Comments on: Open Question

By: jclqsha qrtfnu

jclqsha qrtfnu — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 16:58:52 +0000

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By: JSA

JSA — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:07:45 +0000

Some personal favorites

The Real Majority – Scammon and Wattenberg’s perceptive analysis of the 1968 election:

“…many Americans have begun casting their ballots along the lines of issues relatively new to the American scene. For several decades Americans have voted basically along the lines of bread-and-butter economic issues. Now, in addition to the older, still potent economic concerns, Americans are apparently beginning to array themselves politically along the axes of certain social situations as well. … We call it the social issue.”

Other personal favorites are Eat the Rich by PJ O’Rourke, Virtuous Reality by Jon Katz, and Wealth and Poverty by George Gilder.

By: Dugger

Dugger — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:07:20 +0000

buma,

OK. As I say, I don’t question your liking it – because Coulter is a guilty pleasure for me – but she doesn’t influence my basic ploitical philosophy. It was just the ‘most influential” part that had me wondering.

Dugger

By: Dugger

Dugger — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:07:03 +0000

buma,

“RLIABFI, by Al Franken.”

Is that really your most influential book? Were you pro Limbaugh before or something? Seriously. I’m sure you loved it but it is justa very temporary atatck book – like Coulter’s tomes.

Dugger, Not picking a fight – just curious

By: buma

buma — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:07:00 +0000

Franken’s book was a ‘temporary’ attack only in that Limbaugh has continued to provide good reasons for an expanded update — having exposed himself as a drug addict, divorced yet another wife, worked out a deal with prosecutors to avoid a possible prison sentence, and demonstrated his continued endulgence in personal behavior he publicly condemns in others.

Franken confronted the loudmouth fat man who spreads a lot of the bullshit produced by the republican noise machine. It broke the ground before David Brock and others gave insight to the depth and breadth of the bullshit.

By: Dugger

Dugger — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 12:07:41 +0000

Frank,

Re Drury. Every one of ‘em. From Advise and Consent to the various dystopias. They kept me rapt in the sixties.

Dugger

By: Frank_D

Frank_D — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 10:07:45 +0000

Speaking of political novelists, how many of you have read Allen Drury’s novels? Wowzer!

By: davezimny

davezimny — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 04:07:40 +0000

As a political science instructor at a community college, I was fascinated by the excellent list of political books, from every possible point of view, compiled in this thread. I would like to recommend the work of probably the best — and certainly the most unjustly neglected — American political novelist writing today: Ward Just. His thirteen political novels, from 1970’s A SOLDIER OF THE REVOLUTION to AN UNFINISHED SEASON in 2004, comprise a body of work that can easily stand comparison with the best fiction of Orwell, Golding, Graham Greene, Robert Penn Warren or Edwin O’Connor. His novels aren’t just fascinating political stories; they’re true literature. Try him, you’ll like him — at your local library or bookstore today!

By: hard_knox

hard_knox — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 04:07:16 +0000

I would have to agree with Marty. Animal Farm is truth. Otherwise, the most influential political book is Robert Penn Warren’s “All the King’s Men.”

I read it every presidential election year.

By: brashieel

brashieel — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 03:07:42 +0000

The Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith.

The Marxists by C. Wright Mills

There were several other significant books, but those two are what really got me started.

By: Diamond LeGrande

Diamond LeGrande — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 02:07:51 +0000

Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky/Ed Herman
The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx/Freidrich Engles
Parliament of Whores, P.J. O’Rourke
Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen
A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn
The Jungle and The Flivver King, Upton Sinclair
The Assasination of Iulius Caesar, Michael Parenti
A Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell

By: buma

buma — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 02:07:45 +0000

RLIABFI, by Al Franken. The first anti-rightwing book I read.
It’s obviously time for an updated expanded version to document Rush’s adventures in doctor-shopping, rehab, boys’ vacations in the Dominican Republic, etc. And it’s high time for a good film adaptation.

By: Avedon

Avedon — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 00:07:15 +0000

Then, it was Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex. But that was then. More recently, I have to agree with QuakerinaBasement about The Hunting of the President and Fools for Scandal, which made me acutely aware the magnitude of the evil that our media has become.

By: UncleWalt

UncleWalt — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 23:07:50 +0000

Age of Uncertainty, by J.K. Galbraith; it had lost a little when I reread it recently, but in the 70s it hit me like a ton of bricks…

By: TK

TK — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 22:07:41 +0000

Nonfiction: Chomsky and Herrman, The Political Economy of Human Rights, Vol. 1 (Vol. 2, not so much). First opened my eyes to the collaboration between press and power in determining worthy and unworthy victims.

Fiction: Gravity’s Rainbow. Fiction since 1974 has been pretty much footnotes to Pynchon.

By: common dedominator

common dedominator — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 21:07:38 +0000

First, The Chomsky Reader, followed by Chomsky's Deterring Democracy, and just about everything he's published before and since. In my field of labor unionism, Selling Free Enterprise -- The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-1960 by Elizabeth Fones-Wolf and Taking The Risk Out Of Democracy by the late Alex Carey. In education and pedagogy, Alfie Kohn's No Contest -- The Case Against Competition, followed by his magnum opus Punished by Rewards.

By: Cross+Flame

Cross+Flame — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 21:07:16 +0000

*Riverkeepers, by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

It’s a great book on the impact of legislation and legal challenges that are necessary to keep America beautiful, and tracks RFK’s progress in doing so and saving the environment. Excellent reading.

By: 16

16 — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 21:07:03 +0000

I’ll second the AnalogKid’s selection of Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, and Robert Hessen’s “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”

However, I classify this one as fiction or parody. It’s a cult classic.

By: kofu

kofu — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 20:07:38 +0000

George Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia” is a great one. Then “The World Turned Upside Down,” by Christopher Hill. After those two, the rest just seems like old news.

By: clayf

clayf — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 18:07:42 +0000

Another one: David Renyolds John Brown biography.