The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (Paperback) by Barack Obama

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"For any American citizen who is currently in resignation or despair over the abundant examples of unethical, immoral and abusive leaders who breed cynicism and apathy, The Audacity of Hope is a breath of much needed oxygen." - E. Wingard
 

Hillary Clinton comes across as a thoroughly engaged person, not afraid to be herself, no matter what is thrown in her face.  She articulates for all of us what it was like to come of age in the 60s.  I loved her overview of the turbulent events that led to her life as a public servant.  Certainly, she succeeds in combining a serious career with a strong family, something that must thoroughly gall her "family values" detractors.  I can only admire her willingness to stay with Bill Clinton, and to stand up for the Constitution.  How soon we forget the Republicans with an agenda who were willing to take down the Constitution over a matter that should have stayed between a husband and a wife.  Those who doubt the right-wing conspiracy theory should read David Brock's Blinded by the Right for an expose of The Arkansas Project. -- Rebecca Cope

Primary Colors author Joe Klein offers a nonfictional take on his favorite subject, Bill Clinton, whom he describes as both "the most talented politician of his generation" and "the most compelling."  Klein is of two minds when it comes to the man from Hope: he is at once disappointed by Clinton's failure to achieve greatness, but also a defender of what Clinton did do.  He can be unremittingly harsh about the 42nd president's personal shortcomings:  "Bill Clinton often seemed the apotheosis of his generation's alleged sins: moral relativism, the tendency to pay more attention to marketing than to substance, the solipsistic callowness."  Yet he also credits Clinton with running "a serious, substantive presidency" whose chief success was dragging "Washington toward a recognition that a revised form of government activism might be appropriate in the anarchy of an instant economy."  Klein is a smart and engrossing writer, and The Natural is an honest liberal's best effort to explain eight controversial years.  Readers who supported Clinton will discover new insights into why he didn't accomplish more; those who opposed him will gain a sharper understanding of why he remained so popular with the public. -- John Miller

Unhappy reading for Republicans or political naïfs, The Hunting of the President is the story of a sustained and well-funded effort to discredit and defeat Bill Clinton, dating from his gubernatorial days in Arkansas and eventually leading to his impeachment trial.  Award-winning journalists Joe Conason and Gene Lyons have crafted a tale as compulsively readable as a political thriller -- paced, and at times worded, like a summer bestseller.  Although they provide ample evidence of backstabbing, revenge, deceit, conniving, and "dirty tricks" in the struggle to oust Clinton, arguing that "the better the president and the country did, the more his adversaries appeared willing to endorse almost anything short of assassination to do him in," they also acknowledge that Clinton's reckless behavior, along with the "panicky, defensive, and occasionally less-than-perfectly-honest" responses of the White House press office, didn't hurt his opponents.  Investigative journalism at its juiciest, The Hunting of the President is a surprising valediction to a far-from-angelic public leader who often outmaneuvered his enemies with otherworldly skill. --Regina Marler

"...everything we thought about these bozos in the vast right-wing conspiracy turns out to be true and then some." - Eric Alterman, The Nation, 3/25/02.

Conservative dirty trickster David Brock comes clean in this memoir, showing how he sacrificed truth and professional  integrity to the well-financed and well-organized effort to nullify the Presidential election of 1992 and bring down Bill Clinton and his family.  A "vast right-wing conspiracy?"  Well, we don't know, but if Congress gives you a wide-open pipeline to the U.S. Treasury, you don't need much of a conspiracy.

Nobody has yet succeeded in refuting the facts that Mr. Brock lays out.  As a prime journalistic operator for the group that was determined to get Clinton, he knows what he did, why he did it, and who put him up to it.  It's a pathetic story with tragicomic elements.   Maybe Bill Clinton's most astonishing achievement was to give some meaning and purpose to the lives of those who were obsessed with him; otherwise they might have had no life at all.   You needn't admire Bill Clinton to conclude that he was exceedingly fortunate in his choice of enemies, a fact that most Americans seemed to grasp in their opposition to impeachment.  If there were any doubt about it, this book puts it to rest.

Stupid White Men, Michael Moore's screed against "Thief-in-Chief" George Bush's power elite, hit No. 1 at Amazon.com within days of publication.  Why?  It's as fulminating and crammed with infuriating facts as any right-wing bestseller, as irreverent as The Onion, and as noisily entertaining as a wrestling smackdown.  Moore offers a more interesting critique of the 2000 election than Ralph Nader's Crashing the Party (he argued with Nader, his old boss, who sacked him), and he's serious when he advocates ousting Bush.   But Moore's rage is   outrageous, couched in shameless gags and madcap comedy: "Old white men wielding martinis and wearing dickies have occupied our nation's capital .... Launch the SCUD missiles!  Bring us the head of Antonin Scalia! ...We are no longer [able] to hold free and fair elections.  We need U.N. observers, U.N. troops."    Moore's ideas range from on-the-money (Arafat should beat Sharon with Gandhi's nonviolent shame tactics) to over-the-top:  blacks should put inflatable white dolls in their cars so racist cops will think they're chauffeurs; the ever-more-Republicanesque Democratic Party should be sued for fraud; "no contributions toward advancing our civilization ever came out of the South [except Faulkner, Hellman, and R.J. Reynolds]," because it's too hot to think straight there; Korean dictator Kim Jong-il "has got to broaden himself beyond porn and John Wayne" by watching better movies, like Dude, Where's My Car? (which contains "all you need to know about America").  Whatever your politics, Stupid White Men should make you blow your stack. --Tim Appelo

Vincent Bugliosi has written the modern equivalent of "J'accuse."   I am not a lawyer, but I do know that when Bugliosi quotes a Yale law professor as saying  the day of the Bush v. Gore decision was "like the day of the Kennedy assassination" for him and many of his colleagues, this is not an exaggeration. --Molly Ivins

It is a pathetic spectacle that Bugliosi beckons us to behold -- this high, hallowed court and its revered majority sold out to Power. -- Gerry Spence

Highly recommended by JCCDC member Marilyn Perlman.

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