America has a huge problem. It faces four major challenges, on which its future depends, and it is failing to meet them. In "That Used to Be Us," Thomas L. Friedman, one of our most influential columnists, and Michael Mandelbaum, one of our leading foreign policy thinkers, analyze those challenges--globalization, the revolution in information technology, the nation's chronic deficits, and its pattern of energy consumption--and spell out what we need to do "now" to rediscover America and rise to this moment. They explain how the end of the cold war blinded the nation to the need to address these issues. They show how our history, when properly understood, provides the key to addressing them, and explain how the paralysis of our political system and the erosion of key American values have made it impossible for us to carry out the policies the country needs. They offer a way out of the trap into which the country has fallen, which includes the rediscovery of some of our most valuable traditions and the creation of a new, third-party movement. "That Used to Be Us" is both a searching exploration of the American condition today and a rousing manifesto for American renewal. "As we were writing this book," Friedman and Mandelbaum explain, "we found that when we shared the title with people, they would often nod ruefully and ask: 'But does it have a happy ending?' Our answer is that we can write a happy ending, but it is up to the country--to all of us--to determine whether it is fiction or nonfiction. We need to study harder, save more, spend less, invest wisely, and get back to the formula that made us successful as a country in every previous historical turn. What we need is not novel or foreign, but values, priorities, and practices embedded in our history and culture, applied time and again to propel us forward as a country. That is all part of our past. That used to be us and can be again--if we will it."

It has become clear over the years that the reaction of America's politicians and media to the attacks of 9/11 was bizarrely misdirected and dangerous to our national security. But no one has fully probed its cultural roots. Until now. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author Susan Faludi brilliantly demonstrates how our culture's seemingly inexplicable response was actually a reflex set centuries deep in the American grain. Her analysis of what went on in the months and years after 9/11 will shock even those who thought they knew the full measure of that tragedy (as her account of the post-9/11 media marketing of flight-suit superheroes, cowering "security moms," Jessica-Lynchesque helpless "girls," and Daniel Boone–wannabe politicians will outrage and amuse). A masterwork of historical interpretation and a Rosetta stone for deciphering the ongoing spectacle of American politics, journalism, and culture, The Terror Dream flushes from hiding a forceful dynamic that disfigures our lives even in times of normalcy, and that, unless it is confronted, will send us reeling in a wrong direction the next time tragedy strikes.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • “A tour de force . . . a comprehensive and suitably furious guide to the political landscape of American healthcare . . . persuasive, shocking.” — The New York Times America’s Bitter Pill is Steven Brill’s acclaimed book on how the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was written, how it is being implemented, and, most important, how it is changing—and failing to change—the rampant abuses in the healthcare industry. It’s a fly-on-the-wall account of the titanic fight to pass a 961-page law aimed at fixing America’s largest, most dysfunctional industry. It’s a penetrating chronicle of how the profiteering that Brill first identified in his trailblazing Time magazine cover story continues, despite Obamacare. And it is the first complete, inside account of how President Obama persevered to push through the law, but then failed to deal with the staff incompetence and turf wars that crippled its implementation. But by chance America’s Bitter Pill ends up being much more—because as Brill was completing this book, he had to undergo urgent open-heart surgery. Thus, this also becomes the story of how one patient who thinks he knows everything about healthcare “policy” rethinks it from a hospital gurney—and combines that insight with his brilliant reporting. The result: a surprising new vision of how we can fix American healthcare so that it stops draining the bank accounts of our families and our businesses, and the federal treasury. Praise for America’s Bitter Pill “An energetic, picaresque, narrative explanation of much of what has happened in the last seven years of health policy . . . [Brill] has pulled off something extraordinary.” —The New York Times Book Review “A thunderous indictment of what Brill refers to as the ‘toxicity of our profiteer-dominated healthcare system.’ ” — Los Angeles Times “A sweeping and spirited new book [that] chronicles the surprisingly juicy tale of reform.” — The Daily Beast “One of the most important books of our time.” —Walter Isaacson “Superb . . . Brill has achieved the seemingly impossible—written an exciting book about the American health system.” — The New York Review of Books

Fifty years after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, presidential historian Robert Dallek, whom The New York Times calls “Kennedy’s leading biographer,” delivers a riveting new portrait of this president and his inner circle of advisors—their rivalries, personality clashes, and political battles. In Camelot’s Court, Dallek analyzes the brain trust whose contributions to the successes and failures of Kennedy’s administration—including the Bay of Pigs, civil rights, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Vietnam—were indelible. Kennedy purposefully put together a dynamic team of advisors noted for their brilliance and acumen, including Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, and trusted aides Ted Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger. Yet the very traits these men shared also created sharp divisions. Far from being unified, this was an uneasy band of rivals whose ambitions and clashing beliefs ignited fiery internal debates. Robert Dallek illuminates a president deeply determined to surround himself with the best and the brightest, who often found himself disappointed with their recommendations. The result, Camelot's Court: Inside the Kennedy White House, is a striking portrait of a leader whose wise resistance to pressure and adherence to principle offers a cautionary tale for our own time.

Chomsky's classic back-pocket primer on U.S. government propaganda and media bias, now available in an edition expanded to include his comments regarding media coverage of terrorism and U.S. foreign policy in a post-September 11 world.

Fox News host Mark Levin shows how those entrusted with news reporting today are destroying freedom of the press from within: "not government oppression or suppression," he writes, but self-censorship, group-think, bias by omission, and passing off opinion, propaganda, pseudo-events, and outright lies as news. Levin takes the reader on a journey through the early American patriot press, which proudly promoted the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, followed by the early decades of the Republic during which newspapers around the young country were open and transparent about their fierce allegiance to one political party or the other. It was only at the start of the Progressive Era and the twentieth century that the idea of "objectivity of the press" first surfaced, leaving us where we are today: with a partisan party-press overwhelmingly aligned with a political ideology but hypocritically engaged in a massive untruth as to its real nature

"Read Fake President ….This book can help us replace Trump with truth." —Gloria Steinem "Terrific new book . Fake President informs as it entertains." -- Laurence Tribe ​ An incisive, witty roadmap into the disinformation and betrayals of President Trump—just in time for the impeachment hearings and the 2020 election. Donald Trump was lawfully selected as the US president...but is still a "fake" president because he simply lacks the integrity, intelligence, and stability to perform the duties of the office as the Constitution intended. "If you spend so much time golfing, tweeting, and seething," write Green and Nader, "it's understandable that a POTUS doesn't get around to appointing one-third of all agency inspector generals...Might as well expect a surgeon to be an opera singer." As the House Impeachment Inquiry unfolds based on a similar premise , Fake President decodes many of his worst scandals and "twistifications" (a Jefferson coinage). And it’s bound to get even worse as the House gets closer to actual Articles of Impeachment and the Fall election approaches. Since it's nearly impossible to keep track of Trump's "daily lava of lies," two of America’s foremost public advocates do that work for you. This is your one-stop shop that explains what the Lyin' King means to our democracy. It’s a cheeky, deadly rebuke of Trump’s incorrigible "fakery"...from his dishonesty about foreign policy to blatant ignorance about the environment to his messianic narcissism. Fake President is an essential guide to help you understand the two biggest news stories of the coming year—impeachment and the 2020 presidential election.

As Congress prepares articles of impeachment of President Trump, read the definitive book on presidential impeachment and how it should be used today. Impeachment is our ultimate constitutional check against an out-of-control executive. But it is also a perilous and traumatic undertaking for the nation. In this authoritative examination, Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz rise above the daily clamor to illuminate impeachment's proper role in our age of broken politics. Now revised with a new epilogue, To End a Presidency is an essential book for anyone seeking to understand how this fearsome power should be deployed.

2015 Reprint of 1961 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition. Not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. In 1933 Meerloo began to study the methods by which systematic mental pressure brings people to abject submission, and by which totalitarians imprint their subjective "truth" on their victims' minds. In "The Rape of the Mind" he goes far beyond the direct military implications of mental torture to describing how our own culture unobtrusively shows symptoms of pressurizing people's minds. He presents a systematic analysis of the methods of brainwashing and mental torture and coercion, and shows how totalitarian strategy, with its use of mass psychology, leads to systematized "rape of the mind." He describes the new age of cold war with its mental terror, verbocracy, and semantic fog, the use of fear as a tool of mass submission and the problem of treason and loyalty, so loaded with dangerous confusion. The "Rape of the Mind" is written for the interested layman, not only for experts and scientists. Contents: Part One: The Techniques of Individual Submission. 1. You Too Would Confess. 2. Pavlov's Students as Circus Tamers. 3. Medication into Submission. 4. Why Do They Yield? The Psychodynamics of False Confession. Part Two: The Techniques of Mass Submission. 5. The Cold War against the Mind. 6. Totalitaria and its Dictatorship. 7. The Intrusion by Totalitarian Thinking. 8. Trial by Trial. 9. Fear as a Tool of Terror. Part Three: Unobtrusive Coercion. 10. The Child is Father to the Man. 11. Mental Contagion and Mass Delusion. 12. Technology Invades Our Minds. 13. Intrusion by the Administrative Mind. 14. The Turncoat in Each of Us. Part Four: In Search of Defenses. 15. Training Against Mental Torture. 16. Education for Discipline or Higher Morale. 17. From Old to New Courage. 18. Freedom -- Our Mental Backbone

Millions of people around the world have convinced themselves that the perpetrators of 9/11 were not al-Qaeda terrorists but elements within the U.S. government seeking a pretext to launch wars abroad and enact draconian laws at home. These “9/11 Truthers” are not alone. They are part of a vast conspiracist subculture that is spreading like wildfire on the Internet, is deeply distrustful of mainstream media and is beginning to influence mainstream politics. For two years, Canadian journalist Jonathan Kay has been researching the underground world of conspiracy theorists by attending their conventions, infiltrating their Internet discussion boards and surfing their websites. While many individual conspiracy theories seem harmless, even amusing, the phenomenon is doing real damage to the unity and health of North American society. Since the assassination of JFK, conspiracy thinking has proliferated, and the Internet has fostered the growth of numerous alternate mental worlds in which traditional media and academia have no authority. 9/11 was a death blow to this older consensual view of reality, and as a result, North Americans no longer inhabit one cognitive universe. What this means for the future of politics, and our society at large, is the ultimate subject of this book.

“An indispensable and enduring field guide to the arguments the left makes—and the ones it tries to avoid.” — The Claremont Review of Books According to Jonah Goldberg, if the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist, the greatest trick liberals ever pulled was convincing themselves they’re not ideological. Today, “objective” journalists, academics, and “moderate” politicians peddle some of the most radical arguments by hiding them in homespun apho­risms. Barack Obama casts himself as a disciple of reason: He’s a pragmatist, opposed to the ideology and drama of the Right, solely concerned with “what works.” And today’s liberals follow his lead, spouting countless clichés such as: • One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter: Sure, if the other man is an idiot. Was Martin Luther King Jr. a terrorist? Was Bin Laden a freedom fighter? • Violence never solves anything: Really? It solved our problems with King George III and ended slavery. • We need complete separation of church and state: In other words, all expressions of faith should be barred from politics . . . except when they support liberal programs. With humor and passion, Goldberg dismantles these and many other Trojan horses that liberals use to cheat in the war of ideas. He shows that the Pro­gressive tradition of denying an ideological agenda while pursuing it vigorously under the false flag of reasonableness is alive and well. And he reveals how this dangerous game may lead us further down the path of self-destruction.

Now in paperback: The major national bestseller that the New York Times says "tosses sand on liberal sacred cows"John Stossel -- award-winning journalist, tireless consumer-rights crusader, and anchor of ABC's newsmagazine 20/20 -- has built his reputation on his willingness to debunk conventional wisdom, no matter the source. In his latest New York Times bestseller, which has sold more than 200,000 copies in hardcover, he busts the myths, lies, and downright stupidity clogging media outlets on all sides of the spectrum. Taking a shovel to the heaps of misinterpretations and outright mistakes passing for "fact" these days, Stossel proves:--That contrary to popular belief, Americans have more free time now than ever before; --How DDT could actually save millions of lives annually, if only we hadn't been wrongly convinced it caused cancer; --That Republicans don't shrink government -- they expand it; --Why bottled water is a rip-off (hint: not only doesn't it taste better than tap, it's no healthier either!); --How "defective product" lawsuits end up depriving us of safer products; --Why it's okay to marry your cousin; --And much, much more.Bursting with facts, sharp insights, and plain old common sense, Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity is a modern muckraking classic.

"Superbly well written . . . a wonderfully informative guide to the Supreme Court both past and present."—David J. Garrow, American History Jeffrey Rosen recounts the history of the Supreme Court through the personal and philosophical rivalries that have transformed the law—and by extension, our lives. With studies of four crucial conflicts—Chief Justice John Marshall and President Thomas Jefferson; post–Civil War justices John Marshall Harlan and Oliver Wendell Holmes; liberal icons Hugo Black and William O. Douglas; and conservative stalwarts William H. Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia—Rosen brings vividly to life the perennial rivalry between those justices guided by strong ideology and those who cared more about the court as an institution, forging coalitions and adjusting to new realities. He ends with a revealing conversation with Chief Justice John Roberts, who is attempting to change the court in unexpected ways. The stakes, he shows, are nothing less than the future of American jurisprudence.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER After a decade abroad, the National Book Award – and Pulitzer Prize – winning writer Evan Osnos returns to three places he has lived in the United States—Greenwich, CT; Clarksburg, WV; and Chicago, IL—to illuminate the origins of America’s political fury. 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 his home country, 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, 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.

Dick Morris has written the ultimate inside story about the dramatic reelection of President Clinton, one that is certain to stir controversy about the way politics really works in America today. No one before has so vividly described what policy advisers, pollsters, and advertisers do behind the scenes in the Oval Office. And no one has so acutely identified the new political forces that are dominating America today. Dick Morris was, as Time magazine put it, the most influential private citizen in America. He was President Clinton's secret election strategist, invited to advise the demoralized president in the wake of the midterm debacle of 1994 that gave Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole control of Congress and, it seemed, a certain Republican victory in the 1996 presidential campaign. It did not turn out that way. Clinton made the biggest comeback in the history of modern politics, and he did it largely because of his partnership with Dick Morris, the man whose remarkable political insights helped Clinton become governor of Arkansas in 1978 and rescued him from defeat in 1982. They had a rapport that Clinton himself has called "probably unique in American history." The assignment after the 1994 Republican congressional victory began in utmost secrecy. Morris, who had to cross the road from being adviser to Republicans such as William Weld, Dan Coats, and Trent Lott, was for months known only as Charlie, an unknown source calling Clinton's private White House telephone number. None of Clinton's Cabinet or inner circle knew anything about this, and they could not understand why Clinton began speaking in a new voice. When Clinton decided he needed Morris in the White House working withothers, Morris became an object of intense scrutiny, speculation, and envy. He was Washington's great mystery man. He refused on-the-record press interviews. He was controversial. But he succeeded brilliantly. He laid the foundation for Clinton's return to the White House for a second term. He decided to write a book about it all--about his view of Clinton, his own role, and his perception of a change in the mood of the voters. In August, the president asked Morris to wait until after the election to write this book and to make it "right for Bill Clinton and right for Dick Morris." And then Morris blew it. On a day to savor his triumph, on the day when a resurgent Clinton addressed the Democratic Convention, Morris was on the way out in disgrace: revealed as having had a relationship with a prostitute who claimed he talked freely of his work for the president. In Behind the Oval Office, Dick Morris makes no excuses for his personal conduct. He is candid about it--painfully so--contemplating the wreckage of his career and the damage to his marriage. But with his book he achieves something significant on three levels. Shedding light on the unseen forces that drive politics today, he reveals just how the Republicans were routed by a combination of a Democratic shift to the center and an unprecedented and secret selling strategy. We have a box-seat view of the struggles in the White House for the soul of the Democratic party. We are taken deep into the hidden relationship between President Clinton and Republican Senate leader Trent Lott. The author explains how the deals they cut formulated the laws they passed--laws that doomed Dole's bid for the presidency. And then thereis William Jefferson Clinton. Morris gives us a three-dimensional portrait of the man and the politician. He draws on their twenty-year relationship to explain Clinton to us so vividly, with such new perspective, that we meet him as if for the first time. Morris lets us finally understand Bill Clinton and gives us vital clues about what he will do for the next four years. And we see Hillary Rodham Clinton at work and at home, facing up to political storms and adding her voice to the disputations about which way the Democrats should go. Finally, Morris, the master of polling, gives us a surprising perspective on the values and desires of America, the key that enabled Clinton to respond and unlock the door to a second term in the White House, the first Democratic president to achieve that in fifty years. This is an extraordinary book with a compelling narrative and incisive analysis by a political operator of unparalleled experience. It is filled with insights, touched with pathos. It is must reading for everyone who cares about the future of American democracy.

David Mamet has been a controversial, defining force in nearly every creative endeavor-now he turns his attention to politics. In recent years, David Mamet realized that the so-called mainstream media outlets he relied on were irredeemably biased, peddling a hypocritical and deeply flawed worldview. In 2008 Mamet wrote a hugely controversial op-ed for the Village Voice , "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'", in which he methodically attacked liberal beliefs, eviscerating them as efficiently as he did Method acting in his bestselling book True and False . Now Mamet employs his trademark intellectual force and vigor to take on all the key political issues of our times, from religion to political correctness to global warming. The legendary playwright, author, director, and filmmaker pulls no punches in his art or in his politics. And as a former liberal who woke up, Mamet will win over an entirely new audience of others who have grown irate over America's current direction.

Taking place during the most critical period of our nation’s birth, The First Conspiracy tells a remarkable and previously untold piece of American history that not only reveals George Washington’s character, but also illuminates the origins of America’s counterintelligence movement that led to the modern day CIA. In 1776, an elite group of soldiers were handpicked to serve as George Washington’s bodyguards. Washington trusted them; relied on them. But unbeknownst to Washington, some of them were part of a treasonous plan. In the months leading up to the Revolutionary War, these traitorous soldiers, along with the Governor of New York, William Tryon, and Mayor David Mathews, launched a deadly plot against the most important member of the military: George Washington himself. This is the story of the secret plot and how it was revealed. It is a story of leaders, liars, counterfeiters, and jailhouse confessors. It also shows just how hard the battle was for George Washington and how close America was to losing the Revolutionary War. In this historical page-turner, New York Times bestselling author Brad Meltzer teams up with American history writer and documentary television producer, Josh Mensch to unravel the shocking true story behind what has previously been a footnote in the pages of history. Drawing on extensive research, Meltzer and Mensch capture in riveting detail how George Washington not only defeated the most powerful military force in the world, but also uncovered the secret plot against him in the tumultuous days leading up to July 4, 1776.

In his most influential work, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Bailyn exhibits through a thorough analysis of pre-Revolutionary political pamphlets that the colonists believed that the British intended to establish a tyrannical state that would abridge the historical rights of the colonists. He thus argued that the Revolutionary rhetoric of liberty and freedom was not simply propagandistic but rather central to their understanding of the situation. This evidence was used to displace Charles A. Beard's theory, then the dominant understanding of the American Revolution, that the American Revolution was primarily a matter of class warfare and that the rhetoric of liberty was meaningless. Bailyn maintained that ideology was ingrained in the revolutionaries, an attitude he said exemplified the "transforming radicalism of the American Revolution"

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Vital reading for Americans and people anywhere who seek to understand what is happening ‘after the fall’ of the global system created by the United States” ( New York Journal of Books ), from the former White House aide, close confidant to President Barack Obama, and author of The World as It Is 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.

The post 9/11 global economy is a new and turbulent system - vastly more flexible, resilient, open, self-directing, and fast-changing than ever before. The Age of Turbulence will be an incomparable reckoning with the nature of this new world - how we got here, what we're living through, and what lies over the horizon, for good or ill, channelled through Greenspan's own experiences working in the command room of the global economy for longer and with greater effect than any other single living figure. He will share the story of the extraordinary years he has experienced and shaped, and the individuals who made strong impressions on him, including every US President from Nixon to George W. Bush. But his main goal is to draw readers along the same learning curve he followed, so they have a grasp of his own hard-won, layered understanding of the dynamics that drive world events.