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.
Orientalism
Edward W. Said - 1978
This entrenched view continues to dominate western ideas and, because it does not allow the East to represent itself, prevents true understanding. Essential, and still eye-opening, Orientalism remains one of the most important books written about our divided world.
33 Questions about American History You're Not Supposed to Ask
Thomas E. Woods Jr. - 2007
The New York Times bestselling author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History offers answers to the questions about American history many are afraid to ask.
Zero Hour: Turn the Greatest Political and Financial Upheaval in Modern History to Your Advantage
Harry S. Dent - 2017
Dent Jr., bestselling author of The Demographic Cliff and The Sale of a Lifetime, predicted the populist wave that has driven the Brexit vote, the election of Donald Trump, and other recent shocks around the world. Now he returns with the definitive guide to protect your investments and prosper in the age of the anti-globalist backlash.The turn of the 2020s will mark an extremely rare convergence of low points for multiple political, economic, and demographic cycles. The result will be a major financial crash and global upheaval that will dwarf the Great Recession of the 2000s—and maybe even the Great Depression of the 1930s. We’re facing the onset of what Dent calls “Economic Winter.” In Zero Hour, he and Andrew Pancholi (author of The Market Timing Report newsletter) explain all of these cycles, which influence everything from currency valuations to election returns, from economic growth rates in Asia to birthrates in Europe. You’ll learn, for instance: • Why the most-hyped technologies of recent years (self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, blockchain) won’t pay off until the 2030s. • Why China may be the biggest bubble in the global economy (and you’d be a fool to invest there). • Why you should invest in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, and pull out of real estate and automotive. • Why putting your faith in gold is a bad idea. Fortunately, Zero Hour includes a range of practical strategies to help you turn the upheaval ahead to your advantage, so your family can be prepared and protected.
Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?
Michael J. Sandel - 2009
In his acclaimed book―based on his legendary Harvard course―Sandel offers a rare education in thinking through the complicated issues and controversies we face in public life today. It has emerged as a most lucid and engaging guide for those who yearn for a more robust and thoughtful public discourse. "In terms we can all understand," wrote Jonathan Rauch in The New York Times, Justice "confronts us with the concepts that lurk . . . beneath our conflicts."Affirmative action, same-sex marriage, physician-assisted suicide, abortion, national service, the moral limits of markets―Sandel relates the big questions of political philosophy to the most vexing issues of the day, and shows how a surer grasp of philosophy can help us make sense of politics, morality, and our own convictions as well.Justice is lively, thought-provoking, and wise―an essential new addition to the small shelf of books that speak convincingly to the hard questions of our civic life.
Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas
Edward Klein - 2014
An old-school reporter with incredible insider contacts, Klein reveals just how deep the rivalry between the Obamas and the Clintons runs, with details on closed-door meetings buttressed by hundreds of interviews. Blood Feud is a stunning exposé of the animosity, jealousy, and competition between America’s two most powerful political couples.
The Enemy Within: How a Totalitarian Movement is Destroying America
David Horowitz - 2021
Horowitz lays out how we have ended up in the worst national crisis since the Civil War. He details: • The Left’s embrace of Critical Race Theory and Cultural Marxism—the underpinnings of their totalitarian ideology • The decades-long infiltration of our education system by ideologies hostile to America, our institutions, and our freedom • Why the Obama administration marked a point of no return in the division of America into two irreconcilable political factions • The Democrats’ unprincipled campaign to destroy a duly elected U.S. president • Their political exploitation of the coronavirus pandemic • Their complicity in the riots of the summer of 2020, which left twenty-five dead, injured two thousand police officers, caused billions of dollars in property damage, and revealed the fragility of our civic order.
What We Do Now: Standing Up For Your Values in Trump's America
Dennis JohnsonGeorge Saunders - 2017
Meant to give people heart and actual strategies about how to advance a variety of causes.Bernie Sanders, Gloria Steinem, Elizabeth Warren and others present short, powerful essays on what people can do now to cope with Trump’s election, and what they can do going forward to protect their values, their politics and their country.
The Original Argument: The Federalists' Case for the Constitution, Adapted for the 21st Century
Glenn Beck - 2010
Now he brings his historical acumen and political savvy to this fresh, new interpretation of The Federalist Papers, the 18th-century collection of political essays that defined and shaped our Constitution and laid bare the “original argument” between states’ rights and big federal government—a debate as relevant and urgent today as it was at the birth of our nation.Adapting a selection of these essential essays—pseudonymously authored by the now well-documented triumvirate of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay—for a contemporary audience, Glenn Beck has had them reworked into “modern” English so as to be thoroughly accessible to anyone seeking a better understanding of the Founding Fathers’ intent and meaning when laying the groundwork of our government. Beck provides his own illuminating commentary and annotations and, for a number of the essays, has brought together the viewpoints of both liberal and conservative historians and scholars, making this a fair and insightful perspective on the historical works that remain the primary source for interpreting Constitutional law and the rights of American citizens.
Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World
Otto English - 2021
Whether propagated by politicians and think tanks, populists or the media, the family tales of childhood or your Facebook friend's feed – fake history is everywhere and it impacts, ever more, on our modern world.This book dismantles the lazy and pernicious tropes of the past as Otto English sets out to redress the balance and reclaim truth from those who seek to pervert it.Fake History will expose everything you weren't told in school and reveal why you weren't taught it.
The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War
Andrew J. Bacevich - 2005
It is a marriage of militarism and utopian ideology--of unprecedented military might wed to a blind faith in the universality of American values. This mindset, the author warns, invites endless war and the ever-deepening militarization of U.S. policy. It promises not to perfect but to pervert American ideals and to accelerate the hollowing out of American democracy. As it alienates others, it will leave the United States increasingly isolated. It will end in bankruptcy, moral as well as economic, and in abject failure. With The New American Militarism, which has been updated with a new Afterword, Bacevich examines the origins and implications of this misguided enterprise. He shows how American militarism emerged as a reaction to the Vietnam War. Various groups in American society--soldiers, politicians on the make, intellectuals, strategists, Christian evangelicals, even purveyors of pop culture--came to see the revival of military power and the celebration of military values as the antidote to all the ills besetting the country as a consequence of Vietnam and the 1960s. The upshot, acutely evident in the aftermath of 9/11, has been a revival of vast ambitions and certainty, this time married to a pronounced affinity for the sword. Bacevich urges us to restore a sense of realism and a sense of proportion to U.S. policy. He proposes, in short, to bring American purposes and American methods--especially with regard to the role of the military--back into harmony with the nation's founding ideals.
How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future
Steven Levitsky - 2018
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.
No Logo
Naomi Klein - 2000
First published before the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, this is an infuriating, inspiring, and altogether pioneering work of cultural criticism that investigates money, marketing, and the anti-corporate movement.As global corporations compete for the hearts and wallets of consumers who not only buy their products but willingly advertise them from head to toe—witness today's schoolbooks, superstores, sporting arenas, and brand-name synergy—a new generation has begun to battle consumerism with its own best weapons. In this provocative, well-written study, a front-line report on that battle, we learn how the Nike swoosh has changed from an athletic status-symbol to a metaphor for sweatshop labor, how teenaged McDonald's workers are risking their jobs to join the Teamsters, and how "culture jammers" utilize spray paint, computer-hacking acumen, and anti-propagandist wordplay to undercut the slogans and meanings of billboard ads (as in "Joe Chemo" for "Joe Camel").No Logo will challenge and enlighten students of sociology, economics, popular culture, international affairs, and marketing."This book is not another account of the power of the select group of corporate Goliaths that have gathered to form our de facto global government. Rather, it is an attempt to analyze and document the forces opposing corporate rule, and to lay out the particular set of cultural and economic conditions that made the emergence of that opposition inevitable." —Naomi Klein, from her Introduction
The Grouchy Historian: An Old-Time Lefty Defends Our Constitution Against Right-Wing Hypocrites and Nutjobs
Ed Asner - 2017
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.