Here are some PBC books we think capture something of the spirit of July 4. Click on the titles to find out more, or browse hundreds of other titles here.
American Aurora, by Richard N. Rosenfeld
An original, even subversive, work of revisionist history that supplies the daily details of the rancorous and often personal debate over the future of a new nation largely missing from sanitized textbooks and civics-class accounts of the period.
Founding Faith, by Steven Waldman
Provocatively argues that neither side in the culture war has accurately depicted the true origins of the First Amendment. He sets the record straight, revealing the real history of religious freedom to be dramatic, unexpected, paradoxical, and inspiring.
The End of America, by Naomi Wolf
Cuts across political parties and ideologies and speaks directly to those among us -- true patriots -- who are concerned about the deliberate rollback of freedom in America.
The Rights of Man and Common Sense, by Thomas Paine
Paine's classic arguments in defense of the individual's right to assert his or her freedom in the face of tyranny.
Moyers on Democracy, by Bill Moyers
A crucial message about America’s need to reconnect with our constitutional ideals and rich history of reform as we prepare for the 2008 presidential race.
A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn
The classic work of populist history, updated for a new generation.
--Julian Brookes
Our main selection this month is Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists, by Susan Neiman. It's a big, multifaceted book written with style and verve and out of a conviction that progressives can and must reclaim the language of morality in a way that neither depends upon religion nor disowns it.
Neiman, a philosopher with a storyteller's gift, draws deeply on the classics (especially Homer and the Bible) to illustrate her arguments, and also on the lives and work of real people -- "Enlightenment heroes," she calls them -- who exemplify the kind of the moral reasoning she extols and explains in the book. We've just posted an adapted excerpt of the chapter on the Enlightenment heroes. Read it here, and check back throughout the month for more features about Moral Clarity, including a roundtable discussion with Susan Neiman.
--Julian Brookes
Three reviews in today's New York Times Book Review tackle books about conservatism:
Norman Ornstein reviews Grand New Party, by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salan, whose core thesis is that "the working class in America continues…to ping-pong between the parties and is there for the taking by any group that can seriously and directly address its concerns." They say Democrats have badly underestimated the importance of social issues, which far from being a smoke screen thrown up by conservative demagogues, they argue, "are a major part of working-class insecurity." Ornstein finds the authors' policy proposals “a mix of compassionate conservatism and ersatz centrist neoliberalism” that will resonate more with progressive pragmatists…than with conservative Republican leaders.”Still,
the core Republican and conservative establishment should read this book. Its members may hate activist government, or at least bow politically to the hatred, but Douthat and Salam make a strong case that a conservatism of reflexive tax cuts and sink-or-swim economics will never resonate with the huge core of voters who are spread thin and falling behind.
Jack Shafer allows that Arianna Huffington’s Right is Wrong “breaks original — if rocky — ground” with her argument that “a lunatic fringe seized Ronald Reagan’s party around the beginning of the new millennium and from this power base has commandeered the nation.” He says Huffington “deserves credit for cataloging the ways in which Bush has peddled fear to silence critics and build political support,” but that her argument would have made more sense a few years ago, before Bush-Rove conservatism imploded and Democrats regained the political momentum.
Former Bush speechwriter David Frum takes up White Protestant Nation by Allan J. Lichtman with a pair of tongs and wrinkled nose and finds it more a polemic than a serious work of history. Lichtman argues that “American conservatism should be seen as an ideology devoted above all to advancing “an antipluralistic ideal of America as a unified, white Protestant nation,” which, Frum points out, ignores the central contributions of Catholics (Buckley, Noonan, et al.) and more generally mistakes a part (though a significant one) for the whole of the movement.This may or may not be a fair criticism of the book (I don’t know, not having read it), but grossly and plainly unfair is this comment:
You do not need to be a partisan of a political movement to write its history. But you do need enough imaginative sympathy to comprehend how it won adherents and supporters. Yet increasingly it seems that the history of conservatism is attracting liberals who lack that sympathy — for whom the whole thing was a giant con, a tissue of rationalizations for ugly bigotries. These liberal chroniclers of conservatism refuse to examine their own prejudices. They do not see that their wholesale dismissal of the principles of others amounts to little more than self-flattery. We might call this the Bourbon school of liberalism: after many years in exile, it has still learned nothing.
Unfair because it overlooks the contribution of Rick Perlstein (surely among those whom Frum has in mind), whose Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus is regarded by conservatives and liberals alike as the definitive account of the origins of movement conservatism. (George Will has called it “subtle and conscientious,” and the late William F. Buckley was an admirer.) More controversial on the right is his excellent Nixonland, but it’s a serious (even monumental) work of history, as is The Age of Reagan by Sean Wilentz, which though critical of Reagan pays him the compliment of taking him seriously. Can you think of anything comparably sympathetic written by a conservative historian?
(Finally, a serious quibble: George Will reviews Nixonland in the Times, David Frum White Protestant Nation; by that (questionable) logic, Howard Zinn (or at least Paul Krugman, say) should be reviewing Grand New Party, not the estimable but—as far as I know— moderate Ornstein.)
Just added, video interviews with Larry Diamond and Greg Anrig. Diamond is the author of The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (link). It's a passionate and deeply researched case for democracy promotion -- as a moral end in itself and as a matter of national security. In Diamond's analysis, America has a key role in spreading "freedom," but not by force and not alone.
Greg Anrig is the author of The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right Wing Ideas Keep Failing (link) (and of this entertaining "Putdown" of Grover Norquist's latest anti-government pamphlet). Here he explains how the conservative movement has successfully pushed its agenda despite the patent failure of many of its policy ideas.
Book critic Maureen Corrigan and novelist Stewart O'Nan, author of Last Night at the Lobster, continue their discussion. In the posts added today they talk about the challenge of getting readers to take seriously everyday workplaces and the people who work there, and the tendency of much fiction play up the quirky side of work.
O'Nan writes:
At its best, fiction lets the reader know how it feels to be someone else. I'd like to think readers still have empathy for regular folks trying their best in a tough situation, even if those folks are generally invisible or taken for granted, like Manny. Because there are millions and millions of people out there in the same situation. We can't all be quirky and glamorous.
Corrigan responds that if you're going to depict the workplace in a way that's true to its (largely repetitive, unremarkable) texture, you better be a master of character and plot, as O'Nan certainly is.
Read it here.
We hope you'll start exploring right away -- or, better yet, join the club and then explore!
(If you're wondering how this all works, see our How PBC Works page.)
Browse our books, selected with the help of an all-star cast of progressive thinkers, writers, activists, leaders. (For more on them, see here.)
Check out our community, where you can create your own blog, form a reading group, start building a network of friends, create and find events (like author readings and book discussions) in your neighborhood or anywhere else.
Create a MyPBC profile page where you can show off your bookshelf, manage your groups, blog, events and network, and keep track of your account.
Take a look at our Features -- interviews, reviews, discussions, articles, videos, and more, all connected to the books. This page will be regularly updated with new author chats, debates, roundtables, interviews, essays.
That's it for the logistics. If you want to know why we're here, why we think books -- and book clubs -- are crucially important politically, even in the digital age, see here. (And see our list of partner organizations; they feel similarly.)
But most of all, please explore the site and let us know what you think (we can take it) -- about the books, the tools, the content, the look, the feel, you name it. And give us your suggestions for how we can do better or different. You, our soon-to-be members, are Progressive Book Club, so we want to hear from you, early and often.
That's all for now. Have fun!
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