10 Books to fill the Post-Election Void

Are you a political junkie feeling restless now that the election excitement is over? Are you craving the intrigue of smoke-filled war rooms and rousing populist speeches, but have to settle for C-Span or MSNBC? Or maybe you just want to know what the heck happened for the past three months?

Let me help you ~ here are ten books about politics, candidates and campaigns with all the electioneering you crave, plus a big boost of history to put everything about 2012 in context. Some are about the left, some about the right, but all are fascinating.

Note: Both links and pictures will take you directly to Amazon.

1.
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't
Numbers guy Nate Silver is either a hero or villain depending on your political views. Starting out as a progressive diarist on Daily Kos then rising to New York Times blogger status, he correctly predicted the outcome of both the 2008 and 2012 down to the exact states and number of electoral votes won by Obama, McCain, and Romney. While other statisticians may claim the same success, Silver was the most outspoken on the internet both times, which made him a lighting rod for criticism from all sides.

2.
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin gives behind-the-scenes details about the White House of President Abraham Lincoln. This is a great book if you crave more Lincoln after watching the movie of the same name, which comes out in theaters Nov. 16.

3.
Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime
This book by Republican writers John Heilemann and Mark Halperin gives you the two-fold story of the 2008 presidential race, starting with Hillary Clinton's tough primary fight against Barack Obama, then moving on to John McCain's stunning pick of running mate Sarah Palin and all the drama that followed.

4.
The Selling of the President: The Classical Account of the Packaging of a Candidate
In this age of 24-hour television, we forget that at one time voters had no idea they were being subjected to marketing ploys thought up by Mad Men types. Author Joe McGinniss was the first to expose how presidential candidates are "packaged" for the public. Learn how Roger Ailes, who went on to be president of Fox News, was once just a TV producer trying to put a better and more voter-friendly face on Richard Nixon.

5.
The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown
The long, long lines of the 2012 campaign made everyone wonder why some states run elections so smoothly while others are in a big mess. Author Richard Hasen was an adviser to the Al Gore campaign during the 2000 recount fiasco in Florida and has made it his mission in life to parse and explain our rather byzantine voting system.

6.
Why Romney Lost
Republican pundit David Frum believes Mitt Romney lost through a combination of factors, but mainly because the candidate and party were seen as out of touch with a new diverse America. But he has suggestions for how to fix that in coming elections.

8.
1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year that Transformed America
If we think 2012 was a wild ride, then consider the election battle of 1948 with President Roosevelt's successor Harry Truman running in a primary against previous VP Henry Wallace and Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond. In the general election, the race was so close that some newspapers made the now-famous mistake of reporting that Thomas Dewey had won instead.

7.
The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism
This is probably the most even-handed look at the divisive Tea Party to date. Authors Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson of Harvard University took time to interview ordinary people across America who identify with the Tea Party movement, which is based on the premise that half of society pays taxes to give "free stuff" to the other half. Whether you are part of the elite 1% or the more common 47%, this book is enlightening.

9.
Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent
E.J. Dionne is a liberal, but he tries to strike a balance here while explaining the causes of our "divided" government. This is also a good book to read if you know nothing about politics but are planning to vote in the next presidential election. How did things ever get so confusing?

10.
Presidential Campaign Posters: Two Hundred Years of Election Art
This coffee-table book put out by the Library of Congress is a lush look at campaign art, plus each of the 100 political posters may be removed from the book and framed. There is also ample backstory for each election. The message - candidates haven't changed much over the decades - they just want you to vote for them!

Rowling's New Middle-Class Characters are not Magical, but Monstrous

pic: happiness-in-a-box

J. K. Rowling is starting her publicity push as her new book The Casual Vacancy comes out on September 27, which is next Thursday.


The Casual Vacancy Hardcover from Amazon
The Casual Vacancy for Kindle on Amazon
The Casual Vacancy Audo Book on Amazon

Guardian UK has an in-depth article about Rowling's views on just about everything, including the book. I find it very interesting that a book about small-town politics is timed perfectly to coincide with the elections in the U.S. right now, where the vast majority of Rowling fans happen to live. No real surprise though, LOL.

Some excerpts:

Rowling: "Obviously I need to be in some form of vehicle to have a decent idea," she laughs. Having dreamed up Potter on a train, "This time I was on a plane. And I thought: local election! And I just knew. I had that totally physical response you get to an idea that you know will work. It's a rush of adrenaline, it's chemical. I had it with Harry Potter and I had it with this. So that's how I know."

. . . "I'm interested in that drive, that rush to judgment, that is so prevalent in our society," Rowling says. "We all know that pleasurable rush that comes from condemning, and in the short term it's quite a satisfying thing to do, isn't it?" But it requires obliviousness to the horrors suffered by a family such as the Weedons, and the book satirises the ignorance of elites who assume to know what's best for everyone else."

. . . "We're a phenomenally snobby society," Rowling nods, "and it's such a rich seam. The middle class is so funny, it's the class I know best, and it's the class where you find the most pretension, so that's what makes the middle classes so funny." The book is so funny I was halfway through before noticing that every character is, to a varying degree, monstrous.

. . . Whodunnits are her literary guilty pleasure – "I love a good Dorothy L Sayers" – but then again, she doesn't really feel guilty about that: "There's no shame in a Dorothy." She hasn't read Fifty Shades Of Grey, "because I promised my editor I wouldn't." She doesn't look as if she feels she's missing out. "Not wildly," she agrees drily.

~~~

Reporter Decca Aitkenhead: I am required to sign more legal documents than would typically be involved in buying a house before I am allowed to read The Casual Vacancy, under tight security in the London offices of Little, Brown. Even the publishers have been forbidden to read it, and they relinquish the manuscript gingerly, reverently, as though handling a priceless Ming vase. Afterwards, I am instructed never to disclose the address of Rowling's Edinburgh office where the interview will take place. The mere fact of the interview is deemed so newsworthy that Le Monde dispatches a reporter to investigate how it was secured. Its prospect begins to assume the mystique of an audience with Her Majesty – except, of course, that Rowling is famously much, much richer than the Queen.

. . . When I tell her I loved the book, her arms shoot up in celebration. "Oh my God! I'm so happy! That's so amazing to hear. Thank you so much! You've made me incredibly happy. Oh my God!" Anyone listening would take her for a debut author, meeting her first ever fan.

~~~

J.K.Rowling on her personal life:

Rowling grew up near the Forest of Dean in a community not unlike Pagford. "And this was very much me vividly remembering what it was like to be a teenager, and it wasn't a particularly happy time in my life. In fact, you couldn't give me anything to make me go back to being a teenager. Never. No, I hated it."
Her mother, a school lab technician, was diagnosed with MS when Rowling was 15. "But it wasn't just that – although that did colour it a lot. I just don't think I was very good at being young."

. . . fame has had its upsides; meeting Barack Obama and the legendary Democrat speechwriter Bob Shrum were the two greatest starstruck moments of her life.

. . . Having always longed to be a writer, she now found herself in charge of a business empire stretching all the way to Hollywood, as the Harry Potter films began smashing box office records. "And it's a real bore. Should I be more diplomatic? Oh, I don't care. No, there is literally nothing on the business side that I wouldn't sacrifice in a heartbeat to have an extra couple of hours' writing. Nothing. That sounds hideously ungrateful because it's made me an awful lot of money, and I'm very grateful for that. But it's not something that interests me, and there have been lots of opportunities to do things that make more money, and I've said no."

Hmmm . . . I'll be glad to take some money and power off her hands so she can have more time to write. LOL

But what about the book? If you don't wish to see SPOILERS then skip the following excerpt from Decca Aitkenhead's synopsis:

The pompous chairman assumes the seat will go to his son, a solicitor. Pitted against him are a bitterly cold GP and a deputy headmaster crippled by irreconcilable ambivalence towards his son, an unnervingly self-possessed adolescent whose subversion takes the unusual but highly effective form of telling the truth. His preoccupation with "authenticity" develops into a fascination with the Fields and its most notorious family, the Weedons.

Terri Weedon is a prostitute, junkie and lifelong casualty of chilling abuse, struggling to stay clean to stop social services taking her three-year-old son, Robbie, into care. But methadone is a precarious substitute for heroin, and most of what passes for mothering falls to her teenage daughter, Krystal. Spirited and volatile, Krystal has known only one adult ally in her life – Barry – and his sudden death casts her dangerously adrift. When anonymous messages begin appearing on the parish council website, exposing villagers' secrets, Pagford unravels into a panic of paranoia, rage and tragedy.

Pagford will be appallingly recognisable to anyone who has ever lived in a West Country village, but its clever comedy can also be read as a parable about national politics.

Bin Laden Bestseller Loaded with Controversy

CBS Sixty Minutes will be the first to interview the ex-Navy Seal who penned the controversial book No Easy Day about the raid on Osama Bin Laden's compound in Pakistan.

The book is number one right now on the Amazon Best Seller List, although it's not available until Tuesday, September 4, 2012.

The book is shrouded in controversy because it was not cleared with the Obama Administration who oversaw the killing of Bin Laden. The worry is that this book might contain secrets that could compromise other missions or the Seals themselves.

From CBS News

The former SEAL Team 6 member, who uses the pseudonym Mark Owen, will appear in his first interview on 60 Minutes, Sunday Sept. 9 at 7:00 p.m. ET/PT.

As a security measure, CBS News will not identify "Owen" in any reports about his account of the raid; his face and voice were disguised for his 60 Minutes interview. His book about the raid, "No Easy Day," will be available next week.

. . . Owen's book was to be released on the anniversary of 9/11, but the release has been moved up to next week. There's been criticism that the book is timed to influence the election.

Mark Owen: My worry from the beginning is, you know, it's a political season. This book is not political whatsoever. It doesn't bad mouth either party, and we specifically chose September 11th to keep it out of the politics. You know, if these-- crazies on either side of the aisle want to make it political, shame on them. This is a book about September 11th, and it needs to rest on September 11th. Not be brought into the political arena, because this-- this has nothing to do with politics.

When word of the book was announced last week, a few news organizations discovered Mark Owen's real name and published it. As a result, he's a marked man -- in hiding -- probably for the rest of his life. We will not reveal his true name.

Three Entertaining Autobiographies

Carole King is A Natural Woman


From Kirkus Reviews

Bitten by the music bug at an early age and subsequently converted to rock ’n’ roll in the ’50s, she began writing her own songs, landing a record deal at the age of 15. She would experience far greater success, however, when she and co-songwriter Gerry Goffin turned out hit after hit for such artists as Aretha Franklin, the Shirelles and the Monkees. . . . when her marriage deteriorated, she set off for Los Angeles to seek her own voice. That voice comes through strongly on every page of this memoir, an engaging assortment of recollections comprising a journey that started in her working-class Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, took her to Manhattan and Laurel Canyon and saw her escape what Joni Mitchell called "the star maker machinery" to settle in rural Idaho. In one of the book's best sections, King explains her decision to retreat from fame in the mid ’70s, chronicling the joys and sorrows of going “back to the land.”

Anchorman Dan Rants in Rather Outspoken



From the Daily Beast

Nearly eight years after his fabled career at CBS News imploded like a death star over the notorious George W. Bush/Texas Air National Guard segment on 60 Minutes Wednesday, he can’t stop combing the debris for shards of vindication.
“I have a story to tell from my point of view,” he says about his new book, Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News, which roasts network management for its “spineless” behavior during the Bush episode; takes potshots at his successor in the CBS Evening News anchor chair, Katie Couric, as a purveyor of “News Lite”; and settles scores with former colleagues who, as he writes, “after pretending to be friends for all those years, stealthily snuck around giving anonymous newspaper quotes and otherwise scheming to put the dirk in deep when I was down and hurting.”
Rather explains: “I wanted to tell it as honestly and as candidly as I could with—as Lyndon Johnson used to say—the bark off.”

Sunday, Monday, Happy Days in Hollywoodwith Garry Marshall


From NPR

He calls his mother the primary influence behind his show business career and those of his sisters: Ronny, who's worked primarily behind the camera, and Penny, who is now a director but also starred in one of his most popular sitcoms, Laverne And Shirley.
. . . Happy Days suddenly acquired a new star in Henry Winkler's Arthur Fonzarelli. Marshall says the character grew with Winkler's development of his peculiarities. Some of those "aaaay" and "whoa" sounds that made Fonzie so famous, it turns out, were additions from the actor. "And then slowly, he became Richie's best friend, and the character developed, and it went on."
His daughters loved Happy Days, he explains, but his young son wasn't interested. Why? "There are no space people," Marshall remembers his son complaining. The show being set on ... well, Earth, and in the '50s, it wasn't immediately obvious how to make it happen. So Mork's appearance was a dream sequence at first. And then came the show Mork And Mindy, which made Mork — played by a very young Robin Williams — real. "The dream was so funny, it suddenly wasn't a dream anymore," Marshall says.  Chalk another one up for something Garry Marshall believes is often a smart place to start in entertainment: "Please the people in your house."

Dr. Seuss Too Political?

A school in Canada has banned Yertle the Turtle for being "too political." What is the world coming to? Dr. Seuss is probably rolling over in his grave!
From Huffington Post:

According to the Globe and Mail, an elementary school teacher in Prince Rupert was told she could not display the quote, "I know up on top you are seeing great sights, but down here on the bottom, we too should have rights” from the book in her classroom.
Dave Stigant, acting director of instruction for the Prince Rupert School District, stated the decision was based on the November, 2011 ban by an arbitrator on political messages in schools in the province, though the ongoing labour dispute between the teacher's union and the province played a role as well.

Whenever I read a story like this, I shake my head. Schools don't just exist to turn people into conformists, but to teach children to think about ideas. The flag that hangs in every classroom is just as political as Yertle the Turtle. Values such as equality are simple human rights and should be taught that way, and silencing a teacher sends a message to children that is just plain wrong. I think some of these school administrators need to read the book again. Are they going to ban Horton Hears a Who next? "A person's a person no matter how small."

However, there's no doubt that Theodore Geisel, alias Dr. Seuss, created stories as cautionary tales about political realities of the 20th century. Back in 2000 an exhibit of Dr. Seuss's World War II cartoons toured parts of the country. The Springfield Massachusetts Library Association website has a great essay called "The Political Dr. Seuss, which quotes Richard H. Minear, an expert on the worldly and satirical side of Seuss:

Minear said that there is "a disconnect between what we usually think of as Dr. Seuss and the content of the cartoons." However, many Dr. Seuss's whimsical children's books also contain serious themes. Yertle the Turtle, for example, is a cautionary tale against dictators. The Lorax contains a strong environmental message. The Sneetches is a plea for racial tolerance. Horton Hears a Who is a parable about the American Occupation of Japan. And The Butter Battle Book pillories the Cold War and nuclear deterrence. Even the Cat in the Hat's famous red-and-white-striped hat has a political predecessor in the top hat Uncle Sam wears in Dr. Seuss's wartime cartoons.

Some of these characters, such as a Sneetch-type creature and a prototype of Yertle the Turtle, made their first appearance not in Dr. Seuss's children's books, but in the some 400 political cartoons he drew for PM, a left-wing daily newspaper published in New York from 1940 to 1948. Dr. Seuss worked as an editorial cartoonist for the paper from 1941 to 1943, drawing cartoons that lambasted isolationism, racism, anti-Semitism, Hitler, Mussolini, the Japanese, and the conservative forces in American politics.

Take a look at this early version of Yertle the Turtle forming a "V" for victory during WWII which was included in Minear's book:


From Wikipedia