A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America


Philip Rucker - 2020
    They peer deeply into Trump's White House – at the aides pressured to lie to the public, the lawyers scrambling to clear up norm-breaking disasters, and the staffers whose careers have been reduced to ashes – to paint an unparalleled group portrait of an administration driven by self-preservation and paranoia. Rucker and Leonnig reveal Trump at his most unvarnished, showing the unhinged decision-making and incompetence that has floored officials and stunned foreign leaders. They portray unscripted calls with Vladimir Putin, steak dinners with Kim Jong-un, and calls with Theresa May so hostile that they left her aides shaken. They also take a hard look at Robert Mueller, Trump's greatest antagonist to date, and how his investigation slowly unravelled an administration whose universal value is loyalty – not to country, but to the president himself.

Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again


Donald J. Trump - 2015
    It’s a terrible mess, and that’s putting it mildly. There has never been a more dangerous time. The politicians and special interests in Washington, DC, are directly responsible for the mess we are in. So why should we continue listening to them?It’s time to bring America back to its rightful owners—the American people. I’m not going to play the same game politicians have been playing for decades—all talk, no action, while special interests and lobbyists dictate our laws. I am shaking up the establishment on both sides of the political aisle because I can’t be bought. I want to bring America back, to make it great and prosperous again, and to be sure we are respected by our allies and feared by our adversaries. It’s time for action. Americans are fed up with politics as usual. And they should be! In this book, I outline my vision to make America great again, including: how to fix our failing economy; how to reform health care so it is more efficient, cost-effective, and doesn’t alienate both doctors and patients; how to rebuild our military and start winning wars—instead of watching our enemies take over—while keeping our promises to our great veterans; how to ensure that our education system offers the resources that allow our students to compete internationally, so tomorrow’s jobseekers have the tools they need to succeed; and how to immediately bring jobs back to America by closing our doors to illegal immigrants, and pressuring businesses to produce their goods at home. This book is my blueprint for how to Make America Great Again. It’s not hard. We just need someone with the courage to say what needs to be said.

With All Due Respect: Defending America With Grit and Grace


Nikki R. Haley - 2019
    The New York Times and USA Today bestsellerA revealing, dramatic, deeply personal book about the most significant events of our time, written by the former United States Ambassador to the United NationsNikki Haley is widely admired for her forthright manner (“With all due respect, I don’t get confused”), her sensitive approach to tragic events, and her confident representation of America’s interests as our Ambassador to the United Nations during times of crisis and consequence.In this book, Haley offers a first-hand perspective on major national and international matters, as well as a behind-the-scenes account of her tenure in the Trump administration.This book reveals a woman who can hold her own—and better—in domestic and international power politics, a diplomat who is unafraid to take a principled stand even when it is unpopular, and a leader who seeks to bring Americans together in divisive times.

Republican Rescue: Saving the Party from Truth Deniers, Conspiracy Theorists, and the Dangerous Policies of Joe Biden


Chris Christie - 2021
    Here’s Chris Christie’s urgent guide for recapturing Republican glory and winning elections again, told with all the New Jersey frankness and news-breaking insights that have made the two-term governor, Trump early endorser, and presidential candidate an indispensable voice and instant New York Times bestselling author. As governor of New Jersey and a key Trump insider and longtime friend, Chris Christie has always been known for speaking his mind. Now that the depressing 2020 election is finally behind us, he shares his bold insights on how a battered Republican Party can soar into the future and start winning big elections again. The wrong answers are everywhere. Dangerous conspiracy theorists. A tired establishment. Truth deniers and political cowards. In Republican Rescue, Christie reveals exactly how absurd grievances and self-inflicted wounds sabotaged Donald Trump’s many successes and allowed Democrats to capture the White House, the House, and Senate in two years—a first for the GOP since the days of Herbert Hoover. In his frank and compelling voice, Christie dissects the last year of the Trump administration—which provoked nothing but conspiracy theories and infighting—and he lays out an honest and hopeful vision, explaining how Republicans can capture the future and save America from today’s damaging Democratic excesses. The core Republican values of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan are as relevant now as they’ve ever been, Christie writes. Opportunity for all. A strong national defense. Leaders we can all be proud of. Americans in charge of their own lives. A federal government that answers to the people—not the other way around. But these Republican ideals need to be reinvigorated with fresh clarity and open arms. Christie watched in horror as some in his beloved party embraced paranoia and explained away violence. Determined to restore the party’s integrity and success, he shows how to build a movement voters will flock to again, a Republicanism that’s blunt, smart, conservative, potent, and perfectly suited for the 21st century.

The Stranger: Barack Obama in the White House


Chuck Todd - 2014
    But if he'd come to the White House thinking he could change the political culture, he soon discovered just how difficult it was to swim against an upstream of insiders, partisans, and old guard networks allied to undermine his agenda---including members of his own party. He would pass some of the most significant legislation in American history, but his own weaknesses torpedoed some of his greatest hopes.In The Stranger, Chuck Todd draws upon his unprecedented inner-circle sources to create a gripping account of Obama's White House tenure, from the early days of drift and helplessness to a final stand against the GOP in which an Obama, at last liberated from his political future, finally triumphs.

Permanent Record


Edward Snowden - 2019
    The result would be an unprecedented system of mass surveillance with the ability to pry into the private lives of every person on earth. Six years later, Snowden reveals for the very first time how he helped to build this system and why he was moved to expose it.Spanning the bucolic Beltway suburbs of his childhood and the clandestine CIA and NSA postings of his adulthood, Permanent Record is the extraordinary account of a bright young man who grew up online—a man who became a spy, a whistleblower, and, in exile, the Internet’s conscience. Written with wit, grace, passion, and an unflinching candor, Permanent Record is a crucial memoir of our digital age and destined to be a classic.

Asshole Nation: Trump and the Rise of Scum America


Scott McMurrey - 2017
     The result is thorough lambasting of the people who put Trump in place and the even more reprehensible people who have come out of the shadows since Trump's election. McMurrey takes on the whole cadre of cretinous creatures who flocked to Trump, from the right-wing nutjobs left over from the Tea Party years to the slime who admired him from playing a mogul on TV to the bottom-dwelling Republicans who just saw him as a thug and a bully who would get them what they wanted. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Trump, King of Assholes 2. Asshole Nation: Trump’s Natural Constituency 3. Why Trumpist Assholes are Republicans 4. Why Assholes are Comfortable in the Republican Party 5. Why Asshole Nation Adores Trump 6. Don’t Feel Bad for Trumpists 7. Beating Back Trump’s Asshole Nation 8. Even “Never-Trump” Republicans are Responsible for the Rise of Asshole Nation 9. Trump, Roy Moore, and the Rise of Scum America 10. Crush Scum America and Stop the Careening Eighteen-Wheeler of Democracy If you are disgusted by Trump and by knuckle-dragging conservatism, this book will be a pick-me-up during these dispiriting times. McMurrey speaks the language of anti-Trumpers. He recognizes that Trump mania is just the latests (and let's hope the last!) manifestation of conservatism—a worthless, unnecessary, and fear-filled ideology that promotes selfishness and anti-social attitudes. Pick up Asshole Nation for yourself and give copies to all your Trump-hating friends!

Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One


Ze'ev Chafets - 2010
    For Zev Chafets, it was in a car in Detroit, driving down Woodward Avenue. Limbaugh's braggadocio, the outrageous satire, the slaughtering of liberal sacred cows performed with the verve of a rock-n-roll DJ-it seemed fresh, funny and completely subversive. "They're never going to let this guy stay on the air," he thought. Almost two decades later Chafets met Rush for the first time, at Limbaugh's rarely visited "Southern Command." They spent hours together talking on the record about politics, sports, music, show business, religion and modern American history. Rush opened his home and his world, introducing Chafets to his family, closest friends, even his psychologist. The result was an acclaimed cover-story profile of Limbaugh in The New York Times Magazine. But there was much more to say, especially after Limbaugh became Public Enemy Number One of the Obama Administration. At first Limbaugh resisted the idea of a full-length portrait, but he eventually invited Chafets back to Florida and exchanged more than a hundred emails full of his personal history, thoughts, fears and ambitions. What has emerged is an uniquely personal look at the man who is not only the most popular voice on the radio, but the leader of the conservative movement and one of the most influential figures in the Republican Party. While Limbaugh's public persona is instantly recognizable, his background and private life are often misunderstood. Even devoted Dittoheads will find there's a lot they don't know about the self-described "harmless little fuzzball" who has, over the years, taken on the giants of the mainstream media and the Democratic Party-from Bill and Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama-with "half his brain tied behind his back, just to make it fair." Chafets paints a compelling portrait of Limbaugh as a master entertainer, a public intellectual, a political force, and a fascinating man.

Crunch: If the Economy's Doing So Well, Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? (BK Currents)


Jared Bernstein - 2008
    In "Crunch" he answers these as well as dozens of others he has fielded from working Americans by email, on blogs, and at events where he speaks. Chances are if there's a stumper you've always wanted to ask an economist, it's solved in this book.

Fool Me Twice: Obama's Shocking Plans for the Next Four Years Exposed


Aaron Klein - 2012
     Months of painstaking research into thousands of documents have enabled investigative journalists and New York Times bestselling authors Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott to expose the secret template for Obama's next four years -- the one actually created by Obama's own top advisers and strategists. Just as Obama concealed the true plans for his initial term behind rhetoric of ending partisan differences and cutting the Federal deficit, Obama's re-election theme of creating jobs conceals more than it reveals about his real agenda for a second term. All the main areas of domestic policy are covered -- jobs, wages, health care, immigration overhaul, electoral "reform," national energy policy. Each of the plans exposed seek to permanently remake America into a government-dominated socialist state. Here are just a few samples from dozens upon dozens of specific schemes unveiled herein: Detailed plans to enact single-payer health care legislation controlled by the Federal government regardless of any Supreme Court decision to overturn Obamacare; The recreation of a 21st century version of FDR's Works Progress Administration (WPA) program within the Department of Labor that would oversee a massive new bureaucracy and millions of new Federal jobs; Further gutting of the U.S. military in shocking ways, while using the "savings" for a new "green" stimulus program and the founding of a Federal "green" bank to fund so-called environmentally friendly projects; The vastly reduced resources of the U.S. Armed Forces will be spread even thinner by using them to combat "global warming," fight global poverty, remedy "injustice," bolster the United Nations and step up use of "peacekeeping" deployments; An expansive new amnesty program for illegal aliens linked with a reduction in the capabilities of the U.S. Border Patrol and plans to bring in untold numbers of new immigrants with the removal of caps on H-1B visas and green cards. Fool Me Twice is based on exhaustive research into the coming plans and presidential policies as well as the specific second term recommendations of the major "progressive" groups behind Barack Obama and the Democratic leadership - the organizations that help to craft the legislation and set the political and rhetorical agenda for the president and his allies. While many have general concerns about Obama's second-term ambitions, Fool Me Twice lays bare the devastating details of a second Obama presidency. If he wins re-election in 2012, the America of equal opportunity for all, Constitutionally-limited government, economic freedom and personal liberty will be but a distant memory.

From the Corner of the Oval


Beck Dorey-Stein - 2018
    The ultimate DC outsider, she joined the elite team who accompanied the president wherever he went, recorder and mic in hand. On whirlwind trips across time zones, Beck forged friendships with a tight group of fellow travelers--young men and women who, like her, left their real lives behind to hop aboard Air Force One in service of the president. But as she learned the ropes of protocol, Beck became romantically entangled with a consummate DC insider, and suddenly, the political became all too personal. Set against the backdrop of a White House full of glamour, drama, and intrigue, this is the story of a young woman making unlikely friendships, getting her heart broken, learning what truly matters, and discovering her voice in the process.

Humanity: How Jimmy Carter Lost an Election and Transformed the Post-Presidency (Kindle Single)


Jordan Michael Smith - 2016
    Carter's unpopularity helped Republicans win seats in the House and gain control over the Senate for the first time in over 20 years. The Reagan Era had begun, ushering in a generation of conservative power. Democrats blamed Carter for this catastrophe and spent the next decade pretending he had never existed. Republicans cheered his demise and trotted out his name to scare voters for years to come. Carter and his wife Rosalynn returned to their farm in the small town of Plains, Georgia. They were humiliated, widely unpopular, and even in financial debt. 35 years later, Carter has become the most celebrated post-president in American history. He has won the Nobel Peace Prize, written bestselling books, and become lauded across the world for his efforts on behalf of peace and social justice. Ex-presidents now adopt the Carter model of leveraging their eminent status to benefit humanity. By pursuing diplomatic missions, leading missions to end poverty and working to eradicate disease around the world, Carter has transformed the idea of what a president can accomplish after leaving the White House.This is the story of how Jimmy Carter lost the biggest political prize on earth--but managed to win back something much greater. Jordan Michael Smith is a contributing writer at Salon and the Christian Science Monitor. His writing has appeared in print or online for the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Slate, BBC, and many other publications. Born in Toronto, he holds a Master's of Arts in Political Science from Carleton University. He lives in New York City. www.jordanmichaelsmith.typepad.com.Cover design by Adil Dara.

The End Is Near and It's Going to Be Awesome: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure


Kevin D. Williamson - 2013
    In The End Is Near and It’s Going to Be Awesome, Kevin Williamson, a National Review Online contributor, makes the bold argument that the United States government is disintegrating—and that it is a good thing!Williamson offers a radical re-envisioning of government, a powerful analysis of why it doesn’t work, and an exploration of the innovative solutions to various social problems that are spontaneously emerging as a result of the failure of politics and government.Critical and compelling, The End Is Near and It’s Going to Be Awesome: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure lays out a thoughtful plan for a new system, one based on success stories from around the country, from those who home-school their children to others who have successfully created their own currency.

The Point of Departure


Robin F. Cook - 2003
    Based upon his journal.

Defending Identity


Natan Sharansky - 2008
    Better to have hostile identities framed by democracy than democrats indifferent to identity.In a vigorous, insightful challenge to the left and right alike, Natan Sharansky, as he has proved repeatedly, is at the leading edge of the issues that frame our times.