142 results for "Science"

Confidence Man The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

Maggie Haberman
“This is the book Trump fears most.” - Axios “Will be a primary source about the most vexing president in American history for years to come.” - Joe Klein, The New York Times "A uniquely illuminating portrait." - Sean Wilentz, The Washington Post “[A] monumental look at Donald Trump and his presidency.” — David Shribman, Los Angeles Times From the Pulitzer-Prize-winning New York Times reporter who has defined Donald J. Trump's presidency like no other journalist, Confidence Man is a magnificent and disturbing reckoning that chronicles his life and its meaning from his rise in New York City to his tortured post-presidency. Few journalists working today have covered Donald Trump more extensively than Maggie Haberman. And few understand him and his motivations better. Now, demonstrating her majestic command of this story, Haberman reveals in full the depth of her understanding of the 45th president himself, and of what the Trump phenomenon means. Interviews with hundreds of sources and numerous interviews over the years with Trump himself portray a complicated and often contradictory historical figure. Capable of kindness but relying on casual cruelty as it suits his purposes. Pugnacious. Insecure. Lonely. Vindictive. Menacing. Smarter than his critics contend and colder and more calculating than his allies believe. A man who embedded himself in popular culture, galvanizing support for a run for high office that he began preliminary spadework for 30 years ago, to ultimately become a president who pushed American democracy to the brink. The through-line of Trump’s life and his presidency is the enduring question of what is in it for him or what he needs to say to survive short increments of time in the pursuit of his own interests. Confidence Man is also, inevitably, about the world that produced such a singular character, giving rise to his career and becoming his first stage. It is also about a series of relentlessly transactional relationships. The ones that shaped him most were with girlfriends and wives, with Roy Cohn, with George Steinbrenner, with Mike Tyson and Don King and Roger Stone, with city and state politicians like Robert Morgenthau and Rudy Giuliani, with business partners, with prosecutors, with the media, and with the employees who toiled inside what they commonly called amongst themselves the “Trump Disorganization.” That world informed the one that Trump tried to recreate while in the White House. All of Trump’s behavior as President had echoes in what came before. In this revelatory and newsmaking book, Haberman brings together the events of his life into a single mesmerizing work. It is the definitive account of one of the most norms-shattering and consequential eras in American political history.
National Geographic Books 2022-11-08 1056 pages

Why we're polarized

Klein, Ezra
America's political system isn't broken: it's working exactly as designed. But Klein reveals how that system is polarizing us--and how we are polarizing it--with disastrous results. In examining the structural and psychological forces behind America's descent into division and dysfunction, he shows that everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics. Now our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together--Adapted from jacket
Avid Reader Press 2020 312 pages

Original Sin President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again

Jake Tapper,Alex Thompson
An explosive inside reckoning with one of the most fateful conspiracies inAmerican political history—the concerted effort by the President’s team to hidehis mental decline. In Greek tragedy, the protagonist’s effort to avoid his fate is what seals his fate. 2024 is theyear American politics became a Greek tragedy. From the beginning of the Biden administration, some journalists, including Alex Thompsonand Jake Tapper, focused attention on signs of Joe Biden’s frailty. For their efforts they weresubject to extraordinary levels of personal vitriol from the White House, and even fromsome of their journalistic colleagues. Whatever the self-awareness of the perpetrators, itwas sheer gaslighting. In Original Sin, the check comes due. Tapper and Thompson relate in vivid detail what Team Biden knew, when they knew it, andwhat they did or didn't do about it—including many news-making stories from some of themost powerful players in American politics. There is a general awareness of the effort toprotect his public image, but the details the authors have unearthed are genuinelyshocking. They raise fundamental issues of government accountability and responsibility,and of the role the news media plays. The irony is biting: in the name of defeating anexistential threat to democracy, Biden and his inner circle lost their way, and ensured thathis party’s nomination process was short-circuited, the public was given cause to doubt hisgood faith, and his Vice President was put in a situation that more than anything elsedoomed her to defeat. The deception, sometimes self-deception, surrounding Joe Biden'sdecline was the original sin of the administration and led directly to Donald Trump's returnto power and all that has happened as a consequence. Wherever you stand on the political spectrum, Original Sin is a reminder that the ends mustnever justify the means. The ends are ultimately unpredictable, and in reality, the meansare all we have.
Random House 2025-06-10 464 pages

The Last Politician Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

Franklin Foer
The New York Times bestseller, now with a new epilogue "You might love Biden or you might hate Biden, but either way, if you want to understand him, you will want to buy this book." —Politico “A triumph of reporting.” — Geoff Bennett, PBS NewsHour “Deeply reported . . . a terrific read.” —Chuck Todd, Meet the Press “Fantastic . . . The first real insider account of the Biden White House and a fascinating read about Biden himself.” — Jon Favreau, Pod Save America On January 20, 2021, standing where only two weeks earlier police officers had battled with right-wing paramilitaries, Joe Biden took his oath of office. The American people were still sick with COVID-19, his economists were already warning him of an imminent financial crisis, and his party, the Democrats, had the barest of majorities in the Senate. Yet, faced with an unprecedented set of crises, Joe Biden decided he would not play defense. Instead, he set out to transform the nation. With unparalleled access to the tight inner circle of advisers who have surrounded Biden for decades, Franklin Foer dramatizes in forensic detail the first two years of the Biden presidency, concluding with the historic midterm elections. The result is a gripping and high-definition portrait of a major president at a time when democracy itself seems imperiled. Now with a new epilogue by the author, The Last Politician is a landmark work of political reporting—which includes thrilling, blow-by-blow insider reports of the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan and the White House’s swift response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine—that is destined to shape history’s view of a president in the eye of the storm.
Penguin Group 2024-09-10 448 pages

Get Trump The Threat to Civil Liberties, Due Process, and Our Constitutional Rule of Law

Alan Dershowitz
In Get Trump: The Threat to Civil Liberties, Due Process, and Our Constitutional Rule of Law, Alan Dershowitz—#1 New York Times bestselling author and one of America’s most respected legal scholars—analyses the unremitting efforts by political opponents of Donald Trump to “get” him—to stop him from running in 2024—at any cost. Alan Dershowitz has been called “one of the most prominent and consistent defenders of civil liberties in America” by Politico and “the nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer and one of its most distinguished defenders of individual rights” by Newsweek . Get Trump makes clear that unconstitutional efforts to stop Trump from retaking the presidency challenge the very foundations of our liberty: due process, right to counsel, and free speech. Those who justify these dangerous departures from the rule of law argue that the threat posed by a second Trump presidency is “different” and “immediate,” while the departures from constitutional norms are longer term and more abstract. Dershowitz explains that defenders of Trump’s constitutional rights—even those like him who oppose Trump politically—are sought to be silenced; their free speech rights attacked, their integrity questioned, and their careers threatened. Much of the media substitutes advocacy against Trump for objective reporting, while many in academia petition and propagandize against rights they previously valued—all in the interest of getting Trump. The essence of justice is that it must be equally applicable to all, Dershowitz notes. No one is above the law but digging to find crimes in order to influence an election does not constitute the equal application of the law. In order to assure equal application in comparable situations, he proposes two criteria for indicting a likely candidate of the opposing party: the Richard Nixon standard and the Hillary Clinton standard—and most recently, the Joe Biden standard. Get Trump warns that regardless of whether this anti-democratic effort to stop Trump from running succeeds or fails, it is likely to create dangerous precedents that will lie around like loaded weapons ready to be deployed against other controversial candidates, officials, or citizens about whom it can be argued that the danger they pose “is different.”
Hot Books 2023-03-14 168 pages

Call Them by Their True Names American Crises (and Essays)

Rebecca Solnit
National Book Award Longlist Winner of the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction Winner of the Foreword INDIE Editor's Choice Prize for Nonfiction "Rebecca Solnit is essential feminist reading." --The New Republic "Solnit's exquisite essays move between the political and the personal, the intellectual and the earthy." --Elle Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books, including the international bestseller Men Explain Things to Me. Called "the voice of the resistance" by the New York Times, she has emerged as an essential guide to our times, through her incisive commentary on feminism, violence, ecology, hope, and everything in between. In this powerful and wide-ranging collection, Solnit turns her attention to battles over meaning, place, language, and belonging at the heart of the defining crises of our time. She explores the way emotions shape political life, electoral politics, police shootings and gentrification, the life of an extraordinary man on death row, the pipeline protest at Standing Rock, and the existential threat posed by climate change. The work of changing the world sometimes requires changing the story, the names, and inventing or popularizing new names and terms and phrases. Calling things by their true names can also cut through the lies that excuse, disguise, avoid, or encourage inaction, indifference, obliviousness in the face of injustice and violence.
Haymarket Books 2018 188 pages

The world as it is: a memoir of the Obama White House

Rhodes, Ben
"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 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 and an essential record of the forces that shaped the last decade."--
Random House 2019 450 pages

The Case Against Impeaching Trump

Alan Dershowitz
The New York Times bestseller! "A brilliant lawyer...A new and very important book. I would encourage all people...to read!"—President Donald J. Trump “Absolutely amazing…. If you care about justice...you’re going to want to read this book.”—Sean Hannity “Maybe the question isn’t what happened to Alan Dershowitz. Maybe it’s what happened to everyone else.”— Politico Alan Dershowitz has been called “one of the most prominent and consistent defenders of civil liberties in America” by Politico and “the nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer and one of its most distinguished defenders of individual rights” by Newsweek . Yet he has come under partisan fire for applying those same principles to Donald Trump during the course of his many appearances in national media outlets as an expert resource on civil and constitutional law. The Case Against Impeaching Trump seeks to reorient the debate over impeachment to the same standard that Dershowitz has continued to uphold for decades: the law of the United States of America, as established by the Constitution. In the author’s own words: “In the fervor to impeach President Trump, his political enemies have ignored the text of the Constitution. As a civil libertarian who voted against Trump, I remind those who would impeach him not to run roughshod over a document that has protected us all for two and a quarter centuries. In this case against impeachment, I make arguments similar to those I made against the impeachment of President Bill Clinton (and that I would be making had Hillary Clinton been elected and Republicans were seeking to impeach her). Impeachment and removal of a president are not entirely political decisions by Congress. Every member takes an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution sets out specific substantive criteria that MUST be met. I am thrilled to contribute to this important debate and especially that my book will be so quickly available to readers so they can make up their own minds.”
Hot Books 2018-07-09 160 pages

Where We Go from Here

Bernie Sanders
BERNIE'S BLUEPRINT FOR 2020. AN INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER. In Where We Go from Here, New York Times bestselling author Bernie Sanders reveals the blueprint for his 2020 presidential run by chronicling the day-by-day struggles that he and his progressive colleagues have waged over the last two years in the fight against Donald Trump's reactionary agenda and for a government that works for all, not just wealthy campaign contributors. At home, Sanders has helped lead the fight for Medicare for all, fought for workers desperate for higher wages, and supported immigrants in the DACA program and children affected by gun violence. He has stood with the people of Puerto Rico devastated by Hurricane Maria, as well as veterans, teachers, the incarcerated, the persecuted, and all those who are too often ignored by Washington. Abroad, his voice has been clear that we need a foreign policy that strives for peace—not war—and international cooperation to address the crisis of climate change. The good news is we're making progress. People all across America are standing up to the most dishonest and reactionary president in our history. They're taking on establishment politicians who've turned a blind eye to the concerns of everyday citizens. They're fighting back against the oligarchs of Wall Street, who would happily see our children do worse than their parents so long as the Dow does better. And the general public continually demonstrates that we are more united than the media would allow us to believe, and what we agree on are largely progressive ideals. Maintaining a vibrant democracy has never been easy, and in these dangerous and unprecedented times, it has been more difficult than ever. Bernie Sanders shows, however, that we can repair the damage Trump has done—and create a nation based on the principles of economic, social, racial, and environmental justice.
St. Martin's Publishing Group 2019-09-03 288 pages

Camelot's Court Inside the Kennedy White House

Robert Dallek
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.
HarperCollins 2014-09-16 528 pages

Fake President Decoding Trump's Gaslighting, Corruption, and General Bullsh*t

Mark Green,Ralph Nader
"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.
Skyhorse 2019-12-03 304 pages

To End a Presidency The Power of Impeachment

Laurence Tribe,Joshua Matz
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.
Basic Books 2019-03-05 336 pages

The Tyranny of Clichés How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas

Jonah Goldberg
“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.
Penguin 2013-04-30 336 pages

Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity Get Out the Shovel -- Why Everything You Know is Wrong

John Stossel of abc 20/20
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.
Hyperion Books 2007-05-01 320 pages

The Supreme Court The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America

Jeffrey Rosen,Thirteen/WNET
"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.
St. Martin's Press 2007-12-26 288 pages

Wildland The Making of America's Fury

Evan Osnos
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.
Picador 2022-09-13 496 pages

Behind the Oval Office Winning the Presidency in the Nineties

Dick Morris
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.
Random House 1997 359 pages

The Secret Knowledge On the Dismantling of American Culture

David Mamet
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.
Penguin Publishing Group 2012-08-28 256 pages

After the Fall Being American in the World We've Made

Ben Rhodes
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.
National Geographic Books 2021-07-06 544 pages

The pursuit of liberty: how Hamilton vs. Jefferson ignited the lasting battle over power in America

Rosen, Jeffrey
In The Pursuit of Liberty, Jeffrey Rosen explores the clashing visions of Hamilton and Jefferson about how to balance liberty and power in a debate that continues to define--and divide--our country: Jefferson championed states' rights and individual liberties, while Hamilton pushed for a strong Federal government and a powerful executive. This ongoing tug-of-war has shaped all the pivotal moments in American history, including Abraham Lincoln's fight against slavery and southern secession, the expansion of federal power under Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, and Ronald Reagan's and Donald Trump's conservative push to shrink the size of the federal government. Rosen also shows how Hamilton and Jefferson's disagreement over how to read the Constitution has shaped landmark debates in Congress and the Supreme Court about executive power, from John Marshall's early battles with Andrew Jackson to the current divisions among the justices on issues from presidential immunity to control over the administrative state. More than ever, the clash between Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian ideals resonates today in our most urgent national debates over the question of whether modern presidents are consolidating power and subverting the Constitution -- the very threat to American democracy that both Hamilton and Jefferson were determined to avoid. The Pursuit of Liberty is a compelling history of the opposing forces that have shaped our country since its founding, and the ongoing struggle to define the balance between liberty and power. -- Provided by publisher.
Simon & Schuster 2025 419 pages