentator, outspoken Republican and Christian critic of the Trump presidency offers a spirited defense of politics and its virtuous and critical role in maintaining our democracy and what we must do to save it before it is too late. 'Any nation that elects Donald Trump to be its president has a remarkably low view of politics.'

"Frustrated and feeling betrayed, Americans have come to loathe politics with disastrous results, argues Peter Wehner. In this timely manifesto, the veteran of three Republican administrations and man of faith offers a reasoned and persuasive argument for restoring “politics” as a worthy calling to a cynical and disillusioned generation of Americans.

"Wehner has long been one of the leading conservative critics of Donald Trump and his effect on the Republican Party. In this impassioned book, he makes clear that unless we overcome the despair that has caused citizens to abandon hope in the primary means for improving our world—the political process—we will not only fall victim to despots but hasten the decline of what has truly made America great. Drawing on history and experience, he reminds us of the hard lessons we have learned about how we rule ourselves—why we have checks and balances, why no one is above the law, why we defend the rights of even those we disagree with.

"Wehner believes we can turn the country around, but only if we abandon our hatred and learn to appreciate and honor the unique and noble American tradition of doing 'politics.' If we want the great American experiment to continue and to once again prosper, we must once more take up the responsibility each and every one of us as citizens share."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (148 ratings)
ISBN 978-0062820792 ?
Enemies:
A History of the FBI
Tim Weiner
Random House (February, 2012)
No Review
"Tim Weiner has won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting and writing on secret intelligence and national security. As a correspondent for The New York Times, he covered the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington and terrorism in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Sudan, and other nations. Enemies is his fourth book. His Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA won the National Book Award and was acclaimed as one of the year’s best books by The New York Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, Time, and many other publications. The Wall Street Journal called Betrayal “the best book ever written on a case of espionage.” He is now working on a history of the American military."

"Enemies is the first definitive history of the FBI’s secret intelligence operations, from an author whose work on the Pentagon and the CIA won him the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

"We think of the FBI as America’s police force. But secret intelligence is the Bureau’s first and foremost mission. Enemies is the story of how presidents have used the FBI as the most formidable intelligence force in American history.

"Here is the hidden history of America’s hundred-year war on terror. The FBI has fought against terrorists, spies, anyone it deemed subversive—and sometimes American presidents. The FBI’s secret intelligence and surveillance techniques have created a tug-of-war between protecting national security and infringing upon civil liberties. It is a tension that strains the very fabric of a free republic."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (804 ratings)
ISBN 978-1400067480 ?
Divided Politics, Divided Nation:
Hyperconflict in the Trump Era
Darrell M. West
Brookings Institution Press (March 26, 2019)
No Review
"Darrell M. West is vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. Previously, he was the John Hazen White Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He is the author of numerous books on American politics, campaigns and elections, and technology policy. His recent books include Megachange: Economic Disruption, Political Upheaval, and Social Strife in the 21t Century and Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust. He can be reached at DWest@Brookings.edu or through his webpage at www.InsidePolitics.org." – Amazon biography

"The United States is caught in a partisan hyperconflict that divides politicians, communities—and even families. Politicians from the president to state and local office-holders play to strongly-held beliefs and sometimes even pour fuel on the resulting inferno. This polarization has become so intense that many people no longer trust anyone from a differing perspective.

"Drawing on his personal story of growing up as a fundamentalist Christian on a dairy farm in rural Ohio, then as an academic in the heart of the liberal East Coast establishment, Darrell West analyzes the economic, cultural, and political aspects of polarization. He takes advantage of his experiences inside both conservative and liberal camps to explain the views of each side and offer insights into why each is angry with the other.

"West argues that societal tensions have metastasized into a dangerous tribalism that seriously threatens U.S. democracy. Unless people can bridge these divisions and forge a new path forward, it will be impossible to work together, maintain a functioning democracy, and solve the country's pressing policy problems."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (36 ratings)
ISBN 978-0815736912 ?
The Witches Are Coming
Lindy West
Hachette Books (November 5, 2019)
No Review
"Lindy West is an opinion writer for the New York Times. She is the author of the bestselling memoir Shrill, and executive producer of the acclaimed Hulu adaptation starring Aidy Bryant. She lives in Seattle." – Amazon biography

"This is a witch hunt. We're witches, and we're hunting you.

"From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt. In The Witches Are Coming, firebrand author of the New York Times bestselling memoir and now critically acclaimed Hulu TV series Shrill, Lindy West, turns that refrain on its head. You think this is a witch hunt? Fine. You've got one.

"In a laugh-out-loud, incisive cultural critique, West extolls the world-changing magic of truth, urging readers to reckon with dark lies in the heart of the American mythos, and unpacking the complicated, and sometimes tragic, politics of not being a white man in the twenty-first century. She tracks the misogyny and propaganda hidden (or not so hidden) in the media she and her peers devoured growing up, a buffet of distortions, delusions, prejudice, and outright bullsh*t that has allowed white male mediocrity to maintain a death grip on American culture and politics-and that delivered us to this precarious, disorienting moment in history.

"West writes, 'We were just a hair's breadth from electing America's first female president to succeed America's first black president. We weren't done, but we were doing it. And then, true to form—like the Balrog's whip catching Gandalf by his little gray bootie, like the husband in a Lifetime movie hissing, 'If I can't have you, no one can'—white American voters shoved an incompetent, racist con man into the White House.'

"We cannot understand how we got here—how the land of the free became Trump's America—without examining the chasm between who we are and who we think we are, without fact-checking the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and each other. The truth can transform us; there is witchcraft in it. Lindy West turns on the light."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (1,126 ratings)
ISBN 978-0316449885 ?
The Gatekeepers:
How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency
Chris Whipple
Crown; Illustrated edition (March 6, 2018)
No Review
"Chris Whipple is an acclaimed writer, journalist, documentary filmmaker, and speaker. A multiple Peabody- and Emmy Award-winning producer at CBS's 60 Minutes and ABC's Primetime, he is the chief executive officer of CCWHIP Productions. Most recently, he was the executive producer and writer of Showtime's The Spymasters: CIA in the Crosshairs." – Amazon biography

"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 States—as 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, and—most crucially—enjoy unparalleled access to the leader of the free world. Each chief can make or break an administration, and each president reveals himself by the chief he picks.

"Through extensive, intimate interviews with eighteen living chiefs (including Reince Priebus) and two former presidents, award-winning journalist and producer Chris Whipple pulls back the curtain on this unique fraternity. In doing so, he revises our understanding of presidential history, showing us how James Baker’s expert managing of the White House, the press, and Capitol Hill paved the way for the Reagan Revolution—and, conversely, how Watergate, the Iraq War, and even the bungled Obamacare rollout might have been prevented by a more effective chief.

"Filled with shrewd analysis and never-before-reported details, The Gatekeepers offers an essential portrait of the toughest job in Washington."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (1,859 ratings)
ISBN 978-0804138260 ?
Steadfast Democrats:
How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior
Ismail K. White & Chryl N. Laird
Princeton University Press (February 25, 2020)
No Review
"Chryl N. Laird is an Assistant Professor of Government and Legal Studies at Bowdoin College. Her co-authored book, Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior (2020), looks at the influence of social expectations on black political unity and partisanship. Chryl's research, writing and commentary has been featured in numerous outlets including NPR's All Things Considered, NPR's CodeSwitch, Vox, Newsweek, and The Conversation." – Amazon biography

"Black Americans are by far the most unified racial group in American electoral politics, with 80 to 90 percent identifying as Democrats—a surprising figure given that nearly a third now also identify as ideologically conservative, up from less than 10 percent in the 1970s. Why has ideological change failed to push more black Americans into the Republican Party? Steadfast Democrats answers this question with a pathbreaking new theory that foregrounds the specificity of the black American experience and illuminates social pressure as the key element of black Americans’ unwavering support for the Democratic Party.

"Ismail White and Chryl Laird argue that the roots of black political unity were established through the adversities of slavery and segregation, when black Americans forged uniquely strong social bonds for survival and resistance. White and Laird explain how these tight communities have continued to produce and enforce political norms—including Democratic Party identification in the post–Civil Rights era. The social experience of race for black Americans is thus fundamental to their political choices. Black voters are uniquely influenced by the social expectations of other black Americans to prioritize the group’s ongoing struggle for freedom and equality. When navigating the choice of supporting a political party, this social expectation translates into affiliation with the Democratic Party. Through fresh analysis of survey data and original experiments, White and Laird explore where and how black political norms are enforced, what this means for the future of black politics, and how this framework can be used to understand the electoral behavior of other communities.

"An innovative explanation for why black Americans continue in political lockstep, Steadfast Democrats sheds light on the motivations consolidating an influential portion of the American electoral population."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (39 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593138571 ?
Taking America Back for God:
Christian Nationalism in the United States
Andrew L. Whitehead & Samuel L. Perry
Oxford University Press (March 2, 2020)
No Review
"Andrew Whitehead is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Clemson University and Assistant Director of the Association of Religion Data Archives. He is the author of numerous articles on Christian nationalism and religion in the modern world.
Samuel L. Perry is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of over 70 peer-reviewed journal articles and two books, Addicted to Lust and Growing God's Family." – Amazon biography

"Why do so many conservative Christians continue to support Donald Trump despite his many overt moral failings? Why do many Americans advocate so vehemently for xenophobic policies, such as a border wall with Mexico? Why do many Americans seem so unwilling to acknowledge the injustices that ethnic and racial minorities experience in the United States? Why do a sizeable proportion of Americans continue to oppose women's equality in the workplace and in the home?

"To answer these questions, Taking America Back for God points to the phenomenon of 'Christian nationalism,' the belief that the United States is-and should be-a Christian nation. Christian ideals and symbols have long played an important role in American public life, but Christian nationalism is about far more than whether the phrase 'under God' belongs in the pledge of allegiance. At its heart, Christian nationalism demands that we must preserve a particular kind of social order, an order in which everyone—Christians and non-Christians, native-born and immigrants, whites and minorities, men and women—recognizes (sic) their "proper" place in society. The first comprehensive empirical analysis of Christian nationalism in the United States, Taking America Back for God illustrates the influence of Christian nationalism on today's most contentious social and political issues.

"Drawing on multiple sources of national survey data as well as in-depth interviews, Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry document how Christian nationalism shapes what Americans think about who they are as a people, what their future should look like, and how they should get there. Americans' stance toward Christian nationalism provides powerful insight into what they think about immigration, Islam, gun control, police shootings, atheists, gender roles, and many other political issues-very much including who they want in the White House. Taking America Back for God is a guide to one of the most important-and least understood-forces shaping American politics."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (333 ratings)
ISBN 978-0190057886 ?
American Idolatry:
How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church
Andrew L. Whitehead
Brazos Press (August 15, 2023)
No Review
"Andrew Whitehead (PhD, Baylor University) is associate professor of sociology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, where he codirects the Association of Religion Data Archives at the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture. He is the coauthor of Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States, which won the 2021 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Whitehead has written for the Washington Post, NBC News, Time, and Religion News Service and speaks frequently about Christian nationalism." – Amazon biography

"Power. Fear. Violence. These three idols of Christian nationalism are corrupting American Christianity.

"Andrew Whitehead is a leading scholar on Christian nationalism in America and speaks widely on its effects within Christian communities. In this book, he shares his journey and reveals how Christian nationalism threatens the spiritual lives of American Christians and the church.

"Whitehead shows how Christians harm their neighbors when they embrace the idols of power, fear, and violence. He uses two key examples—racism and xenophobia—to demonstrate that these idols violate core Christian beliefs. Through stories, he illuminates expressions of Christianity that confront Christian nationalism and offer a faithful path forward.

"American Idolatry encourages further conversation about what Christian nationalism threatens, how to face it, and why it is vitally important to do so. It will help identify Christian nationalism and build a framework that makes sense of the relationship between faith and the current political and cultural context."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (25 ratings)
ISBN 978-1587435768 ?
Captured:
The Corporate Infiltration of American Democracy
Sheldon Whitehouse & Melanie Wachtell Stinnett
The New Press (October 18, 2022)
No Review
"Sheldon Whitehouse represents Rhode Island in the U.S. Senate. He has served as a federal and state prosecutor, business regulator, courtroom litigator, environmental advocate, and government reformer.
Boston-based writer Melanie Wachtell Stinnett is a former Director of Policy & Communications for the Tobin Project." – Amazon biography

"In Captured, U.S. Senator and former federal prosecutor Sheldon Whitehouse offers an eye-opening take on what corporate influence looks like today from the Senate Floor, adding a first-hand perspective to Jane Mayer's Dark Money.

"Americans know something is wrong in their government. Senator Whitehouse combines history, legal scholarship, and personal experiences to provide the first hands-on, comprehensive explanation of what's gone wrong, exposing multiple avenues through which our government has been infiltrated and disabled by corporate powers. Captured reveals an original oversight by the Founders, and shows how and why corporate power has exploited that vulnerability: to strike fear in elected representatives who don't 'get right' by threatening million-dollar 'dark money' election attacks (a threat more effective and less expensive than the actual attack); to stack the judiciary―even the Supreme Court―in 'business-friendly' ways; to 'capture' the administrative agencies meant to regulate corporate behavior; to undermine the civil jury, the Constitution's last bastion for ordinary citizens; and to create a corporate 'alternate reality' on public health and safety issues like climate change.

"Captured shows that in this centuries-long struggle between corporate power and individual liberty, we can and must take our American government back into our own hands."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (177 ratings)
ISBN 978-1620972076 ?
The Scheme:
How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court
Sheldon Whitehouse & Jennifer Mueller
The New Press (October 18, 2022)
No Review
"Sheldon Whitehouse represents Rhode Island in the U.S. Senate. He has served as his state’s United States Attorney and as the state Attorney General, as well as its top business regulator. The author of Captured and The Scheme (both from The New Press), he lives in Newport, Rhode Island.
Jennifer Mueller has worked as a judicial clerk, big-firm litigator, policy consultant, law school professor, mediator, coach, writer, and, once upon a time, as an English teacher at the State Language School in Prague. Mueller represented the sponsors of BCRA in McConnell v. FEC as an associate at WilmerHale, and she has published several academic articles about political participation. Today she works with clients in the public, private, and philanthropic sectors and coaches Public Voices Fellows with The OpEd Project. A native of New Jersey and longtime DC resident, she received her undergraduate degree from UNC-Chapel Hill and her law degree from Harvard." – Amazon biography

"Following his book Captured on corporate capture of regulatory and government agencies, and his years of experience as a prosecutor, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse here turns his attention to the right-wing scheme to capture the courts, and how it influenced the Trump administration’s appointment of over 230 'business-friendly' judges, including the last three justices of the United States Supreme Court.

"Whitehouse traces the motive to control the court system back to Lewis Powell’s notorious memo, which gave a road map for corporate influence to target the judiciary, and chronicles a hidden-money campaign using an armada of front groups and helped by the infamous Citizens United Supreme Court decision. The scheme utilized the Federalist Society as an appointments turnstile, spent secret millions to support the nominees, orchestrated an 'amicus brief' signaling apparatus, and propped up front-group litigants to 'fast-lane' strategic test cases to the friendly justices.

"Whitehouse finds the same small handful of right-wing billionaires and corporations running operations that he likens to 'covert ops,' ultimately enticing the Senate to break rules, norms, and precedents to confirm wildly inappropriate nominees who would advance the anti-government agenda of a small number of corporate oligarchs. The world got a glimpse of this story when the Senator’s presentation at the Amy Coney Barrett hearing went viral. Now, full of unique insights and inside stories, The Scheme pulls back the curtain on a powerful and hidden apparatus that has spent years trying to corrupt our politics, control our courts, and degrade our democracy."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (122 ratings)
ISBN 978-1620977385 ?
A Post-Truth World:
Politics, Polarization, and a Vision for Transcending the Chaos
Ken Wilber
Shambhala (July 2, 2024)
No Review
"Ken Wilber is one of the most widely read and influential American philosophers of our time and an internationally acknowledged leader and preeminent scholar of the Integral stage of human development. He is the founder of Integral Institute and the cofounder of Integral Life. He is the author of more than twenty books, including The Religion of Tomorrow, A Brief History of Everything, A Theory of Everything, Integral Spirituality, No Boundary, Grace and Grit, and Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, and his writings have been translated into over twenty languages. He lives in Denver, Colorado."

"A piercing examination of our current social and political situation through the lens of Integral Theory—by the framework’s founder, cutting-edge philosopher Ken Wilber.

"Our overwhelmingly divisive socio-political climate is among the greatest challenges of our time. Not only in America but also internationally, it seems that almost every issue raises incredibly vocal oppositional views. Not least of all, the arising of vast networks of disinformation is a testament to our deepening rifts. With so much hostility, antagonism, cynicism, and discord, how can we mend the ruptures in our society?

"Acclaimed philosopher Ken Wilber examines our polarization through the lens of Integral Theory to show what led to these fractures, both in America and around the world—as well as what is needed for humanity to move forward. In his provocative analysis, he explores how the arising of support for antagonistic authoritarians represents a backlash against the failure of those at the leading edge of consciousness (postmodernism and pluralism) to acknowledge the challenges that persist amidst our imagined progress: that, to date, society has been not proven to be equal, and liberty and justice have not been consistent for all. But a new Integral force is emerging that can move beyond the narcissism, nihilism, and cynicism to offer genuine leadership and move us all toward greater wholeness. All of us can be part of the movement, and here Ken Wilber shows us how."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (24 ratings)
ISBN 978-1645473558 ?
The Rise of American Democracy:
Jefferson to Lincoln
Sean Wilentz
W. W. Norton (October 17, 2005)
No Review
"Sean Wilentz is the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton University and author of the Bancroft Prize–winning The Rise of American Democracy, Bob Dylan in America, and many other works. He is completing his next book, No Property in Man, on slavery, antislavery, and the Constitution, based on his Nathan I. Huggins Lectures delivered at Harvard in 2015."

"A grand political history in a fresh new style of how the elitist young American republic became a rough-and-tumble democracy.

"In this magisterial work, Sean Wilentz traces a historical arc from the earliest days of the republic to the opening shots of the Civil War. One of our finest writers of history, Wilentz brings to life the era after the American Revolution, when the idea of democracy remained contentious, and Jeffersonians and Federalists clashed over the role of ordinary citizens in government of, by, and for the people. The triumph of Andrew Jackson soon defined this role on the national level, while city democrats, Anti-Masons, fugitive slaves, and a host of others hewed their own local definitions. In these definitions Wilentz recovers the beginnings of a discontenttwo starkly opposed democracies, one in the North and another in the Southand the wary balance that lasted until the election of Abraham Lincoln sparked its bloody resolution. 75 illustrations."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (123 ratings)
ISBN 978-0393058208 ?
The Age of Reagan:
A History, 1974-2008
Sean Wilentz
Harper (May 6, 2008)
No Review
"Sean Wilentz is the author of The Rise of American Democracy, which won the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Wilentz teaches American history at Princeton University. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey."

"The past thirty-five years have marked an era of conservatism. Although briefly interrupted in the late 1970s and temporarily reversed in the 1990s, a powerful surge from the right has dominated American politics and government. In The Age of Reagan, Sean Wilentz accounts for how a conservative movement once deemed marginal managed to seize power and hold it, and the momentous consequences that followed.

"Ronald Reagan has been the single most important political figure of this age. Without Reagan, the conservative movement would have never been as successful as it was. In his political persona as well as his policies, Reagan embodied a new fusion of deeply right-leaning politics with some of the rhetoric and even a bit of the spirit of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and John F. Kennedy's New Frontier. In American political history there have been a few leading figures who, for better or worse, have placed their political stamp indelibly on their times. They include Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt—and Ronald Reagan. A conservative hero in a conservative age, Reagan has been so admired by a minority of historians and so disliked by the others that it has been difficult to evaluate his administration with detachment. Drawing on numerous primary documents that have been neglected or only recently released to the public, as well as on emerging historical work, Wilentz offers invaluable revelations about conservatism's ascendancy and the era in which Reagan was the preeminent political figure.

"Vivid, authoritative, and illuminating from start to finish, The Age of Reagan raises profound questions and opens passionate debate about our nation's recent past."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.1 (86 ratings)
ISBN 978-0060744809 ?
Caste:
The Origins of Our Discontents
Isabel Wilkerson
Random House; Reprint edition (August 4, 2020)
No Review
"Isabel Wilkerson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, is the author of the critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller The Warmth of Other Suns, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and was named to Time’s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the 2010s and The New York Times Magazine’s list of the best nonfiction books of all time. She has taught at Princeton, Emory, and Boston Universities and has lectured at more than two hundred other colleges and universities across the United States and in Europe and Asia."

"The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

"In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched, and beautifully written narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

"Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their outcasting of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

"Original and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (44,021 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593230251 ?
The Spirit Level:
Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger
Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett
Bloomsbury Press (December 22, 2009)
No Review
"Richard Wilkinson has played a formative role in international research on inequality, and his work has been published in ten languages. He is professor emeritus at the University of Nottingham Medical School. Kate Pickett is a senior lecturer at the University of York and a National Institute for Health Research Career Scientist. They live in North Yorkshire, England."

"The eye-opening and headline-generating UK bestseller that shows how one single factor―the gap between its richest and poorest members―can determine the health and well-being of a society.

"It is well established that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem. Now a groundbreaking book, based on thirty years' research, takes an important step past this idea. The Spirit Level shows that there is one common factor that links the healthiest and happiest societies: the degree of equality among their members. Not wealth; not resources; not culture, climate, diet, or system of government. Furthermore, more-unequal societies are bad for almost everyone within them―the well-off as well as the poor.

"The remarkable data assembled in The Spirit Level reveals striking differences, not only among the nations of the first world but even within America's fifty states. Almost every modern social problem―ill-health, violence, lack of community life, teen pregnancy, mental illness―is more likely to occur in a less-equal society. This is why America, by most measures the richest country on earth, has per capita shorter average lifespan, more cases of mental illness, more obesity, and more of its citizens in prison than any other developed nation.

"Wilkinson and Pickett lay bare the contradiction between material success and social failure in today's world, but they do not simply provide a diagnosis of our woes. They offer readers a way toward a new political outlook, shifting from self-interested consumerism to a friendlier, more sustainable society. The Spirit Level is pioneering in its research, powerful in its revelations, and inspiring in its conclusion: Armed with this new understanding of why communities prosper, we have the tools to revitalize our politics and help all our fellow citizens, from the bottom of the ladder to the top."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (1,218 ratings)
ISBN 978-1608190362 ?
The Bodies Keep Coming:
Dispatches from a Black Trauma Surgeon on Racism, Violence, and How We Heal
Brian H. Williams
Broadleaf Books (September 26, 2023)
No Review
"Dr. Brian H. Williams is an Air Force Academy graduate, a Harvard-trained surgeon, a former congressional health policy advisor, and a nationally recognized leader at the intersection of public policy and structural racism, gun violence, and health equity. He has treated gun violence victims for more than two decades. Williams has served as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellow at the National Academy of Medicine and as a professor of trauma and acute care surgery at the University of Chicago Medicine. Williams and his work have been featured in outlets like the Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News, CNN, and Newsweek."

"A tour de force that diagnoses the structural root of the violence that plagues us all.

"Trauma surgeon and professor Dr. Brian H. Williams has seen it all: gunshot wounds, stabbings, and traumatic brain injuries. In The Bodies Keep Coming, Williams ushers us into the trauma bay, where the wounds of a national emergency amass.

"As a Harvard-trained physician, Williams learned to keep his head down and his scalpel ready. As a Black man, he learned to swallow the rage when patients told him to take out the trash. Just days after the tragic police shootings of two Black men, Williams tried to save the lives of police officers shot in Dallas in the deadliest incident for US law enforcement since 9/11. Thrust into the spotlight in a nation that loves feel-good stories about heroism more than hard truths about racism, Williams came to rethink everything he thought he knew about medicine, injustice, and what true healing looks like.

"Now, in raw and intimate detail, Williams narrates not only the events of that night in 2016, but the grief and anger of a Black doctor on the front lines of trauma care. Working in the physician-writer tradition of Atul Gawande and Damon Tweedy, Williams diagnoses the roots of the violence that plagues us. He draws a through line between white supremacy, gun violence, and the bodies he tries to revive, and he trains his surgeon's gaze on the structural ills that manifest themselves in the bodies of his patients. What if racism is a feature of our healthcare system, not a bug? What if profiting from racial inequality is exactly what it was designed to do?

"Black and brown bodies will continue to be wracked by all types of violence, Williams argues, until something changes. Until we transform policy and law with compassion and care, the bodies will keep coming."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (43 ratings)
ISBN 978-1506483122 ?
The Greatest of All Plagues:
How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx
David Lay Williams
Princeton University Press (September 3, 2024)
No Review
"David Lay Williams is Professor of Political Science at DePaul University. He earned his PhD in Government from the University of Texas at Austin and [is] the author of Rousseau's Platonic Enlightenment (2007), Rousseau's 'Social Contract': An Introduction (2014), and The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx (2024). He has frequently written on themes in the history of political thought for outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Hill, the Chicago Sun-Times, and Time Magazine, among others."

"How the great political thinkers have persistently warned against the dangers of economic inequality.

"Economic inequality is one of the most daunting challenges of our time, with public debate often turning to questions of whether it is an inevitable outcome of economic systems and what, if anything, can be done about it. But why, exactly, should inequality worry us? The Greatest of All Plagues demonstrates that this underlying question has been a central preoccupation of some of the most eminent political thinkers of the Western intellectual tradition.

"David Lay Williams shares bold new perspectives on the writings and ideas of Plato, Jesus, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx. He shows how they describe economic inequality as a source of political instability and a corrupter of character and soul, and how they view unchecked inequality as a threat to their most cherished values, such as justice, faith, civic harmony, peace, democracy, and freedom. Williams draws invaluable insights into the societal problems generated by what Plato called 'the greatest of all plagues,' and examines the solutions employed through the centuries.

"An eye-opening work of intellectual history, The Greatest of All Plagues recovers a forgotten past for some of the most timeless books in the Western canon, revealing how economic inequality has been a paramount problem throughout the history of political thought."

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 978-0691171975 ?
What the Hell Do You Have to Lose?:
Trump's War on Civil Rights
Juan Williams
PublicAffairs (September 25, 2018)
No Review
"Juan Williams has covered and written about American politics for four decades. He is currently a columnist for The Hill, and was a longtime writer and correspondent for The Washington Post and NPR. Most notably, Juan is currently a cohost of Fox News Channel's roundtable debate show The Five, and makes regular appearances across the network on shows like Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace and Special Report with Brett Baier, where he regularly challenges the orthodoxy of the network's conservative stalwarts. He is also the author of numerous books, including Eyes on the Prize, Thurgood Marshall, Enough, Muzzled, and We The People." – Amazon biography

"In this powerful and timely book, civil rights historian and political analyst Juan Williams denounces Donald Trump for intentionally twisting history to fuel racial tensions for his political advantage. In Williams's lifetime, crusaders for civil rights have braved hatred, violence, and imprisonment, and in so doing made life immeasurably better for African Americans and other marginalized groups. Remarkably, all this progress suddenly seems to have been forgotten—or worse, undone. The stirring history of hard-fought and heroic battles for voting rights, integrated schools, and more is under direct threat from an administration dedicated to restricting these basic freedoms.

"Williams pulls the fire alarm on the Trump administration's policies, which pose a threat to civil rights without precedent in modern America. What the Hell Do You Have to Lose? makes a searing case for the enduring value of our historic accomplishments and what happens if they are lost."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (113 ratings)
ISBN 978-1541788268 ?
Read My Lips:
Why Americans Are Proud to Pay Taxes
Vanessa Williamson
Princeton University Press; Illustrated edition (March 21, 2017)
No Review
"Vanessa S. Williamson is a fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. She is the coauthor of The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism." – Amazon biography

"Conventional wisdom holds that Americans hate taxes. But the conventional wisdom is wrong. Bringing together national survey data with in-depth interviews, Read My Lips presents a surprising picture of tax attitudes in the United States. Vanessa Williamson demonstrates that Americans view taxpaying as a civic responsibility and a moral obligation. But they worry that others are shirking their duties, in part because the experience of taxpaying misleads Americans about who pays taxes and how much. Perceived 'loopholes' convince many income tax filers that a flat tax might actually raise taxes on the rich, and the relative invisibility of the sales and payroll taxes encourages many to underestimate the sizable tax contributions made by poor and working people.

"Americans see being a taxpayer as a role worthy of pride and respect, a sign that one is a contributing member of the community and the nation. For this reason, the belief that many Americans are not paying their share is deeply corrosive to the social fabric. The widespread misperception that immigrants, the poor, and working-class families pay little or no taxes substantially reduces public support for progressive spending programs and undercuts the political standing of low-income people. At the same time, the belief that the wealthy pay less than their share diminishes confidence that the political process represents most people.

"Upending the idea of Americans as knee-jerk opponents of taxes, Read My Lips examines American taxpaying as an act of political faith. Ironically, the depth of the American civic commitment to taxpaying makes the failures of the tax system, perceived and real, especially potent frustrations."

Rating by Amazon customers: 3.9 (12 ratings)
ISBN 978-0691174556 ?
The Impeachers:
The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation
Brenda Wineapple
Random House (May 21, 2019)
No Review
"Among Brenda Wineapple's books are Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Whitman Speaks. She has received a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Pushcart Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, a Marfield Prize, an Ambassador Award, and two National Endowment Fellowships in the Humanities; Wineapple was also named an NEH Public Scholar for The Impeachers. An elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Society of American Historians, she contributes to such publications as the 'New York Times Book Review' and 'The New York Review of Books' and is presently teaching in the MFA programs at Columbia and the New School." – Amazon biography

"When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and Vice-President Andrew Johnson became 'the Accidental President,' it was a dangerous time in America. Congress was divided over how the Union should be reunited: when and how the secessionist South should regain full status, whether former Confederates should be punished, and when and whether black men should be given the vote. Devastated by war and resorting to violence, many white Southerners hoped to restore a pre-Civil War society, if without slavery, and the pugnacious Andrew Johnson seemed to share their goals. With the unchecked power of executive orders, Johnson ignored Congress, pardoned rebel leaders, promoted white supremacy, opposed civil rights, and called Reconstruction unnecessary. It fell to Congress to stop the American president who acted like a king."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (362 ratings)
ISBN 978-0812998368 ?
Keeping the Faith:
God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation
Brenda Wineapple
Random House (August 13, 2024)
No Review
"Brenda Wineapple's books include The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation, selected by a New York Times critic as one of the ten best nonfiction works of 2019; Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877, a New York Times Notable Book; and White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. A recipient of a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship, and a Pushcart Prize, among other honors, Wineapple has also received three National Endowment Fellowships, including its Public Scholars Award. She writes regularly for such publications as The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, and The Wall Street Journal. In 2023, she was selected a Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers."

"In this magnificent book, award-winning author of The Impeachers brings to life the dramatic story of the 1925 Scopes trial, which captivated the nation and exposed profound divisions in America that still resonate today—divisions over the meaning of freedom, religion, education, censorship, and civil liberties in a democracy.

“'No subject possesses the minds of men like religious bigotry and hate, and these fires are being lighted today in America.' So said legendary attorney Clarence Darrow as hundreds of people descended on the sleepy town of Dayton, Tennessee, for the trial of a schoolteacher named John T. Scopes, who was charged with breaking the law by teaching evolution to his biology class in a public school.

"Brenda Wineapple explores how and why the Scopes trial quickly seemed a circus-like media sensation, drawing massive crowds and worldwide attention. Darrow, a brilliant and controversial lawyer, said in his electrifying defense of Scopes that people should be free to think, worship, and learn. William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic nominee for president, argued for the prosecution that evolution undermined the fundamental, literal truth of the Bible and created a society without morals, meaning, and hope.

"In Keeping the Faith, Wineapple takes us into the early years of the twentieth century—years of racism, intolerance, and world war—to illuminate, through this pivotal legal showdown, a seismic period in American history. At its heart, the Scopes trial dramatized conflicts over many of the fundamental values that define America, and that continue to divide Americans today."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (45 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593229927 ?
Oligarchy in America:
Power, Justice, and the Rule of the Few
Luke Winslow
University of Alabama Press (October 10, 2024)
Part of: Rhetoric, Culture, and Social Critique (70 books)
No Review
"Luke Winslow is an associate professor of rhetorical studies in the Department of Communication at Baylor University. He is author of American Catastrophe: Fundamentalism, Climate Change, Gun Rights, and the Rhetoric of Donald J. Trump, Economic Injustice and the Rhetoric of the American Dream, and coauthor of Children as Rhetorical Advocates in Social Movements."

"A fascinating survey of the history of political and economic ideas in the US that have led to an increasingly entrenched ultra-rich class of oligarchs.

“To an American, oligarchy is something that happens somewhere else. In Oligarchy in America, Luke Winslow reveals oligarchy’s deep intellectual roots and alarming growth in America. The book provides conceptual tools the lack of which have prevented Americans from recognizing oligarchy at home.

"Winslow argues that generic labels like “billionaires” for a class of ultra-rich masks the pervasive structures that entrench their power. He introduces instead the concept of democratic oligarchy—an institutional arrangement in which the ultra-rich form a class consciously creating and leveraging state power to accumulate wealth.

"Like a master class in political ideas, Winslow traces the intellectual lineage of oligarchy in the US. His lively and compulsively readable survey examines key rhetorical sources such as Herbert Spencer, Andrew Carnegie, Friedrich Hayek, Lewis Powell, Milton Friedman, Charles Koch, Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, and others.

"Oligarchy in America maps the connective web of oligarchic ideas uniting these disparate figures. By offering a lucid framework through which to view oligarchic ideas ambient in American culture, Winslow makes a vital contribution to readers and scholars of communication and rhetorical studies, public address, economics, and political science."

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 978-0817322069 ?
The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism
Martin Wolf
Penguin Press (February 7, 2023)
No Review
"Martin Wolf is associate editor and chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, London. He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2000 for services to financial journalism. Wolf won the Overseas Press Club of America’s prize for Best Commentary in 2013 and the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award at the Gerald Loeb Awards. He was a member of the UK’s Independent Commission on Banking in 2010–11. Wolf is the author of The Shifts and the Shocks: What We’ve Learned—and Have Still to Learn—from the Financial Crisis." – Amazon biography

"From the chief economics commentator of the Financial Times, a magnificent reckoning with how and why the marriage between democracy and capitalism is coming undone, and what can be done to reverse this terrifying dynamic

"Martin Wolf has long been one of the wisest voices on global economic issues. He has rarely been called an optimist, yet he has never been as worried as he is today. Liberal democracy is in recession, and authoritarianism is on the rise. The ties that ought to bind open markets to free and fair elections are threatened, even in democracy’s heartlands, the United States and England.

"Around the world, powerful voices argue that capitalism is better without democracy; others argue that democracy is better without capitalism. This book is a forceful rejoinder to both views. Even as it offers a deep, lucid assessment of why this marriage has grown so strained, it makes clear why a divorce of capitalism from democracy would be a calamity for the world. They need each other even if they find it hard to life together.

"For all its flaws, argues Wolf, democratic capitalism remains far and away the best system for human flourishing. But something has gone seriously awry: the growth of prosperity has slowed, and the division of its fruits between the hypersuccessful few and the rest has become more unequal. The plutocrats have retreated to their bastions, where they pour scorn on government’s ability to invest in the public goods needed to foster opportunity and sustainability. But the incoming flood of autocracy will rise to overwhelm them, too, in the end.

"Citizenship is not just a slogan or a romantic idea; it’s the only idea that can save us, Wolf argues. Nothing has ever harmonized political and economic freedom better than a shared faith in the common good.

"This wise and rigorously fact-based exploration of the epic story of the dynamic between democracy and capitalism concludes with the lesson that our ideals and our interests not only should align, but must do so, for everyone’s sake. Democracy itself is now at stake."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (91 ratings)
ISBN 978-0735224216 ?
The Case for Christian Nationalism
Stephen Wolfe
Canon Press (November 1, 2022)
No Review
"Stephen Wolfe (PhD, Louisiana State University) is a country scholar at Wolfeshire in central North Carolina where he lives with his wife and four children. He recently finished a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University's James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. Wolfe is co-host of the Ars Politica podcast and has written for Mere Orthodoxy, First Things, Chronicles Magazine, and History of Political Thought. The Case for Christian Nationalism is his first book."

"Evangelical elites and the progressive media complex want you to think that Christian nationalism is hopelessly racist, bigoted, and an idol for right-wing Christians. Is Christian nationalism the golden calf of the religious right—or is it the only way forward?

"Few 'experts' answering this question actually know what nationalism is—and even fewer know what could make it Christian. In The Case for Christian Nationalism, Stephen Wolfe offers a tour-de-force argument for the good of Christian nationalism, taken from Scripture and Christian thinkers ancient, medieval, and modern. Christian nationalism is not only the necessary alternative to secularism, it is the form of government we must pursue if we want to love our neighbors and our country.

"Wolfe shows that the world’s post-war consensus has successfully routed the United States towards a gynocratic Global American Empire (GAE). Rather than the religious right's golden calf, Christian nationalism is the idea that people in the same place and culture should live together and seek one another's good. The grace of the gospel does not eliminate our geography, our people, and our neighbors. Instead, it restores us to pursue local needs and local leadership freely and without apology.

"For all its flaws, argues Wolf, democratic capitalism remains far and away the best system for human flourishing. But something has gone seriously awry: the growth of prosperity has slowed, and the division of its fruits between the hypersuccessful few and the rest has become more unequal. The plutocrats have retreated to their bastions, where they pour scorn on government’s ability to invest in the public goods needed to foster opportunity and sustainability. But the incoming flood of autocracy will rise to overwhelm them, too, in the end.

"If you want to be able to answer the political debate raging today, you must understand the arguments in The Case for Christian Nationalism."

It's hard to avoid the suspicion that Wolfe has in mind a Christian theocracy for America. That would contravene our Constitution.

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (394 ratings)
ISBN 978-1957905334 ?
Wired for Racism?:
How Evolution and Faith Move Us to Challenge Racial Idolatry
James Woodall & Mark Ellingsen
New City Press (July 31, 2022)
No Review
"James Woodall currently serves as Public Policy Associate of the Southern Center for Human Rights, Founder/CEO of The Major Wish Group LLC, and former State President of Georgia NAACP. James is also an Associate Minister at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in Marietta, Georgia and served as an Intelligence Analyst in the U.S. Army. Mark Ellingsen is a Lutheran pastor serving as Professor of Church History on the faculty of the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, the largest historic Black accredited seminary in the nation. With a Yale Ph.D. along with significant international ecumenical work experience, he is the author of 27 books and hundreds of published articles." – Amazon biography

"Why is there so much racism in America, when most of us claim we are not racists? Drawing on evolutionary insights, the latest research on the human brain, and wisdom from religious traditions, Mark Ellingsen and James Woodall explore this question with a unique perspective. They detail the ways in which we are in some ways “wired for racism”, but they also show how the elasticity of the brain enables genuine progress, particularly when aided by religious practices and best practices of the civil rights movement. If you are looking for a way to challenge the racial idolatry and race-based thinking that characterizes many of the social, legal, and economic structures in our world today, this is the book for you."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (1 rating)
ISBN 978-1565484900 ?
The Last of the President's Men
Bob Woodward
Simon & Schuster (October 13, 2015)
No Review
"Bob Woodward is an associate editor at The Washington Post, where he has worked for 49 years and reported on every American president from Nixon to Trump. He has shared in two Pulitzer Prizes, first for the Post’s coverage of the Watergate scandal with Carl Bernstein, and second 20 years later as the lead Post reporter for coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He has authored or coauthored 18 books, all of which have been national non-fiction bestsellers. Twelve of those have been #1 national bestsellers. He has written books on eight of the most recent presidents, from Nixon to Obama."

"Bob Woodward exposes one of the final pieces of the Richard Nixon puzzle in his new book The Last of the President’s Men.

"Woodward reveals the untold story of Alexander Butterfield, the Nixon aide who disclosed the secret White House taping system that changed history and led to Nixon’s resignation. In forty-six hours of interviews with Butterfield, supported by thousands of documents, many of them original and not in the presidential archives and libraries, Woodward has uncovered new dimensions of Nixon’s secrets, obsessions and deceptions.

"The Last of the President’s Men could not be more timely and relevant as voters question how much do we know about those who are now seeking the presidency in 2016—what really drives them, how do they really make decisions, who do they surround themselves with, and what are their true political and personal values?"

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (1,140 ratings)
ISBN 978-1501116445 ?
Wrong:
How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation
Dannagal Goldthwaite Young
Johns Hopkins University Press (October 17, 2023)
No Review
"Dannagal Goldthwaite Young is a professor of communication and political science at the University of Delaware. Young is an award-winning scholar and teacher, a TED speaker, an improvisational comedian, and the author of Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States."

"An engaging look at how American politics and media reinforce partisan identity and threaten democracy.

"Why are so many of us wrong about so much? From COVID-19 to climate change to the results of elections, millions of Americans believe things that are simply not true―and act based on these misperceptions. In Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation, expert in media and politics Dannagal Goldthwaite Young offers a comprehensive model that illustrates how political leaders and media organizations capitalize on our social and cultural identities to separate, enrage, and―ultimately―mobilize us. Through a process of identity distillation encouraged by public officials, journalists, political and social media, Americans' political identities―how we think of ourselves as members of our political team―drive our belief in and demand for misinformation. It turns out that if being wrong allows us to comprehend the world, have control over it, or connect with our community, all in ways that serve our political team, then we don't want to be right.

"Over the past 40 years, lawmakers in America's two major political parties have become more extreme in their positions on ideological issues. Voters from the two parties have become increasingly distinct and hostile to one another along the lines of race, religion, geography, and culture. In the process, these political identities have transformed into a useful but reductive label tied to what we look like, who we worship, where we live, and what we believe.

"Young offers a road map out of this chaotic morass, including demand-side solutions that reduce the bifurcation of American society and increase our information ecosystem's accountability to empirical facts. By understanding the dynamics that encourage identity distillation, Wrong explains how to reverse this dangerous trend and strengthen American democracy in the process."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (3 ratings)
ISBN 978-1421447759 ?
Lessons From The Edge: A Memoir
Marie Yovanovitch
Mariner Books (March 15, 2022)
No Review
"Marie Yovanovitch served as the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan, in addition to other senior government positions during her thirty-three-year diplomatic career. She retired from the State Department in 2020 and is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a non-resident fellow at Georgetown University. She has received multiple awards, including the Presidential Distinguished Service Award (twice), the Secretary’s Diplomacy for Freedom Award, the Trainor Award for Excellence in the Conduct of Diplomacy, and the PEN/Benenson Courage Award. She lives in the Washington, DC, area." – Amazon biography

"Marie Yovanovitch was at the height of her diplomatic career when it all came crashing down. In the middle of her third ambassadorship—a rarity in the world of diplomacy—she was targeted by a smear campaign and abruptly recalled from her post in Kyiv, Ukraine. In the months that followed, she endured personal tragedy while simultaneously being pulled into the blinding lights of the first impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump. It was a time of chaos and pain, for her and for the nation.

"Yet Yovanovitch was no stranger to instability and injustice. Born into a family that had survived Soviet and Nazi terror, she first saw the corrosive effect of corruption in Somalia while cutting her teeth as a diplomat in the male-dominated world of the 1980s State Department. She was an eyewitness to the 1993 constitutional crisis in Russia and the street fighting in Moscow. And she rose to the top of her profession in the crucible of the former USSR, where she saw how President Vladimir Putin adeptly exploited corrupt leaders in neighboring countries and undermined their developing democracies.

"Nowhere was Putin’s aggression clearer than in Ukraine, where Russia meddled in elections, launched cyberattacks, peddled misinformation, illegally annexed Crimea, invaded the Donbas, and attacked Ukrainian ships in the Black Sea. But when Yovanovitch was abruptly recalled from her post and Ukraine’s democratically elected president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, found himself set upon by Trump, it became clear just how dangerously close to the edge America itself had strayed.

“Through it all, Yovanovitch tirelessly advocated for the Ukrainian people, while advancing U.S. interests and staying true to herself. When she made the courageous decision to participate in the impeachment inquiry—over the objections of the Trump administration—she earned the nation’s respect, and her dignified response to the president’s attacks won our hearts. She has reclaimed her own narrative, first with her lauded congressional testimony, and now with this powerful memoir: the dramatic saga of one woman’s role at the vanguard of American foreign policy during a time of upheaval, for herself and for our country."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (1,768 ratings)
ISBN 978-0358457541 ?
Burning Down the House:
Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party
Julian E. Zelizer
Penguin Press (July 7, 2020)
No Review
"Julian E. Zelizer is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University and a CNN Political Analyst. His most recent books are Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974 (co-authored with Kevin Kruse) and The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society, the winner of the D.B. Hardeman Prize for Best Book on Congress. Zelizer has been awarded fellowships from the New York Historical Society, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and New America." – Amazon biography

"When Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, President Obama observed that Trump 'is not an outlier; he is a culmination, a logical conclusion of the rhetoric and tactics of the Republican Party.' In Burning Down the House, historian Julian Zelizer pinpoints the moment when our country was set on a path toward an era of bitterly partisan and ruthless politics, an era that was ignited by Newt Gingrich and his allies. In 1989, Gingrich brought down Democratic Speaker of the House Jim Wright and catapulted himself into the national spotlight. Perhaps more than any other politician, Gingrich introduced the rhetoric and tactics that have shaped Congress and the Republican Party for the last three decades. Elected to Congress in 1978, Gingrich quickly became one of the most powerful figures in America not through innovative ideas or charisma, but through a calculated campaign of attacks against political opponents, casting himself as a savior in a fight of good versus evil. Taking office in the post-Watergate era, he weaponized the good government reforms newly introduced to fight corruption, wielding the rules in ways that shocked the legislators who had created them. His crusade against Democrats culminated in the plot to destroy the political career of Speaker Wright.

"While some of Gingrich's fellow Republicans were disturbed by the viciousness of his attacks, party leaders enjoyed his successes so much that they did little collectively to stand in his way. Democrats, for their part, were alarmed, but did not want to sink to his level and took no effective actions to stop him. It didn't seem to matter that Gingrich's moral conservatism was hypocritical or that his methods were brazen, his accusations of corruption permanently tarnished his opponents. This brand of warfare worked, not as a strategy for governance but as a path to power, and what Gingrich planted, his fellow Republicans reaped. He led them to their first majority in Congress in decades, and his legacy extends far beyond his tenure in office. From the Contract with America to the rise of the Tea Party and the Trump presidential campaign, his fingerprints can be seen throughout some of the most divisive episodes in contemporary American politics. Burning Down the House presents the alarming narrative of how Gingrich and his allies created a new normal in Washington."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (173 ratings)
ISBN 978-1594206658 ?
The Presidency of Donald J. Trump:
A First Historical Assessment
Julian E. Zelizer (Editor)
Princeton University Press (April 12, 2022)
No Review
"Julian E. Zelizer is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University. A CNN Political Analystt and a regular guest on NPR, he is the author of many books, including Burning Down the House, The Fierce Urgency of Now, and Abraham Joshua Heschel: A Life of Radical Amazement." – Amazon biography

"The Presidency of Donald J. Trump presents a first draft of history by offering needed perspective on one of the nation’s most divisive presidencies. Acclaimed political historian Julian Zelizer brings together many of today’s top scholars to provide balanced and strikingly original assessments of the major issues that shaped the Trump presidency.

"When Trump took office in 2017, he quickly carved out a loyal base within an increasingly radicalized Republican Party, dominated the news cycle with an endless stream of controversies, and presided over one of the most contentious one-term presidencies in American history. These essays cover the crucial aspects of Trump’s time in office, including his administration’s close relationship with conservative media, his war on feminism, the solidification of a conservative women’s movement, his response to COVID-19, the border wall, growing tensions with China and NATO allies, white nationalism in an era of Black Lives Matter, and how the high-tech sector flourished.

"The Presidency of Donald J. Trump reveals how Trump was not the cause of the political divisions that defined his term in office but rather was a product of long-term trends in Republican politics and American polarization more broadly.

"With contributions by Kathleen Belew, Angus Burgin, Geraldo Cadava, Merlin Chowkwanyun, Bathsheba Demuth, Gregory Downs, Jeffrey Engel, Beverly Gage, Nicole Hemmer, Michael Kazin, Daniel C. Kurtzer, James Mann, Mae Ngai, Margaret O’Mara, Jason Scott Smith, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and Leandra Zarnow."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (68 ratings)
ISBN 978-0691228938 ?
Class, Race, and Gender:
Challenging the Injuries and Divisions of Capitalism
Michael Zweig
Rev. William J. Barber II (Foreword)
PM Press (November 28, 2023)
No Review
"Michael Zweig is founding director of the Center for Study of Working Class Life at the State University of New York at Stony Brook; he received his PhD in economics from the University of Michigan where he was a founding member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) where he helped found the Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE). He remains active in his union, United University Professions, and was a national co-convener of US Labor Against the War. In 2014 he received the Working Class Studies Association award for lifetime contributions to the field of working class studies.

"Class, Race, and Gender: Challenging the Injuries and Divisions of Capitalism is for those who want to understand the underlying connections among today’s social justice movements.

"Bringing forth the basic operations of capitalist economies, it reveals what is driving many of today’s most urgent and vexing problems: the common origins of the inequalities of income, wealth, and power; environmental devastation; militarism; racism and white supremacy; patriarchy and male chauvinism; periodic economic crises; and the cultural conflicts that are tearing at US life.

"Michael Zweig illuminates all propositions with specific examples from US history, from the first settlement of the New World to current life, including his own lived experiences as an activist, educator, and organizer over the past six decades. As such, the book is an urgently needed resource for activists and organizers seeking structural and moral transformation of life in the US. Building on his analysis, Zweig also presents strategies for political action in electoral and movement-building work."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (3 ratings)
ISBN 978-8887440125 ?

NOTE: The color code for the authors goes as follows: those critical of Trump are shown in blue; those defending or supporting him are shown in red to indicate lack of coherent argument. Books that make a reasonable defense of Trump, should I find any, will have titles shown in black. There is a host of self-published books touting Trump, and quite a few by "big-name" authors like Newt Gingrich, Victor Davis Hanson, Roger Stone, or Jerome Corsi. I put no credence in these authors.

If I have done a review, I include a link to it. Unless otherwise indicated, the book descriptions and author biographical sketches come from Amazon.

The score given by customers of Amazon.com is generally a good indicator of a product's quality. In my experience, this is true for the great majority of books. However, there are cases of a controversial book being downrated simply because it is controversial, often by people who haven't read it. (The reverse also occurs, of course; a book may get fulsome praise from uncritical people.) If, in my opinion, either sort of rating distortion occurs, I indicate it by a red background. In following the reviews of climate change books on Amazon, I have encountered a few individuals who seek out mainstream books and give them derogatory reviews. Reviews by such campaigners are often brief and general (e.g. "This book is worthless!"), making it likely that they didn't read the book and are just reacting to its title or description.

The publisher is often a clue to the quality of the book. Mainstream publishers try not to produce nonfiction books which present unfounded information. You will see in this list that the majority of the red titles come from obscure publishers, or from self-publishing operations. (The exception is Regnery, long known to specialize in right-wing, often bogus, tracts.) This is not to say every self-published book is suspect; but the ones on climate change generally are.

In the Library Call Number field (right-most in the box below the Amazon rating), "SJn" denotes the floor on which the book is shelved at San Jose's Martin Luther King Public Library (shared with SJSU) where n varies from 1 to 8. "SJ0" indicates King Library system does not currently have a copy. Sometimes copies are all at one or more branch libraries, with none at main. This is indicated by "SJBr." A call number with a strike-through line means the book is in the library's database but the copy is listed as missing. (Many are simply misplaced; I have recovered 24 such.)

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