Books read, to read, and/or write about

Just found this older list that I planned to do short takes on, but now have returned the books and don’t recall much so have to recheck out, but here is the list for your consideration. Some duplicates with other posts may occur if I did manage to do some write ups but I am too lazy too check each one.

For some reason, the links to a lot of the books are gone. I may have missed one or two, but I KNOW I DID NOT MISS all the ones now missing GoodReads links, darn it. So I’m sorry, but I am not going to spend another hour or more redoing them when I don’t know why they disappeared in the first place.

book jacket with cowboy boot like flag colors
Mary Beth Rogers

Turning Texas Blue: What it will take to Break the GOP Grip on America’s Reddest State by Mary Beth Rogers

 

 

 

 

book jacketIllustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court by Tony Mauro (2000)

 

 

 

 

book jacket portrait of Victoria WoodhullThe woman who ran for president: the many lives of Victoria Woodhull Lois Beachy UnderhillGloria Steinem (Translator)(1995)

 

 

 

book jacket with a little rounded flag symbolThat’s not what we meant to do: reform and its unintended consequences in twentieth-century America by Steven M. Gillon (2000)

 

 

 

book jacket with little drawing of American flag

Blasphemy: how the religious right is hijacking our declaration of independence by Alan Dershowitz (2007)

 

 

 

book jacketBetter, stronger, faster: the myth of American decline — and the rise of a new economy by Daniel Gross (2012)

 

 

book jacket with bar code under illustration of capitol buildingDollarocracy: how the money-and-media election complex is destroying America by John Nichols

 

 

 

book jacket with political donkey and elephant and crossGod’s Politics: why the Right gets it wrong and the Left doesn’t get it by Jim Wallis

 

 

 

book jacket photo with George W. Bush and Dick CheneyTakeover: the return of the imperial presidency and the subversion of American democracy by Charlie Savage (2007)

 

 

 

book jacketThe Supreme Court on unions: why labor law is failing American workers by Julius G. Getman
(checked out via ILL)

 

 

book jacket with cartoon of fat bankerThe Age of Acquiescence: the life and death of American resistance to organized wealth and power by Steve Fraser

 

 

 

book jacket photo of suffragettesThe Concise History of Woman Suffrage: selections from History of woman suffrage, edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Edited by Paul Buhle (2005)

 

 

book cover reading right to vote with the r crossed out and changed to F for fight to vote

The Fight to Vote by Michael Waldman

 

book jacketFICTION The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood

 

 

 

 

book jacket photo Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton

 

The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the rivalry that defined a generation (2008)

 

 

book jacket with golden dust panThe Servant Economy: where America’s elite is sending the  middle class by Geoffrey P. Faux (2012)

 

 

 

book jacketWar is the Force that gives us Meaning by Chris Hedges (2002)

 

 

 

book jacketWhat’s the matter with White People: why we long for a golden age that never was by Joan Walsh (2012)

 

 

 

book jacketWriting with intent: essays, reviews, personal prose, 1983-2005 by Margaret Atwood (2005)

 

 

 

book jacketA Disability History of the United States by Kim E. Nielsen (2012)

 

 

 

book jacket photo of Ayn RandAyn Rand Nation: The hidden struggle for America’s Soul by Gary Weiss (2012)

 

 

 

book jacket with hand marking a ballotBending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the transformation of American democracy by Gary May (2013)

 

 

 

book jacketGive us the ballot: the modern struggle for voting rights in America by Ari Berman ( 2015)

 

 

 

book jacketGreat Cases in Constitutional Law by Robert P. George (2000)

 

 

 

video jacket PBS seriesOne Woman, one vote by Ruth Pollak (2005)

 

 

 

 

[no image] The ACLU Freedom Files: voting rights by Jeremy Paul Kagan (2005)

[no image] The Democratic Party: Opposing Views by Noah Berlatsky

[no image] The United States Constitution: Questions and Answers by John R. Vile

video jacket capital building covered in dollar billsThe Best Government Money Can Buy? by Francis Megahy (2010)

 

 

 

book jacket red elephant graphic part of blue donkeyThe Party is Over: how Republicans went crazy, Democrats became useless, and the middle class got shafted by Mike Lofgren (2012)

 

 

book jacket image of old fashioned keyFICTION The Winter Siege  [large print] by Ariana Franklin

 

 

 

video jacket photo of Ralph NaderUnreasonable Man [Ralph Nader video] by Henriette Mantel (2006)

 

 

 

book jackets tarot card-like graphicsThe New Prophets of Capital:  A deft and caustic takedown of the new prophets of profit, from Bill Gates to Oprah by Nicole Ashcroft (2015) [checked out via ILL]

 

 

book jacketBecause of sex: one law, ten cases, and fifty years that Changed American Women’s Lives at Work by Gillian Thomas (lawyer)

 

 

 

book jacket graphic ear of cornBetting on famine: why the world still goes hungry by Jean Ziegler

 

 

 

 

book jacket photo of protestors hemmed in by armed policeProfit over People: neoliberalism and global order by Noam Chomsky (1999)

 

 

 

book jacketRat F**ked: the true story behind the secret plan to steal America’s democracy by David Daley

 

 

 

[no image] The End of Poverty? Think Again by Beth Portello (2010) – heartbreaking

book jacket of protestorsThe People’s Pension: the struggle to defend Social Security since Reagan by Eric Laursen (2012)

 

 

 

book jacketEmpire of Capital by Ellen Meiksins Wood  (2003)[checked out via ILL]

 

 

 

book jacket photo of Milton FriedmanCapitalism and freedom by Milton Friedman (2002) [author I am happy to say died in 2006; he created the false doctrine of neoliberalism]

 

 

 

book jacketIll Fares the Land by Tony Judt (2010)

 

 

 

 

book jacketNation on the Take: how big money corrupts our democracy and what we can do about it by Wendell Potter (2016)

 

 

 

book jacket graphic of Ben Franklin from the $50 bill in bandit maskThe Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republican and Clinton Democrats enriched Wall Street while mugging Main Street by Robert Scheer (2010)

 

 

book jacketThe New Road to Serfdom: a letter of warning to America [listened to book on cd] by Daniel Hannan (2011)

 

 

 

book jacketThe Road to Serfdom: text and documents by Friedrich A. von Hayek (2007)

 

 

 

book jacket with graphic of necktie shaped dollar billWhy we can’t afford the rich by R. Andrew Sayer

 

 

 

 

book jacketThe Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: dispatches from the front lines by Michael E. Mann (2012)

 

 

 

book jacketBill of Wrongs: The Executive branch’s assault on America’s fundamental rights [cd] by Molly Ivins (2007)

 

 

book jacket with stains glass graphic around capitol buildingC Street: the fundamentalist threat to American democracy by Jeff Sharlet (2010)

 

 

 

book jacket photo of the authorDemocracy Maters: Winning the Fight against Imperialism [cd] by Cornel West (2004)

 

 

 

book jacketF*U*B*A*R: America’s right wing nightmare [cd] by Sam Seder (2006) for the innocents out there, FUBAR stands for Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition, and variation of SNAFU, Situation Normal, All Fucked Up

 

 

book jacketUnthinking: the surprising forces behind what we buy [cd] by Harry Beckwith (2011)

 

 

 

book jacket with partial image of the statue of LibertyAll the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the rise of an independent nation by Rebecca Traister (2016)

 

 

book jacketFICTION Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan (2002)

 

 

 

 

book jacketPeople Get Ready: the fight against a jobless economy and a citizenless democracy by Robert Waterman McChesney

 

 

book jacketFICTION The Peripheral by William Gibson

 

 

 

 

book jacket by Thom Hartmann

 

 

 

 

book jacketTheft of a Nation [checked out via ILL]

 

 

 

 

book jacket with portrait of Dred ScottDred Scott and the problem of Constitutional Evil [checked out via ILL]

 

 

 

 

Showdown by Will Haygood

showdown

Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Nomination that Changed America by Will Haygood (2015)

Haygood is the author of The Butler (an excellent movie too) and this book on Thurgood Marshall is as compelling as a stimulating novel but the people are real, and even more so because they span generations in their role in our government for good or mostly I would say, ill. (Strom Thurmond, may he rest in hell, who dares to question Marshall on the topic of  “miscegenation” while he himself had started an affair with a 16 year old black girl in his household service. [can you say coercion? or statutory rape perhaps?) The bastard lived to be 100 and spent most of that time trying to stop progress, especially racial equality. (This was about 7 years after the Loving decision that ruled mixed race marriage legal.)

Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America, is a MUST READ book. Not only is it a good read, it exposes with objectivity that I would not be able to manage (anger, horror, etc. would be my view) what America was like at the time of his nomination under the Presidency of L.B. Johnson (sixties in other words). The odious Senator Sam Ervin, and other characters like Strom, are brought to life, exposing their bigotry, corporatism even then, and sheer meanness in their grilling of Marshall with arcane and irrelevant questions, topped by entrapment style “Constitution is a living document” or the words exactly and only as men from a world long ago meant them. In other words, if Marshall opted for strict constitutionalism, by which I do not think the senators even included the Bill of Rights (except obviously for the Second Amendment) as completely legitimate law, the senator would be asking Marshall to declare slavery legal again.

I would include more detail here, but I had to return the book to the library. I may check it out again after I knock off some of the other 50 or so I have piled up, and will update this page when I do get it back.

 

The Life of the Parties by A. James Reichley

The Life of the Parties: A History of American Political Parties (2000, 1992)

the life of the partiesThis link is to the 2000 edition, the one I am reading is 1992 but not as dated as one might think given that it begins at the beginning of America’s founding and all the information up to then and is extremely detailed and analyzed and described very well.

This book answers the many questions I have had over the years of how we ended up with an essentially two-party system that is run like two warring corporations for a monopoly of the United States government as the prize.

I knew that the Founding Fathers had not begun nor wanted political parties, but apparently not “until they began running parties themselves.” Thomas Jefferson was pro-party. Alexander Hamilton “associated parties with ‘ambition, avarice, personal animosity.'” I’m going to side with Hamilton on this point. James Madison “wrote in Federalist Number Ten of ‘the mischiefs of faction. John Adams expressed ‘dread’ toward ‘division of the republic into to great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other.'” Now that was prescient!

Continue reading The Life of the Parties by A. James Reichley