A bunch of the titles on the New York Times's just-released list of the 100 Notable Books of 2008 are available at Progressive Book Club. See them below (click on the cover images find out more).

Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause

By Tom Gjelten

"[A] vivid portrait of the anti-Castro clan behind the liquor empire."

Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World

By Samantha Power

"Vieira de Mello, who was killed in Iraq in 2003, embodied both the idealism and the limitations of the United Nations, which he served long and loyally."

The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals 

By Jane Mayer

A New Yorker writer recounts the emergence of the widespread use of torture as a central tool in the fight against terrorism.

The Forever War

By Dexter Filkins

"Filkins, a New York Times reporter who was embedded with American troops during the attack on Falluja, has written an account of the Iraq war in the tradition of Michael Herr’s Dispatches.

The House at Sugar Beach

By Helene Cooper

"A New York Times reporter who fled a warring Liberia as a child, returned to confront the ghosts of her past — and to look for a lost sister."

Nixonland

By Rick Perlstein

"Perlstein’s compulsively readable study holds that Nixon’s divisive and enduring legacy is the 'notion that there are two kinds of Americans.'"

The Race Card

By Richard Thompson Ford

"Ford vivisects every sacred cow in “post-racist” America."

The Trillion Dollar Meltdown

By Charles R. Morris

"How we got into the mess we’re in, explained briefly and brilliantly."

Netherland

By Joseph O'Neill

"the wittiest, angriest, most exacting and most desolate work of fiction yet about post-9/11 New York and London, the game of cricket provides solace to a man whose family disintegrates after the attacks."

The turn of a new month means a batch of great new books from Progressive Book Club. Buy any three of them for $1 each (or any three of our large selection of the very best progressive books) when you join PBC!

To learn more about any of the books below, click on the cover image.

State by State A Panoramic Portrait of America

by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey

PBC Pick: Fifty of America's finest novelists, journalists, and essayists write about our fifty states in a book the New York Times Book Review calls “a funny, moving, rousing collection, greater than the sum of its excellent parts, a convention of literary superdelegates, each one boisterously nominating his or her piece of the Republic.”

Obama's Challenge America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency

By Robert Kuttner

The co-founder of The American Prospect magazine argues that Obama could join the ranks of a small handful of previous presidents who have been truly transformative, succeeding in fundamentally changing our economy, society, and democracy for the better. Air America's Thom Hartmann says, "[Obama's Challenge will] probably more powerfully transform your understanding of American politics, progressive economics, and the role of leadership in saving a nation than any other book currently in print."

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

By Junot Díaz

The Pulitzer Prize–winning novel from one of the most original writers working today. Michiko Kakutani, New York Times called it “funny, street-smart and keenly observed. An extraordinarily vibrant book that's fueled by adrenaline-powered prose. . . . A book that decisively establishes [Díaz] as one of contemporary fiction's most distinctive and irresistible new voices.”

The Lazarus Project

By Aleksandar Hemon

A riveting whodunit—based on a true story—by a man who "can’t write a boring sentence." The Los Angeles Times called the book “a measured, clear spotlight of injustice, made all the more eloquent by the prickly humor of the author.”

The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008

By Paul Krugman

The Nobel Prize–winning economist shows how the 2008 financial crisis parallels the events that caused the Great Depression—and explains what it will take to avoid catastrophe. Says J. Bradford DeLong, "This is a book that anyone interested in international economic policy and the possible destinies of the world economy needs to read."

We're a bit late to this, but check out The Guardian's recent Tech Weekly podcast on how technology helped win the election for Obama. The Guardian's blog editor Kevin Anderson speaks to National Public Radio's social media guru Andy Carvin, Todd Ziegler – vice president of electronic consultancy at The Bivings Group – and Garrett Graff, editor at large of the Washingtonian Magazine, about the hi-tech weaponry deployed in this year's campaigns.

Garrett Graff, by the way, is also the author of The First Campaign: Globalization, the Web and the Race for the White House, which argued, among other things, that the winning presidential candidate would be the one who best harnessed the potential of new technologies. Guess he was right about that.

Lest we get carried away, though, here's a claim/finding from the Campaign Finance Institute that runs counter to the conventional wisdom: Obama received about the same percentage from small donors in 2008 as Bush in 2004. Obama also raised 80 percent more from large donors than small. (TechPresident has more.)

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, Thomas Jefferson once said. Live long enough and you can't help but agree with the statement. The problem is, agreeing with it and fully understanding its implications are separate. Being eternally vigilant sounds like a lot work without a day off. Exactly how vigilant are we talking here?

I'm afraid Jefferson's wise observation means we have to occasionally attend boring political meetings or carry a sign in the street. It means we have to read the news, or worse watch it, or make tedious calls from a campaign office. It means no matter how much fun we're having, sometimes we have to stop, and volunteer for a second job that doesn't pay, so we can take part in a movement to fight some wankers who are trying to outlaw gay marriage, or videogames, or books, or whatever.

Some might think that within that "whatever" I include guns. I suppose it could, but I find it a never-ending source of irony that the people most vocally terrified their freedoms are going to be taken are the ones who run out and stock up on guns, at the same time voting for Republicans who rob them blind and lock them in the cage of poverty. Analogies to describe the situation are equally surreal. It's like pointing all your weapons at the front door, while leaving your money stash outside on the back porch with the door wide open. Gun Nuts have admirable drive but a poor sense of direction.

Pay attention, Gun Nuts! What is the primary obstacle when you seek to go from point A to point B? What most often blocks your freedom to pursue life, liberty and happiness? Is it someone you need to shoot? No. It's money. So should you shoot money? Cease fire, soldier! You can't blast your way out of the poor house, and as for bullets, you can sweat 'em but you can't eat 'em.

But enough of all this sky-high abstract talk. Let's get specific. Let's talk about eternal vigilance as it refers to Prop 8 which just passed in California, attempting to deny gays the right to marry.

If all of those who worked hard for the No on Prop 8 (pro-gay) movement would forgive a marginally educated opinion (since there is such a shortage of those!) let me say that the success of Prop 8 seems to be in part due to a lack of vigilance on all of us freedom lovers.

It's easy to say that from 3,000 miles away (as I live on the opposite North American coast) but I don't count myself blameless. Here's the score: 1.) Despite the zillions of liberal organizations that send me email asking for money every day, I barely heard of Prop 8 until the election was right on top of us. 2.) When I finally did hear of Prop 8, I heard that the Mormon church from Utah was donating a lot to the anti-gay effort. As a supporter of the other side from out of state, I was never contacted to lend financial support. 3.) I set aside the issue in favor of working for Obama because I found it hard to believe an anti-gay measure would pass in the state that holds two gay capitals: Hollywood and San Francisco.

That makes me part of the problem. Of course maybe it was simply a devious strategy by anti-gay wankers, in that they timed Prop 8 at the same time they knew all the liberal energy would be working pro-Obama.

Psychotic extremists have an advantage over us cool people who want to live and let live. Extremists don't care if their Friday night is spent sealing envelopes, or preparing bombs, or something equally uncool. Extremists are eternally vigilant... for opportunities to be assholes. We need to be just as relentless in stopping them, even if that means doing the boring stuff mentioned earlier.

So, for this past election, as great as we all did, we have to do better. There's still work to do to achieve equality for our fellow human. Let's get to it. Obama's elected, because that campaign and its supporters took nothing for granted.

Despite my critique, let's not waste too much time on blame. Maybe Prop 8 just got beat in a close race. I just want to make sure we remember that if we take something for granted, we'll soon have nothing left to take for granted. Not as poetic as Jefferson's quote, but just as true.

===
Larry Nocella is the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? available on Amazon. For more info, visit his website at http://www.larrynocella.com/.

I just finished reading the massive graphic novel From Hell. It was also made into a movie starring Johnny Depp. It's based on a theory of who Jack the Ripper was and why he killed. We Americans have our JFK theories, our British pals have their JTR theories.

The story is good, but it's a huge downer. It's not the sort of thing one should be reading in these dark months, but for those who could use an extra helping of seasonal depression, From Hell is just the ticket.

The story bummed me out because the victims were completely helpless. They were poor nineteenth-century prostitutes, essentially street people, scratching out a living day to day by letting any guy give them some coins for a few minutes against a wall. Then on top of it all they were being hunted by a psychotic killer. They simply had nowhere to run, and little to live for. Death and mutilation closed in, inevitable as the sunset.

As if autumn's dark and From Hell together weren't enough to knock me into a funk, layoffs hit the day job. Fortunately, I was lucky and spared the ordeal of having to look for employment. Luck was all it came down to. Those that were released across all levels of the organization were powerless to resist and I was powerless to help them.

It's the powerlessness that's upsetting. Tie that in with the brutal impact of the event, make it random and you've got everything that composes terror.

To ponder the subject of layoffs and poverty sends me on a rant-path that always ends with this question: Why are we working, anyway? Why are we relying on the random forces of the market (meaning, the will of the rich)? There is enough wealth and food for everyone to have plenty. If we could just all distribute the work evenly, we could probably work one day a week and spend the remaining six days doing little more than drinking and eating and goofing off. Who's the ass that came up with the concept of work? Why couldn't Jack the Ripper take out that fool?

Now I'm not saying that your modern cube jockey is as unfortunate as your average nineteenth-century prostitute from the slums of London...

Or am I?

I don't think I am. Despite similarities, they're not identical. I'd argue now, people are better off. There is money to be collected from unemployment. If you want to, you could survive using a credit card for a while, even though you'd go into debt for a long time.

According to the theory, the Jack the Ripper killings were not random, there was an agenda behind them (but no spoilers here!) Maybe that's inaccurate. Maybe they were random. The human mind just can't tolerate a lack of reason. We see patterns even when we don't want to. Images emerge from clouds. Shapes form in TV static.

Randomness annoys our brains. Death terrifies. Together that's a primal-level scared-shitless cocktail.

Sure, there may be a reason behind something, some kind of pattern, but if we're not aware of it, it might as well be random. If we're powerless to stop it, does a pattern make it anymore comforting? Or does that make it worse, convincing us that the architect behind the forces that control our lives is malevolent just like Jack the Ripper and just like a system that makes layoffs so crushing?

===
Larry Nocella is the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? available on Amazon. For more info, visit his website at http://www.larrynocella.com/.

Barack Obama has nominated former Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota as secretary of health and human services. As this Times report notes, Daschle, if confirmed, would be "the point man on any efforts to overhaul the country’s health care delivery and insurance system."

Daschle would bring plenty of relevant experience to the post, having worked on healthcare for several decades. He also has some definite ideas about how best to fix the United States' dysfunctional healthcare system. In Critical: What We Can Do About the Health Care Crisis, he puts forward a plan for comprehensive reform, one that turns on the idea of a kind of depoliticized Federal Reserve Board for healthcare. The book carries a blurb by none other than Barack Obama, in which the then senator says, "Sen. Daschle brings fresh thinking to this problem, and his Federal Reserve for Health concept holds great promise for...at long last, giving this nation the health care it deserves." Critical is available at Progressive Book Club. Learn more here.

In his 60 Minutes interview on Sunday (see below) Barack Obama mentioned he's reading two books about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. One, about FDR's history-shaping first 100 days, is Jonathan Alter's The Defining Moment: F.D.R’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope. The other: Jean Edward Smith's brilliant FDR, available at Progressive Book Club.

(To learn more, click on the cover -- or here.)

Watch CBS Videos Online

(Via The Page.) The AP today has a short profile of Obama transition co-chief (and Progressive Book Club editorial board member) John Podesta. A snippet:

Podesta has thrived on pressure many others wouldn't stand, handling the scandals of the Clinton White House. But since leaving government, he has been writing and speaking on the same issues that Obama will face when he takes office: the economy, global warming, health care, education, the Iraq war. ...

"He doesn't need a favor," said Podesta's brother Tony, one of the top lobbyists in Washington. "Obama picked him because he'll give it to you straight. He knows a lot about policy and politics, and knows all the people you might pick to run the government." 

Podesta's policy views--elaborated, along with his larger vision of a progressivism equal to the challenges of the times in his recent book, The Power of Progress--don't square at all points with Obama's, as the piece notes. But, as Podesta himself tells AP, "Before joining the transition, I ran a think tank [the Center for American Progress] and have obviously put forward a number of ideas for tackling our nation's most critical problems. But I am here to help implement President-elect Obama's agenda, not my own." 

A lyrical, funny, and touching account of a series of American journeys into small-town America, the author traces the little-known Dunbar-Hunter Expedition of 1804 through the southern half of the Louisiana Purchase, searching out the head of the Ouachita River in Arkansas. The book recounts six adventures on what Heat-Moon calls "journeys to places a goodly portion of the American populace would call 'nowhere.' "

In the course of his travels the author:

—Discovers a "road to nowhere" built by a Florida county so local drug smugglers would have a landing strip

—Comes up with what he believes is the real story behind the murder of his great-grandfather

—Meets a man who tried to fund a school for disadvantaged children by providing lonely widows with special massages

—Rides a bicycle along an abandoned railroad track

—Hangs out with an artist who's turned his cabin into a walk-in kaleidoscope

From the Washington Post, a brief review of Katha Pollitt's Learning to Drive -- yes, available at Progressive Book Club.

"Observation is my weakness," writes Katha Pollitt in the title essay of her collection Learning to Drive. It is also her strength. In these 11 essays, several of them published previously in the New Yorker, Pollitt turns her keen eye, sharp wit and elegant prose style to a subject she knows well: herself. Though the essays cover a wide range of subjects -- driving school, Webstalking, motherhood -- they are fundamentally about Pollitt and her milieu, the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

That isn't a criticism. It is a delight to accompany Pollitt to her Marxist study group ("The endless drone of male voices made the sessions simultaneously intense and soporific, like the reading itself, which I had usually not finished and sometimes barely begun," she writes); on a driving lesson, as she zips "up West End Avenue, enjoying the fresh green of the old plane trees and the early-morning quiet"; and to Zabar's as she searches for kitchen items to replace the ones her ex-boyfriend took ("What kind of person walks out the door after seven years with a wooden spoon, a spatula, a whisk?" she asks). Pollitt, a columnist for the Nation, may write as the denizen of a small world, but her wry humor is universal: "Maybe what we think of as our self is just nature's way of making sure our cats have someone to open their cans."

See  also:

Interview with Katha Pollitt (about Learning to Drive) (Guardian)

Katha Pollitt discusses Learning to Drive with Terry Gross on Fresh Air (link)

The New York Times's Caucus blog reports that Jules Witcover has signed a deal to write a biogrpahy of Joe Biden, which means it's likely to be a good book, neither hagiographic or unfairly harsh. I would note that Biden's own autobiography, Promises to Keep (available at Progressive Book Club), is, for a political autobiography, very readable. Witcover is, as the Times notes, the author of a dozen books about American politics and was "one of the original “Boys on the Bus” — a member of the cabal of journalists featured in Timothy Crouse’s timeless chronicle of the 1972 presidential campaign and the reporters who covered it." (I would note, too, that Crouse's timeless chronicle is also available at Progressive Book Club.) “Don’t be shocked if I call the book ‘Joe Biden,’” the Times quotes the publisher as saying. I'd suggest, with a nod to Saturday Night Live, an alternative: "Let Me Repeat."

John Podesta, head of the Center for American Progress and former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, is much in the news these days as head of Barack Obama's transition team--making this an opportune moment to recommend Podesta's recent book, The Power of Progress: How America's Progressives Can (Once Again) Save Our Economy, Our Climate, And Our Country.

Here's our blurb (for more info click here):

America today faces unprecedented challenges—to our economic well-being, our environment, and our security—and the American people are looking for real answers; the next president must mobilize our government and our citizens in ways that no president has done since the New Deal. Tapping the spirit of great progressive leaders from Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt to Martin Luther King Jr., The Power of Progress provides the road map toward a government responsive to the needs of its citizens, one that is focused on our generation’s greatest challenges: combating global warming, growing our economy and expanding the middle class, and meeting America’s twenty-first-century security challenges.

Podesta, who heads one of the nation’s most innovative and successful progressive think tanks, the Center for American Progress, compares our current moment to the Gilded Age at the turn of the twentieth century. Then, the American Dream was beginning to dim in a nation riven by growing inequalities in wealth and run by a powerful network of privileged industrialists and their political allies. But that era also gave birth to a renaissance in American political thought that forever changed our nation. At a time when conservative ideology served as an excuse for the accumulation of wealth and privilege, the original Progressive movement created a new political order built on America’s basic principles—justice and equality for all, economic opportunity, and a commitment to the Common Good.

In The Power of Progress, Podesta offers a very personal account of his own political development. He writes: “It’s not too hard to figure out why I am a progressive—I was born to it. … The progressive values that defined our national life during most of the 20th century allowed my family— transplanted to America as poor Italian and Greek immigrants—to flourish and to prosper.”  

He goes on to draw on the lessons of twentieth-century history to show that progressives:

—stand with people, not privilege
—believe in the Common Good, and a government that offers a hand up
—hold that all people are equal in the eyes of God and under the law
—stand for universal human rights and cooperative global security

Podesta explains how the lives of all Americans have been profoundly improved by the achievements of progressive reformers, from the eight-hour workday and voting rights to our victory in the Cold War and the economic gains middle-class Americans enjoyed in the Clinton years. And he argues clearly and persuasively that today’s challenges demand a second great Progressive era, one that can deliver to America:

—an economy in which workers at every income level share in our riches
—a climate policy that stops global warming and ends our addiction to fossil fuels
—American leadership in the global fight against terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and poverty

One of the country’s most gifted and wide-ranging policy experts and a deeply versed student of American history, Podesta lays out a clear progressive framework, both practical and inspiring, for returning to “an America that truly is prosperous, safe, and free for everyone; where even poorest among us see their families rise into the middle class and beyond.” 

And check out Progressive Book Club's muiti-part interview with Podesta, conducted by columnist E.J. Dionne. Part One is below. The rest you'll find here.

Nicholas Kristoff sees Barack Obama's victory as a turn away from the proud know-nothing-ism of the Bush years.

Maybe, just maybe, the result will be a step away from the anti-intellectualism that has long been a strain in American life. Smart and educated leadership is no panacea, but we’ve seen recently that the converse — a White House that scorns expertise and shrugs at nuance — doesn’t get very far either. ... [link]

Indeed not.  But I guess depends, like so much, on how Obama governs, and whether his administration delivers tangible gains to a majority of Americans. If so, then sure, smart might be in for a comeback. 

However, as Kristoff notes, and as Richard Hofstadter noted long years ago in Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, self-satisfied ignorance runs deep in our tradition. (The Bush administration just tapped into that current, and very effectively.)

More recently, Susan Jacoby picked up where Hofstadter left off. In The Age of American Unreason, Jacoby combines historical analysis with contemporary observation to show how far we Americans have strayed from the Enlightenment ideals--secular knowlege, science, reason--that animated the nation's founding.

No question, President Obama makes gives smart a good name as no one else can. However, it's well worth reading Jacoby's book to see how much work needs to be done, and how much needs to change--in our education system, our media, our culture generally--before we can declare victory for reason in the War Against Dumb.

Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air's book critic and a member of Progressive Book Club's editorial board, has a great review of Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America by Jay Parini, our "PBC Pick" for November. She says, "List books like Parini's are invitations to readers both to discover new treasures and to quibble," and, "Especially at this time in our history readers will benefit from dipping into Parini's book and reacquainting themselves with the nation's bedrock myths even as new American stories are about to be written."

Listen here.

Read the introduction to Promised Land, in which Parini gives the rationale for his thirteen choices, here.

Rahm Emanuel, who may or may not accept Barack Obama's offer to be the 44th president's chief of staff, has been called "a cross between a hemorrhoid and a toothache" owing to his famously abrasive, hard-charging style. But in a more ruminative mode, Emanuel was the author, with Bruce Reed, of The Plan: Big Ideas for America.

Emanuel is too centrist for the taste of some progressives, but he's going to wield major influence in the Obama adminstration, whether from the White House or Capitol Hill, so it's worth checking out where he's coming from -- when he's not being "temperamental, vindictive, foul-mouthed and mean" (to quote the man himself). In other words, buy The Plan from Progressive Book Club for $1 when you join!

Excerpt follows:

“Who am I? Why am I here?” Insiders laughed when Ross Perot’s running mate, Admiral James Stockdale, blurted out those words in the 1992 vice presidential debate. Yet in his own bumbling way, the late admiral had stumbled upon two of the most important and overlooked questions in American politics. As a newcomer making his primetime debut, Stockdale can be forgiven for wondering who he was and why he was there. When we look around at the current political landscape, we wonder, what’s Washington’s excuse?

Most Americans think people in Washington have no idea what they’re doing. From the budget deficit to Iraq to Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration did a heck of a job calling government’s competence into question. But as two politicians who have spent most of the past two decades in Washington, we have encountered a more disturbing truth. Although Washington has its share of screw-ups and incompetents, most politicians here are pretty good at what they’re doing. The trouble is, they’re not always sure why they’re doing it.

We’re both dyed-in-the-wool, lifelong Democrats, but we can’t help but notice that in recent years, both parties in Washington lost their way. Americans scratch their heads in wonder that Republicans and Democrats can’t find common purpose. But the challenge is deeper: Each party needs to be clearer in its own purpose.

How could conservatism—which even with its many shortcomings was once a rigorous doctrine—have come to such a small-minded, unsatisfying demise? Republicans who rode to power on conservative ideals turned them into a hollow faith. Conservatism became a strategy for winning elections, not leading a nation—for staying in power, not respecting its limits. Conservative leaders forgot what made them conservatives in the first place: a recognition that rigid ideology has always been the God That Failed, and that no idea is good if it doesn’t work.

Ironically, conservatives made government bigger, not smaller. In Senator John McCain’s phrase, Washington Republicans spent like drunken sailors—a conservative administration leading the biggest domestic spending spree since Lyndon Johnson. No wonder Republicans are confused of late: They say their purpose is to get government off our backs, but they have little interest in or intention of doing so, and years of conclusive proof show that left to their own devices, they’ll do just the opposite.

With Republicans confused and corrupted by being in power, Democrats became so desperate to stop the damage that we often forgot to show where we’d like to lead the country instead. In the 1990s, Democrats began to define a new mission for the country and the party, with impressive results. But in recent years, our anger and frustration with the other side steered us away from our real strength: America hires Democrats to help solve problems, not to listen to us whine about them.

If all this were just about politics—one confused party somehow outmaneuvering the other—it might not matter that so many Republicans and some Democrats lost their way. But what’s at stake is far more important than momentary partisan advantage. Today, America cannot afford to stumble. Our enemies are few, but after September 11, 2001, their intentions are clear. Our rivals also are few, but the rapid economic progress of competitors like India and China suggests that their aim is clear, too.

Lack of purpose comes at a heavy price. When the greatest superpower can’t decide whether it even needs friends, the world is a more dangerous place. When the White House and Congress set out blindly to tax less and spend more, they literally mortgage the country’s future to emerging economic rivals like China, which is all too happy to help us go deep in debt. When politicians in Washington care more about holding onto power than about what to do with it, they invite a culture of corruption that raids taxpayers’ pockets and saps the nation’s strength.

As we vote today in an election of vast historical import and intoxicating promise, let's not forget that our political  system is an unholy mess, especially when it comes to voting. If waiting for hours to vote, arriving at your polling place to find that you've mysteriously vanished from the voter rolls, or leaving with the nagging suspicion that your vote didn't register as cast doesn't convince you of this, reading Michael Waldman's unsparing but ultimately hopeful (not to mention constructive) book on the subject, A Return to Common Sense, surely will. It's available at PBC for $1. Click the cover for more.

Here's our blurb:

A passionate, practical handbook for renewing our democracy.

Imagine an America in which a vast number of people routinely vote; where voting is easy, accessible to all and fair; in which campaigns know they cannot win by dividing slivers of the electorate, but by energizing large numbers behind their plans and ideas.

American democracy, once the envy of the world, urgently needs repair. Our capacity to solve problems languishes, yet the need to do so compounds. Lawmakers should grapple with long-postponed challenges, such as climate change or health care, yet if they do, narrow interests and the forces of stasis will inevitably combine to make the needed action nearly impossible. This combination raises deep questions about whether our government and political system can face hard challenges.

The perilous state of our goverment and democracy drives the creation of this book. A Return to Common Sense looks at the institutions of American self-government. It shows where they are broken, and it proposes ways to fix them—concrete, specific steps we could take that would make the government listen more and work better.

— End Voter Registration as We Know It
— Stop Disenfranchisement and Lower Barriers to Voting — Fix Electronic Voting
— Reform the Campaign Finance System
— End Partisan Gerrymandering
— Abolish the Electoral College
— Restore Checks and Balances

Praise for Michael Waldman and A Return to Common Sense

"Seven eminently practical suggestions that cut to the heart of how politics actually works in this country and that promise reforms which can actually work."
— Sean Wilentz, Princeton University, author of The Rise of American Democracy

"With Thomas Paine's gift for brilliant brevity, Michael Waldman tells us exactly what's wrong with our democracy and exactly how to fix it in the time it takes to watch a movie."
— Jonathan Alter, Newsweek, author of The Defining Moment

"Waldman's book is a call to arms, which everyone who cares about our democratic system should read, absorb, debate and then use as a signpost for change."
-- Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team of Rivals

"Michael Waldman's book is a clarion call for reinvigorating voter participation and other key aspects of our democracy."
-- Representative John Conyers, Jr., member of Congress 

From the New York Times:

After years of unfettered growth in military budgets, Defense Department planners, top commanders and weapons manufacturers now say they are almost certain that the financial meltdown will have a serious impact on future Pentagon spending. ...

The obvious targets for savings would be expensive new arms programs, which have racked up cost overruns of at least $300 billion for the top 75 weapons systems, according to the Government Accountability Office. Congressional budget experts say likely targets for reductions are the Army’s plans for fielding advanced combat systems, the Air Force’s Joint Strike Fighter, the Navy’s new destroyer and the ground-based missile defense system. (LINK)

For more on why this is a good thing, see Robert Scheer's recent book The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America, which lays out in devastating detail the destructive influence of America’s military-industrial complex. From the book jacket:

"In the course of his 40-year career as one of America’s most admired journalists, Robert Scheer’s work has been praised by Gore Vidal, Susan Sontag, and Joan Didion, who deems him “one of the best reporters of our time.” now, Scheer brings a lifetime of wisdom and experience to one of the most overlooked and dangerous issues of our time—the destructive influence of America’s military-industrial complex.

"Scheer examines the quiet expansion of our military presence throughout the world, our insane nuclear strategy, the immorality of corporations profiting in Iraq, and the arrogance of our foreign policy. Although Scheer is an unabashed liberal, his view echoes that of former republican president general Dwight Eisenhower, who, in his farewell speech to the American people, spoke prophetically about the need to guard against the growing influence of the military-industrial complex. in George W. Bush’s America, politicians like Ike and Richard Nixon seem like prudent centrists.

"The Pornography of Power marks the culmination of a major journalist’s efforts to change the debate in America. At a time when many are exploiting fears of terrorist attacks and only a few national leaders are willing to advocate cuts in defense spending, nuclear disarmament, and restrained use of American force, Robert Scheer has written a manifesto for enlightened reform."

And see this Progressive Book Club interview with Scheer where he explains why 9/11 turned out to be a "gift" to the defense industry.

Associated Press

New York Times

The Nation

NPR

Available from Progressive Book Club:

Studs Terkel’s classic Working, first published in 1974, applied the methods of oral history to an exploration of the current moment: what jobs Americans do and how they feel about them. Terkel interviewed people from all walks of life, and the book reflects the variety of American work experiences, as teachers, hospital aides, autoworkers, waitresses, and gravediggers (for a start) talk about work. Some of their reflections, thirty years on, show us just how much the American work culture has changed since then: a switchboard operator tells about how she passes the time on slow night shifts (by listening on calls, among other things!), but it’s unlikely that someone in a similar job today ever has much down time in this era of “management by stress.”

But many of Terkel’s other interviewees share insights and preoccupations that will be instantly familiar—how to make meaning out of work that isn’t respected by the rest of society, feeling both happy and resentful when one’s children rise to a higher economic class, pride in one’s ability, and dealing with authority are just a few of the complicated topics these American workers explore. Working is a testament to Terkel’s renowned gift for eliciting searching, honest and sometimes unsettling answers.

At the time of its publication, social critic Marshall Berman compared Working to a popular folk song of the Popular Front Era, sung by Paul Robeson, which tells of the “everybody who’s nobody and the nobody who’s everybody,” and the comparison is still apt. Working is for anybody with ears to hear America talking.