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The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency — the belief that the here and now is all there is. Allan Bloom
 

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George W. Bush

Abel, Gene P. Four More For George W?. Author House, 2004. ISBN 1414076347 (paperback), 1414076355 (ebook)
This book examines the policy changes that have taken place under the Bush administration to date, and the disastrous effect Bush's policies will have if he gets another term.

Alterman, Eric, and Mark J. Green. The Book on Bush. Viking Press, 2004. ISBN 0670032735
Alterman, the author of What Liberal Media?, and Green, a New York City Democrat, offer a critique of both the president and his policies, with one of their main premises being that Bush starts with conclusions and then finds facts with which to frame them. So how does he make decisions? According to the authors, by asking what the religious right wants, what big business wants, and what the neocons want, and then proceeding accordingly.

Bonifaz, John. Warrior King: The Case for Impeaching George Bush. Nation Books, 2003. ISBN 1560256060
Public interest lawyer John Bonifaz argues passionately that George Bush violated the Constitution when he a first-strike invasion of Iraq without a congressional declaration of war. Bonifaz argues that if we are to preserve our Constitution, we must now act: We must call for George Bush's impeachment.

Bowen, Russell S. The Immaculate Deception: The Bush Crime Family Exposed. America West, 1992. ISBN 0922356807
From Amazon.com:
This is perhaps the most shocking book written this century about treason committed by the highest leaders within the U.S. Government. This disturbing and thought provoking expose, which few Americans know about, shows the truth about the drug running activities in behalf of the "secret" government". You will learn about the unsavory past of George Bush and his family, and well as the unscrupulous activities in which he has been involved.

Bruni, Frank. Ambling Into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush. Harper Collins, 2002. ISBN 0066213711
From Amazon.com:
Frank Bruni, a New York Times reporter, has, in Ambling into History, drawn an informal, evenhanded, largely anecdotal and revealing portrait of George W. Bush, whose presidential campaign he covered.... Bruni is not especially concerned with Bush's political philosophy, preferring instead to relate many "small moments" to show what Bush "looked and acted like on the edges of what was usually considered news." Bruni is at his best when describing — often humorously — the exhausting life of the media corps during a campaign: the 24-hour days, the harrowing deadlines, and the brutish tedium of listening to and reporting on the same speech over and over again, a process he likens to "aerobic stenography." An equal-opportunity cynic, Bruni decries the "superficiality" not only of American politics but the media's coverage of it.

Corn, David. The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception. Crown Publishing Group, 2003. ISBN 1400050669
From a column by John W. Dean:
The Washington editor of The Nation, David Corn, has written a powerful — not to mention disquieting — 324-page polemic addressing the pervasive mendacity of George W. Bush's administration. It is entitled The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception. Actually, calling the book a polemic is misleading. It may be more accurate to call it a bill of particulars -- the document that provides the specific charges underlying an indictment. In this case, the charges are highly credible. Corn is an experienced and respected Washington journalist. His evidence is overwhelming, his tone is measured, and his book a jaw dropper. This devastating work is not a laundry list of false statements; rather, it is the chronology of a presidency. Corn found that "lies, in part, made this president, and lies frequently have been the support beams of his administration."

Cox, William John. You’re Not Stupid! Get the Truth: A Brief on the Bush Presidency. Progressive Press, 2004. ISBN 093085232X
Publisher's Review:
At a time when most citizens don’t have the time to seek out discrepancies between the Bush rhetoric and the Bush reality, You're Not Stupid marshals information and provides an overview of Bush and his administration. In order for any voter to engage in intelligent debate over our government’s actions for the last three and a half years, he or she needs to know what those actions were. To this end, You're Not Stupid provides facts familiar to most as well as obscure information ignored or under reported by mainstream media.... But just as important as providing the details, William John Cox presents the big picture.... Cox has collected a large amount of information and condensed it into an accessible format. He approached this work as an attorney--gathering the facts and asking you, the reader, to reach a conclusion. Each chapter contains evidence that many would rather not acknowledge, but as an intelligent public, we must face, and maybe question, the current state of our nation, while also supporting our troops and facing the realistic threat of terrorism in our own country.

Dean, John W. Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush. Little Brown & Company, 2004. ISBN 031600023X
From BuzzFlash:
Dean presents a stunning indictment of George W. Bush's administration. He assembles overwhelming evidence of its obsessive secrecy and the dire and dangerous consequences resulting from a return to Nixonian governing. Worse than Watergate connects the dots, explaining the hidden agenda of a White House shrouded in secrecy and a presidency that seeks to remain unaccountable. Dean lays out a blistering case against President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, revealing, among other facts, even criminal offenses. Worse than Watergate brilliantly reveals the serious dangers of a president who, like Nixon, is a gambler and believes he is above the law. John Dean lays out an irrefutable case that the tactics of the Bush administration are, in intent and reach, the most potentially dangerous threat to American life in recent political history.

Hatfield, J. H. Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President. 2nd Edition, Soft Skull Press. 2001. ISBN 1887128-75-1
From the book blurb:
Now president after the most dubious election in American history, George W. Bush is brought to task by controversial author J. H. Hatfield, who examines Bush's past and the questionable business and political practices of the Bush family. This updated edition documents the campaign to discredit and suppress the most talked-about biography of George W. Bush.

Huberman, Jack. The Bush-Haters Handbook: An A-Z Guide of the Most Appalling Presidency of the Past 100 Years. Thunder's Mouth Press, 2004. ISBN 1560255692
The Bush-Haters Handbook is a godsend to those looking for a concise, mordantly entertaining overview of the Bush record from a liberal perspective, or those who want to arm themselves with talking points, facts, and figures for debates with conservatives, and at those seeking the perfect holiday gift book for that certain, special Bush-hater in their lives-or for a Bush-lover they hope to rescue from the outer darkness. Summarizing, detailing, and bewailing all of the more important Bush administration outrages, and some of the more trivial ones, this book is the brainchild of Jack Huberman, a former Canadian who took up U.S. citizenship just so he could vote against Dubya in 2000. Topics range from abortion, AIDS, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and Ashcroft, to women and workplace safety. Other major topics include budget and taxes, civil liberties, death penalty, defense spending, education, environment, gun control, health care, homeland security, Iraq, judicial nominations, "nucular" weapons, patients' rights, privacy, public land, September 11 and the war on terror, and social security. In between are a variety of smaller topics, such as Bush's language abilities (featuring a selection of priceless Bushisms). The pages are also enlivened by sidebars, "boxed" lists, and political cartoons.

Ivins, Molly, and Lou Dubose. Shrub : The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush. Vintage, 2000. ISBN (hardcover) 0375503994 (paperback) 0375757147
From the Amazon.com review:
Youthful political reporters are always told there are three ways to judge a politician," write Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose in Shrub. "The first is to look at the record. The second is to look at the record. And third, look at the record." The record under scrutiny in this brief, informative book belongs to one George W. Bush — dubbed "Shrub" by Ivins — governor of Texas and 2000 presidential hopeful. These two veteran journalists know how politics are played in Texas and they've done their homework, writing a comprehensive examination of Bush's professional and political life that's a lively read, to boot. And if the title alone doesn't convey their particular slant, perhaps the following caveat from the introduction will: "If, at the end of this short book, you find W. Bush's political résumé a little light, don't blame us. There's really not much there. We have been looking for six years."

Miller, Mark Crispin. The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder. W.W. Norton & Company, 2001. ISBN 0393041832
From the Publishers Weekly review:
Bush succeeded on TV not despite his "utter superficiality," but because his superficiality blended seamlessly with the vacuous culture of the tube. It was not simply that Bush's handlers were able to manipulate his image, attempting to construct out of his ignorance an anti-intellectual "good ole boy" persona, but that news professionals in the medium were all too willing to go along with this ploy. They went along because the pundits of TV have become, according to Miller, increasingly right-wing, thus natural Bush allies, but also because they no longer care to talk about substance, preferring instead discussion of "likability" and other attributes of pure image.

Moore, James. Bush's War For Reelection: Iraq, the White House, and the People. John Wiley & Sons, 2004. ISBN 0471483850
From BuzzFlash:
James Moore masterfully details how Bush's war for reelection has real victims: the families of soldiers who have died in Iraq and American citizens who have dared to tell the truth. This exhaustively researched book exposes the dishonest underside of an administration that claims integrity as its calling card. Real young men and women are paying the price for Bush's follies with their lives, Moore reveals, while the man in the White House has used elitist connections to avoid ever risking anything.

Phillips, Kevin. American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush. Viking Press, 2004. ISBN 0670032646
In this devastating book, onetime Republican strategist Phillips reveals how four generations of Bushes have ascended the ladder of national power since World War One, becoming entrenched within the American establishment—Yale, Wall Street, the Senate, the CIA, the vice presidency, and the presidency—through a recurrent flair for old-boy networking, national security involvement, and political deception. By uncovering relationships and connecting facts with new clarity, Phillips comes to a stunning conclusion: The Bush family has systematically used its financial and social empire—its "aristocracy"—to gain the White House, thereby subverting the very core of American democracy.

Sims, Bennett J. Why Bush Must Go: A Bishop's Faith-Based Challenge. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004. ISBN 0826416373
Retired Episcopal Bishop Bennett Sims offers a critique of the extremist religious and political assumptions that underlie the domestic and foreign policies of President George W. Bush.

Singer, Peter. The President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush. Dutton Books, 2004. ISBN 0525948139
More than any president in recent memory, George W. Bush invokes the language of good versus evil and right versus wrong. Controversial professor of ethics Peter Singer has put his spotlight on President Bush’s moral claims. The results are required reading. Examining public pronouncements that have rarely been subjected to ethical analysis, on topics from stem-cell research and tax cuts to Iraq and the drive for American preeminence, The President of Good and Evil reveals the president’s pattern of ethical confusion and self-contradiction. Delivering his charges in accessible, logical, and lively chapters, Singer asks whether Bush has lived up to the values so often touted in current presidential prose.

Suskind, Ron. The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill. Simon & Schuster, 2004. ISBN 0743255453
From Amazon.com:
The George W. Bush White House, as described by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, is a world out of kilter. Policy decisions are determined not by careful weighing of an issue's complexities; rather, they're dictated by a cabal of ideologues and political advisors operating outside the view of top cabinet officials. The President is not a fully engaged administrator but an enigma who is, at best, guarded and poker-faced but at worst, uncurious, unintelligent, and a puppet of larger forces. O'Neill provided extensive documentation to journalist and author Suskind, including schedules with 7,630 entries and a set of 19,000 documents that featured memoranda to the President, thank-you notes, meeting minutes, and voluminous reports.

Unger, Craig. House of Bush, House of Saud. Scribner, 2004. ISBN 074325337X
From Amazon.com:
As Unger claims in this incisive study, the seeds for the "Age of Terrorism" and September 11 were planted nearly 30 years ago in what, at the time, appeared to be savvy business transactions that subsequently translated into political currency and the union between the Saudi royal family and the extended political family of George H. W. Bush. On the surface, the claim may appear to be politically driven, but as Unger (a respected investigative journalist and editor) probes--with scores of documents and sources--the political tenor of the U.S. over the last 30 years, the Iran-Iraq War, the war in Afghanistan, the birth of Al Qaeda, the dubious connection between members of the Saudi Royal family and the exportation of terror, and the personal fortunes amassed by the Bush family from companies such as Harken Energy and the Carlyle Group, he exposes the "brilliantly hidden agendas and purposefully murky corporate relationships" between these astonishingly powerful families. His evidence is persuasive and reveals a devastating story of Orwellian proportions, replete with political deception, shifting allegiances, and lethal global consequences.

Waldman, Paul. Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and Why the Media Didn't Tell You . Sourcebooks Trade, 2004. ISBN 1402202520
How to Build a Fraud --Portray son of one of America's most influential families as down-home Texan --Berate media as "liberal" until they stop asking tough questions --Take advantage of reporters' tendency to not check the facts --Mask reactionary policies in compassionate words and pictures --Push false stories from right-wing media into mainstream media --Extol the virtues of workers while systematically pushing an anti-labor agenda --Propose a series of tax cuts aimed at the wealthy, but sell them as a boon to ordinary Americans --Disguise destructive initiatives with friendly sounding names --Befriend media with "genuine guy" routine --Keep the public from accessing information --Maintain message discipline at all times --Question patriotism of anyone who disagrees --Repeat above until it all seems true.

Wilson, Joseph. The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity. Carroll & Graf, 2004. ISBN 078671378X
From BuzzFlash:
With fearless insight and disarming candor, Ambassador Joseph Wilson recounts more than two decades in the U. S. Foreign Service. Under presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., and Clinton -- from Angola to Iraq to Bosnia to Niger -- here is an unprecedented look at the career of an American diplomat as well as an unvarnished account of our nation’s foreign policy. Whether fostering peaceful democratization in African nations or facing down Saddam Hussein just days before the first Gulf War or accompanying Bill Clinton on his historic 1998 African tour, Wilson vividly chronicles history in the making. And on page after compellingly narrated page, he demonstrates the courage of his convictions in the face of volatile situations, violent conflicts, and vindictive governments. As the acting ambassador to Iraq, Wilson was the last American official to meet with Saddam before Desert Storm in 1990. He successfully parried the dictator’s threats to use American hostages as human shields against U.S. bombing and was given a patriot’s welcome by President George H. W. Bush on his homecoming. Yet today he finds himself in a battle with his own government. Why? Because he called a lie a lie.

The Theft of the Presidency: Election 2000

Videotape: Counting on Democracy. GlobalVision Inc.; produced by Faye M. Anderson and directed by Danny Schechter; featuring Greg Palast.
The documentary Counting on Democracy, narrated by Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, tells the story of how, in Florida, "tens of thousands of votes were counted out in a country where very vote is supposed to count."

Anyone who cares about democracy must still be outraged about the hijacking of the Florida presidential election. The news media focused on "hanging chads" and charges that the Gore campaign wanted to deprive military personnel of their vote by disallowing absentee ballots. But much more happened in Florida to throw the election to George W. Bush: the purge of tens of thousands of legitimate voters from the rolls, illegal ballot designs and incorrect voting instructions, unreliable machines in majority-Democrat precincts; the failure of county supervisors to perform the legally mandated automatic recounts the way the law required. The recounts requested by the Gore campaign were disrupted by delaying tactics from the Republican monitors, intimidating protests by Republican Congressional staffers and party aides pretending to be local voters, and questionable decisions by state officials who just happened to be Republican. The news media abetted the Bush juggernaut by oversimplifying the story and by uncritically reporting the Bush campaign's claims that Al Gore was trying to "steal" the Florida election.

The conclusion is unavoidable: George W. Bush got Florida's electoral votes in the 2000 election because political pressure, legal maneuvers, and outright threats of violence prevented thousands of votes from being counted -- and thousands more votes were never cast because of the wholesale disenfranchisement of legitimate voters, mostly minorities.

At the end of the film, investigative journalist Greg Palast reports the 2002 election was equally fraught with errors and official misfeasance, and warns that "2002 and 2000 were just practice. Just wait for 2004." The new federal law to reform election procedures "takes the Florida show on the road" by putting every state's voting records under the control of the Secretary of State.

The events of the Florida election have more than just historical significance. They are a warning to all of us of what could happen to nationwide elections if we do not demand fair and accurate voting systems and accountability from elections officials.

Bugliosi, Vincent. The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President. Avalon, 2001. ISBN 156025355X
The book that calls for the impeachment of the Treasonous Five, and lays out why.

Dershowitz, Alan M. Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000. Oxford University Press, 2001. ISBN 0195148274
From Library Journal review:
Dershowitz argues that Supreme Court justices "hijacked Election 2000 by distorting the law, violating their own expressed principles, and using their robes to bring about a partisan result." He seriously asks whether the Supreme Court has damaged its ability to decide national issues and has damaged the political system as well.

Kellner, Douglas. Grand Theft 2000: Media Spectacle and a Stolen Election. Rowman & Littlefield, 2001. ISBN 0-7425-2103-6
From the publisher's web site:
The battle for the White House following the election of November 7, 2000 was arguably one of the major media spectacles in U.S. history, comparable to the Army-McCarthy hearings, the Kennedy assassination, the Watergate hearings, the Iran-Contra affair, the O.J. Simpson trial, and, most recently, the Clinton sex scandals and Impeachment trials. The election was in many ways more contained and circumscribed than these other epochal events, taking place over 36 days from the uncertainty of election night to Al Gore's concession on December 13 and George W. Bush's acceptance of the mantle of President-Elect. The story was highly theatrical with ups and downs, and surprises and reversals, for the candidates and the global audience, exhibiting unpredictability and uncertainty until the end. Its colorful cast of characters and melodramatic story line could hardly be bettered by the most creative Hollywood central casting.

In Grand Theft 2000, Douglas Kellner recounts the story of a stolen election and Republican coup d'etat, focusing on the flaws of the system of democracy in the United States that allowed this event to take place. Kellner examines what the events of Election 2000 tell us about politics in the U.S. today and the alarming consequences for democracy in the battle for the White House. Grand Theft 2000 presents a historical narrative of the heist of the presidency as well as a critique of the media and political system that registers a crisis of democracy in the U.S.A. today. Arguing that the media are largely to blame for the theft of the presidency by the "Bush machine," Kellner shows how failures of voting technology and literacy, Republican manipulation of the Florida electoral process and political system in the counting of the votes, and structural problems with the system of democracy in the United States reveals a crisis of democracy that requires radical measures. Concluding sections on "Lesson and Conclusions" suggests some solutions to the problems revealed and a final section critically dissects the first 100 days of the Bush presidency.

Merzer, Martin, Miami Herald editor, and staff. The Miami Herald Report: Democracy Held Hostage. St. Martin's Press, 2001. ISBN 0312284527
From Publishers Weekly:
There's no smoking gun in the Herald's investigation into the 2000 presidential election morass, but there's a lot of ammunition. The newspaper's examination of the chaos in Florida will please partisans on both sides, as well as those looking for a little irony: …. Even though the desire to recount prompted this study, the book's strength lies in its profiles of the personalities that flooded our TV sets after the election.

Nichols, John, with David DesChamps. Jews for Buchanan: The Theft of the American Presidency. New Press. ISBN 1565847172
From Publishers Weekly:
Nichols, an experienced political observer who writes for the Nation, assembles an impressively wide array of little-known information about the 2000 election in Florida: how TV network cutbacks left them short of news resources and vulnerable to spin and bad-faith attacks; how several counties with optical-scan equipment capable of catching mismarked ballots had high error rates because officials disabled the function to save money; how the "butterfly ballot" cost Gore over 8,500 votes, and a rush to judgment overlooked the clear precedent of a court-ordered revote in the 1968 presidential election; how a Reconstruction-era law disenfranchising felons cost Gore roughly 85,000 votes, and how Bush's and Katherine Harris's offices combined to purge the votes of thousands of supposed "ex-felons," including one county election supervisor; how blacks, with 11% of eligible voters, constituted 44% of those "scrubbed" from voter rolls and 54% of rejected ballots; how Republicans quietly challenged and disqualified hundreds of overseas Gore votes; and many other examples. Nichols combines a journalistic, point-by-point style with engaging, conversational, sometimes chilling and sometimes humorous anecdotes: Pat Buchanan, for instance, jokes about how he prayed to God not to let his epitaph read "The Man Who Cost George W. Bush the Presidency," and wholeheartedly agrees that the butterfly ballot helped save him from this particular ignominy. This volume will leave little doubt in the minds of many that Gore was robbed. But Nichols doesn't dryly build a case; he tells compelling stories revolving around the deeper, more troubling notion that the American people and democracy itself were robbed.

Tapper, Jake. Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency. Little, Brown & Co., 2001. ISBN 0316832642
From the book jacket:
Tapper paints vivid portraits of all the major players, revealing shocking details about what happened behind closed doors, what deals were cut, and who did what to whom.

Thoreau, Jackson and Sharon. We Will Not Get Over It: Restoring a Legitimate White House. E-book download from Citizens for Legitimate Government. $5.00 donation requested; half the proceeds go to the authors, and half to CLG.
From the download page: When the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the legal counting of votes for U.S. president in December 2000 and effectively handed Republican George W. Bush the White House, the justices eroded many people's confidence in the judicial system, the White House, and elections. Thousands of supporters of Democrat Al Gore, who attracted more than 539,000 more overall votes than Bush, took action. They wrote letters, organized rallies and marches, signed petitions, formed Internet sites and groups, and did whatever else they could to register their disapproval of what the court did. They worked for needed electoral reforms so that all Americans' votes could be counted in future elections.

We Will Not Get Over It: Restoring a Legitimate White House covers their story, which has been largely ignored by the media. The roughly 100,000-word book was written by journalist Jackson Thoreau and social worker Sharon Thoreau. Backed up with hundreds of footnotes and sources that are linked to Internet pages, We Will Not Get Over It starts by outlining how the Republicans employed questionable actions to win the election in Florida. Those included purging legal voters from the rolls, doctoring absentee ballots, using state offices for political purposes, giving voters misleading instructions, approving confusing ballots, questionable decisions that favored Republicans by Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who was Bush's state co-chair, behind-the-scenes maneuvers by Bush's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and blaming Democrats for delays when Republicans filed the lawsuits blocking and delaying the legal vote-counting process.

We Will Not Get Over It goes on to detail what organizations like Democrats.com and Citizens for Legitimate Government, panels like the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, politicians like U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and others are doing to restore confidence in the White House and U.S. electoral system. It shows how many in the media ignored and belittled such actions and embraced a president who has little business being in the White House. The book also covers how people and organizations in other countries are reacting to the controversy. Michael Rectenwald, an adjunct professor and writer at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and founder and chairman of Citizens for Legitimate Government, wrote the foreword to this book.

Finally, We Will Not Get Over It includes recommendations from people like Rev. Jesse Jackson, Barbra Streisand, and U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., and organizations like the ACLU, NAACP, and the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, led by former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, on what needs to be done to restore legitimacy to the White House and our election system. There is a long directory of more than 220 organizations, Internet sites, and individuals — with Web site, email, and mailing addresses and other information — to enable readers to learn more and get involved with this important cause.

The Media

The Attempted Coup Against Bill Clinton

Adler, Renata. Canaries in the Mineshaft: Essays on Politics and Media. St. Martin's Press, 2001. ISBN 031227520X
From the book jacket:
In three essays on the Supreme Court, Adler examines the third branch of government, focusing especially on the failed nomination of Robert Bork and Chief Justice Rehnquist's peculiar understanding of the history of the Court. And in her two brilliant analyses of the Clinton scandals, "Decoding the Starr Report" and "Monica's Story", she lays out with remarkable clarity both what actually happened and the serious threat to the Republic which Mr. Starr and his methods of investigation represented.

Brock, David. Blinded by the Right. Crown, 2002. ISBN 0812930991
From A Tattered Cover bookstore review:
The author describes his disenchantment with the neo-conservative movement and offers an insider's view of the hypocrisy and treachery of the right-wing political force that abandoned its principles to sabotage the Clinton presidency.

Carville, James. And the Horse He Rode In On : The People V. Kenneth Starr. Simon & Schuster, 1998. ISBN 0684857340
From the Amazon.com review:
Carville piles on the evidence for his argument that Starr, with his partisan politics and numerous conflicts of interest, should never have been let anywhere near Whitewater, let alone allowed to pry into the personal relationship that Clinton had with Monica Lewinsky in the mid-'90s. And he stands by his man, commenting, "In my mind, an indiscretion here and an indiscretion there will never amount to a tenth of cruelty."

Conason, Joe, and Gene Lyons. The Hunting of the President: The Ten Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton. St. Martin's Press, 2000. ISBN (hardcover) 0312245475 (trade paperback) 0312273193
The definitive source for the chronology and genesis of the Clinton Coup.

Didion, Joan. Political Fictions. Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. ISBN 0375413383
From the review by Susan Faludi in the New York Observer:
The political, it turns out, matters very much to Ms. Didion. Her awakening came as she watched with increasing distress the operations of a political mechanism wholly committed to "disenfranchising America." By the dawn of the 21st century, she writes with newfound force and anger, "half the nation's citizens had only a vassal relationship to the government under which they lived," a catastrophe that galls her all the more for having gone largely unobserved.

There is a reason, she says, why a quarter of all adult Americans are either "alienated" or "disenchanted" with U.S. politics, and it's not, as the press would have it, just "apathy." There is a reason why the parties court only a narrow band of unrepresentative "target" voters, and the rest of the public be damned. What Ms. Didion perceives-and reviles-is the systematic expulsion of the citizenry from the political process, and its replacement by a few oligarchs who live in a bubble world "in which they themselves were the principal players, and for which they themselves were the principal audience." This exclusionary process, she concludes, has not only "left most voters with no reason to come to the polls"; worse, that was the intent-what "had even come to be spoken about, by less wary professionals, as the beauty part, the bonus that would render the process finally and perpetually impenetrable."

Kalb, Marvin L. One Scandalous Story: Clinton, Lewinsky, and Thirteen Days That Tarnished American Journalism. Free Press, 2001. ISBN 0684859394
From the Publishers Weekly review:
Kalb is mad as hell, and he's not going to take it anymore.... He presents a detailed account of how journalism debased itself with a feeding frenzy in 1998, when l'affaire Lewinsky first broke. Television and newspapers ... were all too willing, according to Kalb, to report gossip as news, innuendo as fact, without finding reliable sources. Reporters even became sources in a "prairie fire of copycat journalism." Kalb's report on reporting is an engrossing and disturbing story of what happens when integrity gives way to expediency.

Lyons, Gene, and the editor of Harper's. Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater. Franklin Square Press, 1996. ISBN 1879957523
From an Amazon.com review:
After reading Jeff Gerth's Chinese spy stories in the NY Times, and realizing that they were mostly anti-Clinton innuendo with very few facts, I decided to read this book. Lyons dissects Gerth's "journalism" word by word, innuendo by innuendo, half-truth by half-truth, lie by lie, smear by smear. Any reporter at a self-respecting college newspaper who was as dishonest as Gerth was in his Whitewater stories would've been immediately fired.

Before reading "Fools for Scandal," I was annoyed by Jeff Gerth's "journalism"; now I'm angry at both him and The New York Times, since they have obviously become tools of the most poisonous element in our political culture, the right wing. When the history of this era — with its right-wing smear machine and the corrupt journalism that is the machine's partner in crime — is taught, "Fools for Scandal" should be required reading

McDougal, Susan. The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk. Carroll & Graf, 2002. ISBN 0786711280
From Publishers Weekly:
"There were four people who knew what went on in Whitewater," McDougal explains in her wry memoir (cowritten with a close friend and legal advisor). "Two of them were in the White House," and not about to talk, while McDougal's ex-husband, Jim, lacked credibility, leaving her as the sole credible witness. The problem was that nobody in the media or the office of independent counsel Ken Starr wanted to hear what she had to say: that Whitewater was just "a stupid land deal that went bad," and the McDougals weren't all that close to the Clintons anyway. McDougal offers up her full life story, including an Arkansas childhood and the raunchy antics of the Clinton-run statehouse, and details her turbulent marriage to Jim McDougal, exacerbated by his long-undiagnosed manic-depression. But she knows that readers want to learn about-her experiences being grilled, then jailed for contempt for refusing to give Starr his smoking gun-and she lays on the horrific details with righteous fury. She also recalls positive experiences with fellow inmates and supportive friends (and strangers) on her way to eventual vindication, and looks back on her travails with humor. Several personalities around "Clintongate" rushed their books out to take advantage of their fleeting notoriety and, in some cases, the rising anti-Clinton tide; McDougal's delay gives her account a historical and emotional perspective many of her predecessors lacked.

Merkl, Peter H. A Coup Attempt in Washington? A European Mirror on the 1998-1999 Constitutional Crisis. Palgrave, 2001. ISBN 0312238312
From the Booklist review:
Merkl, an emeritus professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, examines Europe's view of that controversy, which the author considers our "most serious constitutional crisis . . . since the Civil War." Merkl sketches the European media's reaction to GOP attacks on Clinton from 1993 to 1997 and to legal and legislative processes ("the coup attempt") from the Supreme Court's decision that the Paula Jones suit could proceed to House passage of articles of impeachment and the Senate's failure to convict. He parses European commentary on "sex, lies, and audiotape" and joins the European critique of the U.S. "media conspiracy" that made tabloid tidbits the lead story while ignoring serious constitutional issues, important nonscandal stories, and the rest of the world's appalled reaction to the U.S. feeding frenzy. Merkl closes with a thoughtful analysis of the long-term damage the long, bitter impeachment drama may have done to the U.S. Constitution.

Toobin, Jeffrey. A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal that Nearly Brought Down a President. (hardcover) Random House, 2000. ISBN 0375502955. (trade paperback) Touchstone Books, 2000. ISBN 0743204131
The first major book on l'affaire Lewinsky includes some interesting stories about the cast of characters, but the author pulls his punches before connecting all the dots.

Wickham, DeWayne. Bill Clinton and Black America. One World, 2002. ISBN 0345450329
From A Tattered Cover bookstore review:
A collection of interviews with prominent African Americans on the Clinton presidency reveals Clinton's very personal connection to Black America, exploring his administration and his move to Harlem after his presidency ended.

The Iran/Contra Scandal and Ronald Reagan

Parry, Robert. Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press and Project Truth. The Media Consortium, 1999. ISBN 1893517004
From the book description:
Lost History is a kind of All the President's Men in reverse. As that journalistic classic followed Woodward and Bernstein exposing Watergate, Lost History is the inside story of reporters who broke the key stories of the Iran-contra scandal. But instead of basking in praise, they paid a high personal price. In a larger sense, Lost History explains how the Washington press corps of the 1980s missed or under-reported many of the major scandals of the era, from the dirty secret of Nicaraguan contra-cocaine trafficking to the Guatemalan army's genocide against Mayan Indians. Not only does Lost History recover this important historical record from the government's secret files, but it shows how the decade of the 1980s was the missing link in the transformation of the Washington press corps from the glory days of Watergate to the tawdry tabloid moments of Monica Lewinsky. This is a book not only about "lost history" but about a political system that has lost its way.

Walsh, Lawrence E. Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up. W. W. Norton, 1997. ISBN (hardcover) 0393040348 (paperback) 0393318605
From a reader review at Amazon.com:
Finally a book that exposes the truth on the Reagan administration. Readers need to keep in mind that although Judge Walsh did his homework, he could not get a deserved conviction due to a strong GOP Congress and Reagan's "halo effect" in the press's and public's eyes who refused to believe the truth that Walsh, et al., uncovered. This book sheds light on the Reagan administration for all it's worth: lies, corruption, cover-up, deceit, treason, cabal. Always an actor in the Oval Office.

Webb, Gary. Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Introduction by Maxine Waters. Seven Stories Press, 1998. ISBN (hardcover) 1888363681 (paperback) 1888363932
From the Amazon.com review:
In July 1995, San Jose Mercury-News reporter Gary Webb found the Big One--the blockbuster story every journalist secretly dreams about--without even looking for it. A simple phone call concerning an unexceptional pending drug trial turned into a massive conspiracy involving the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, L.A. and Bay Area crack cocaine dealers, and the Central Intelligence Agency. For several years during the 1980s, Webb discovered, Contra elements shuttled thousands of tons of cocaine into the United States, with the profits going toward the funding of Contra rebels attempting a counterrevolution in their Nicaraguan homeland. Even more chilling, Webb quickly realized, was that the massive drug-dealing operation had the implicit approval--and occasional outright support--of the CIA, the very organization entrusted to prevent illegal drugs from being brought into the United States.

Political Thought and Citizen Action

Begala, Paul, and James Carville. Buck Up, Suck Up...and Come Back When You Foul Up : How to Fight and Win...in Business, in Politics and in Life. Simon & Schuster, 2001. ISBN 0743224221
From the Amazon.com review: Even if you fervently disagree with the party bias they tout proudly and often, you probably concur that Democratic political consultants Paul Begala and James Carville know what it takes to craft a winning strategy. In Buck Up, Suck Up... and Come Back When You Foul Up, the two lay out 12 of the rules they developed while separately and jointly masterminding some of the hottest political races in recent years. And with entertaining and enlightening behind-the-scenes anecdotes drawn from both effective and futile experiences along the campaign trail — most notably their work with Bill Clinton during his two presidential terms — Begala and Carville present a practical course that can be followed in business as well as politics. "If the audience you're trying to reach is smaller than the one hundred million voters we spend our time trying to reach," they write, "we believe these lessons are even more important because your target audience is even more sophisticated, even more interested, even more up-to-the-minute."

Dionne, E. J. Stand Up Fight Back : Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revenge. Simon & Schuster, 2004. ISBN 0743258584
From Amazon.com
It says something that even E. J. Dionne, Jr., a radio and print columnist noted for a generally placatory left-center tone, allows a clear sense of outrage to creep into his take on the Bush II era, starting with the title. Indeed, Dionne's discontent grows more pronounced with each page, though ultimately Stand Up, Fight Back maps out practical responses to what the author sees as the two maladies that infect contemporary politics--resolute conservative maliciousness and irresolute liberal defensiveness. Dionne finds gaping holes in right-wing morality, notably when chronicling the 2000 Florida debacle and the "grotesque" Supreme Court decision that handed the presidency to the second-place finisher in the popular vote. Dionne wraps things up by outlining a program to stall the precipitous shift to the right. It would be engineered by a moderate and liberal alliance that emphasizes fairness, compassion, justice, and the common good.

Easton, Nina J. Gang of Five: Leaders at the Center of the Conservative Crusade. Touchstone Books, April 2002. ISBN 0743203208
From Amazon.com:
"There is a hidden history in American politics, the other side of the baby-boom generation: political rebels of the Right who emerged on campus in the 1970s and went to overturn the established liberal order," writes Nina J. Easton in Gang of Five. "To understand them is to understand what politics has become and what it will be." Her book is probably best described as a quintuple biography of five movement conservatives in the midst of their political careers: Clint Bolick, a civil rights lawyer; William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard magazine; David McIntosh, a GOP congressman running for governor of Indiana in the fall of 2000; Grover Norquist, an antitax activist and one of Washington, D.C.'s most prominent right-wingers; and Ralph Reed, the former Christian Coalition maestro.

Ellul, Jacques. Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes. Random House, 1973 (reprint). ISBN 0394718747
A classic work from the 1950s on how propaganda is essential to modern states, and how it corrupts and distorts the state and those who are exposed to it.

Feldman, Noah. After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy. Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2003. ISBN 0374177694
Review by Susie Dow:

Democracy is messy.

The very idea of an Islamic democracy is alarming for many Westerners in the aftermath of September 11th. But the policy of maintaining the status quo of unelected autocrats, dictators, and "rentier nations", and ignoring power struggles that result in civil war, has already proven catastrophic.
The absolutist thinking that insists on arraying movements like "democracy" and "Islam" against each other in inevitable conflict has led us badly astray. Shared by skeptical Westerners and some hard line Islamists, it has led to mistaken reasoning, and hence to mistaken policies. Specifically, it has led the United Sates and Europe to ignore the possibility that Muslims want freedom as much as anybody else. It has led Western governments that pride themselves on their own democratic character to embrace dictators for reasons of short term self interest, forgetting that in the long run, the support of autocracy undermines their own democratic values and makes enemies of the people who are being oppressed with Western complicity.

Feldman has written After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy as a book that explores the question in three parts. Part One looks at how Islam and democracy can be synthesized so that they remain true to themselves. Part Two looks at existing states and shows that the seeds of democracy are there. Part Three demands that Western nations, the United States in particular, take a vested interest in seeing democracy succeed. Practical steps that might lead to successful democratic societies are suggested.
The point is that as a moral matter, Muslims, like everyone else, should have the opportunity to make basic decisions about government for themselves. The fact that a country is not democratic, however, is not good evidence that its citizens do not wish for it to be more democratic. If Muslims choose democratic government, then they ought to be assisted in achieving it. If, on the other hand, they choose something else, that, too, should be permitted to exist undisturbed.
Those expecting a concise and explicit answer in Part 3 of After Jihad will be sorely disappointed; but Feldman reminds his readers that successful democracy comes from within, and cannot be imposed from without. As Iraq begins the process of forming a new government, as Afghanistan continues its own internal struggles, After Jihad is as much about Western foreign policy as it is about the form of Islamic democracy likely to result from 21st century Muslims who yearn for change.

Feldman reviews the various forms of government that currently exist where Islam is the dominant religion. He explores what is meant by the very concept of "democracy". He sees the advent of an Islamic democracy as a "mobile idea" — one that can accommodate the unique cultures of nations as diverse as Malaysia from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia from Pakistan, Egypt from Indonesia.

After Jihad proposes that monarchies hold the greatest promise of democratic reform, as kings make way for necessary social change while simultaneously attempting to hold on to their thrones. Dictatorships pose the greatest challenge: with little outside influence, interaction, or contact from Western nations, and with their citizens powerless to effect change except through the use of armed force. A surprise for many readers will be the optimism and excitement that Feldman holds for internal democratic reform in Iran.

Feldman's examination of the governance of oil states is of particular interest. While no one likes to pay taxes, citizens derive concrete benefits that are denied them when under the rule of "rentier nations". Rentier nations are those that rely on the sale of their natural resources rather than on income taxes to pay for social services.
At the structural level, democrats realize that a government that does not tax its people also lacks most incentives to respond to the people's desires.

Feldman opens After Jihad with a short history of the brief success, followed by tragic failure, of a fledgling Islamic democracy in Algeria. In 1989, mass protests led to elections ushering in a newly formed Islamic party in 1990. Before a second round of elections could be administered, at the insistence of Algerian generals, the leaders of the newly formed party were arrested and jailed, the party was banned, and the elections cancelled. As a result of their oppression, the party turned to armed resistance.
In a speech that has cast long shadows over subsequent American policy, then Assistant Secretary of State Edward Djerejian explained that while the United States favored democracy, it opposed elections that would provide for "one person, one vote, one time."
The ensuing civil war led to the deaths of 100,000 Algerians.

This short narrative acts as a wakeup call for Western readers throughout the rest of the book.

After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy is relatively short; Feldman's explication of the language and history of foreign nations unfamiliar to Westerners is easy to follow. Feldman provides numerous references and footnotes, all of which the reader will wish to dive into because the references provide context and not just scholarly evidence. Feldman's excitement at the prospect of what Islamic democracy holds is contagious. His exuberance is sure to be well received by the Iraqi people whom he is now advising as they explore ways to craft a new constitution.

Will the West embrace and support Noah Feldman's mobile idea of an Islamic democracy as an option for a new form of government in Iraq? The future is unknowable, but as After Jihad has clearly laid out:
Change is needed before it is too late.

Friedenberg, Daniel M. to the Highest Bidder: The Presidency from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1573929239
From Publishers Weekly:
In a no-holds-barred style, Friedenberg (Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Land) decries recent U.S. presidents as manipulators of "legislative capitalism": elected by those special-interest groups that give them the most money and, in turn, appointing to key administrative positions these same friends, often leaders of major industries, like defense contractors or scions of wealthy families, with many of the same names continually circulating in positions of high power. Devoting a chapter to each presidency, Friedenberg keeps a journalistic balance while making his opinions spotlessly clear.

Harris, Bev. Black Box Voting: Ballot-Tampering in the 21st Century. Talion Publishing, 2004. ISBN 1890916900
Author Bev Harris is the 52-year old grandma who found 40,000 secret voting machine files on the Web, which have now been studied by computer scientists all over the world. "Black Box Voting" is the book that resulted from her investigations into the voting industry. What she learned was that modern-day voting systems are run by private for-profit corporations, rely on a few cronies for oversight, using a certification system so fundamentally flawed that it allows machines to miscount and lose votes, with hidden back doors that enable "end runs" around the voting system. Find out why your vote might not count -- and what to do about it!

Hartmann, Thom; Gene Latimer (Editor); Paul Burke (Editor); Neil Cohn (Illustrator) . We the People: A Call to Take Back America. Coreway Media, 2004. ISBN 1882109384
In this illustrated nonfiction book, the author of Unequal Protection tells the story of how a government of, by, and for the people has been replaced by corporate domination. Through brilliant analysis and imaginative illustrations, the book illuminates the central dynamics of American politics.

Hofstadter, Richard. The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Harvard University Press, 1952 (reprinted 1996). ISBN 0674654617
From a reader review in Amazon.com:
The book is a prescient and devastating analysis of the breathless mindset on display, mainly from the Right, over the last ten years or so.... Back in 1964, Prof. Hofstadter noted that people who think [in the paranoid style] tend to imitate the massive conspiracies they imagine threatening themselves. Writing in an era that still resembled the stereotypical 1950s more than the stereotypical 1960s, Hofstadter did not foresee the current power of the paranoid style. But the title essay of his book nails it right to the wall.

Huffington, Arianna. Fanatics and Fools: The Game Plan for Winning Back America. Miramax, 2004. ISBN 1401352138
As America’s leaders fight pre-emptive wars abroad and ordinary Americans fight to keep their heads above water here at home, Arianna Huffington offers a no-holds-barred account of where we stand and a clear and remarkable vision of where we should be headed. Taking aim at the ruthless fanatics in the Bush White House and the feckless fools in the all-too-compliant Democratic opposition, the best-selling author of Pigs at the Trough paints a scathing picture of our contemporary political landscape—peopled with scoundrels and cowards, and awash in the constant and corrosive tow of dirty money. But the book doesn’t stop there.... She lays out her game plan for winning back America. With the 2004 election fast approaching, Arianna Huffington sees fire in the ashes of the Democratic Party and reason for hope that this can be the year that the people finally take back control of their government and their country.

Keyssar, Alex. The Right to Vote: The Contest History of Democracy in the United States. Basic Books, 2000. ISBN (hardcover) 046502968X (paperback) 0465029698
From the publisher:
The Right to Vote is the first comprehensive history of suffrage in the United States to be published in more than eighty years. This path-breaking volume chronicles the surprisingly complex and slow evolution of the right to vote from the American Revolution to the present.

Alexander Keyssar's account highlights the gap between the hallowed image of the United States as the democratic nation and the reality that it took nearly two centuries for universal suffrage to be achieved. The story that he presents is one of both progress toward democratization and of fierce resistance to any expansion of the franchise. It includes lively accounts of those who "won" the right to vote, including women, African Americans, immigrants and industrial workers, while also describing recurrent — and sometimes successful — efforts to bar millions of individuals from the polls.

Keyssar analyzes this story in the context of broad currents in American economic, social and political history. In so doing, he explains the ways in which diverse forces — including war, class tension, socioeconomic changes, racial and ethnic hostilities, ideological shifts and the dynamics of party competition — shaped the expansion and contraction of voting rights over the last two hundred years. The Right to Vote is a sweeping reinterpretation of major chapters of American political history as well as a meditation on the meaning of democracy in contemporary American life.

Lind, Michael. Up from Conservatism : Why the Right Is Wrong for America. Free Press, 1998. ISBN 0684831864
From the review in Baker Books: With no dearth of irony, Michael Lind borrows the title of this attack against American conservatism from Booker T. Washington's classic narrative of ascent, Up from Slavery. Lind, a former protégé of William F. Buckley, traces his transformation from vociferous spokesperson for the right to up-and-coming liberal pundit. The book details the workings of the American right as witnessed from the inside, and rails against what he describes as the right wing's politics of cynicism and propaganda. Lind decries the right's disingenuous tactic of spreading misleading information about issues such as taxes, welfare, family values, and affirmative action, and criticizes conservative leaders for starting a divisive "culture war" which has served to alienate and distract a large number of Americans. This is a forceful, timely book.

Loeb, Paul Rogat. Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in a Cynical Time. St. Martin's Griffin, 1999. ISBN 0312204353
From the Amazon.com review
These are indeed cynical times. But to hide behind the smugness of cynicism is a kind of self-imposed death sentence, explains writer and social commentator Paul Loeb. In fact, now is the ideal time for gathering all our strengths and wisdom as spiritual beings and applying ourselves to shaping a better world, he claims. …, Loeb is talking about a new kind of activism — an exciting, spiritual model for creating social change. ..We can be "good enough" activists, assuming the task of helping 10 people in need rather than taking on the globe. We can remember the power of storytelling when convincing an audience, rather than angrily spewing scary facts. …We can emphasize themes such as community and forgiveness rather than separatism and blame.

Miller, Bruce J. and Diana Maio. Take Them at Their Words: Startling, Amusing and Baffling Quotations from the G.O.P. and Their Friends, 1994-2004. Academy Chicago Publications, 2004. ISBN 089733521X
From BuzzFlash:
Here is what you've been waiting for. A compendium of hundreds of right wing GOP quotations that you are always writing to BuzzFlash to ask, "Did they really say that?" Yes, they did! Over more than 350 pages, Bruce Miller, brother of Mark Crispin Miller, has assembled the bitter, spiteful and downright bizarre ranting and ravings of the people who now rule America, along with their supporters.

Moore, Michael. Stupid White Men. Regan Books, 2002. ISBN 0060392452
From the book description:
The government has been seized by a ne'er-do-well rich boy and his elderly henchmen . . . Our great economic expansion is unraveling faster than a set of Firestones . . . Our water is poisoned, the ozone's in shreds, and the SUVs are advancing like a plague of locusts . . . Michael Moore, the award-winning provocateur behind Roger & Me and the bestseller Downsize This!, now returns to size up the new century -- and that big, ugly special-interest group that's laying waste to the world as we know it: stupid white men. Whether he's calling for United Nations action to overthrow the Bush Family Junta, calling on African-Americans to place whites only signs over the entrances of unfriendly businesses, or praying that Jesse Helms will get kissed by a man, Stupid White Men is Mike's Manifesto on Malfeasance and Mediocrity.

Palast, Greg. The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, second edition. Plume, 2003. ISBN 0452283914
Investigative journalism is not extinct; Greg Palast is on the job revealing the corrupt underside of politics and the downside of globalization. Palast specializes in stories that are avoided or underplayed by the major media, particularly in the U.S.: the illegal purge of minority voters from Florida election rolls; the disastrous effect of International Monetary Fund policy on national economies; the "cash for access" policies of the U.S. and British governments; the suppression of the FBI's pursuit of Osama bin Laden and investigations into Saudi links to terrorism; price-gouging in California by energy suppliers; unscrupulous business dealings by über-evangelist Pat Robertson; the virtually unhindered despoliation of the environment and the economy by insatiable corporations.

Palast's investigations have a common theme and create a clear pattern: wealth, not the democratic process, controls government. That Palast is frequently the only person in all the wide media world reporting on these events and issues is an indictment of our news media, and an indication of how much money and power control what We The People learn about what goes on in our own backyard or our employer's headquarters.

The Best Democracy Money Can Buy is enlightening — and disturbing. To confront the problems besetting our political systems, we must understand what they are. Palast provides an unflinching look at those problems, so that "we won't be fooled again".

Parry, Robert. Fooling America: How Washington Insiders Twist the Truth and Manufacture the Conventional Wisdom. Wm Morrow and Company, 1992. ASIN 0688109276
From Kirkus Reviews:
Parry, a former AP and Newsweek reporter, offers a name-naming book on the herd mentality among Washington's opinion-makers and accuses the Reagan Administration of mounting a domestic disinformation campaign.... But Parry also states that successive Republican administrations made an active, secret, and highly successful effort — using CIA-trained personnel and psychological warfare techniques — to suppress adversarial media outlets and to get Middle America to accept military intervention as a legitimate policy option. The Reagan and Bush Administrations' "public diplomacy" triumphs can be seen, says Parry, in the vilification of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the railroading of former US asset Manuel Noriega, and the willingness of Americans to go to war for a corrupt monarchy in Kuwait.

Sharp, Gene. Politics of Non Violent Action. (Three volumes.) Porter Sargent. ISBN Power and Struggle (1973), 087558070X; Methods of Nonviolent Action (1973), 0875580718; Dynamics of Nonviolent Action (1985), 0875580726
From a reader review in Amazon.com:
The Politics of Nonviolent Action is a landmark study of nonviolence in three volumes.... Sharp, Senior Scholar at the Albert Einstein Institution, reveals that political power is not intrinsic to rulers but derives exclusively from citizens. Thus political power requires social support.... Sharp outlines a brief history of nonviolent action, from plebeian noncooperation in ancient Rome to modern movements like the Czechoslovakian civilian resistance of 1968.... If government is the will of the people manifest, then the nonviolent activist must change the will of the people, not the government. When viewed in this light we see why both Gandhi's and King's movements ultimately failed. Both successfully affected political change but were assassinated before social change could be completed.

Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States: 1492–Present. 20th Anniversary edition, Harper Collins, 1999. ISBN (hardback) 0060194480 (paperback) 0060937319
From the book description:
Since its original landmark publication in 1980, A People's History of the United States has been chronicling American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official version of history taught in schools — with its emphasis on great men in high places — to focus on the street, the home, and the, workplace. Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, A People's History is the only volume to tell America's story from the point of view of — and in the words of — America's women, factory workers, African-Americans, Native Americans, the working poor, and immigrant laborers. As historian Howard Zinn shows, many of our country's greatest battles — the fights for a fair wage, an eight-hour workday, child-labor laws, health and safety standards, universal suffrage, women's rights, racial equality — were carried out at the grassroots level, against bloody resistance. Covering Christopher Columbus's arrival through President Clinton's first term, A People's History of the United States, which was nominated for the American Book Award in 1981, features insightful analysis of the most important events in our history.
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