Book #178 of 2025: 107 Days by Kamala Harris Plenty of books have been written about modern politics, but the most obvious comparison point for this particular one is probably Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign memoir What Happened, produced in the wake of her loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 election for president. Kamala Harris …
Tag Archives: politics
Book Review: Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
Book #95 of 2025: Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson An intentionally-provocative political treatise that attempts to diagnose from the center-left why modern America seems to underperform in arenas from housing to manufacturing to scientific innovation. I would say it’s written primarily for Democratic-leaning readers who are open to intra-party criticism, as authors Ezra …
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Book Review: Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service edited by Michael Lewis
Book #93 of 2025: Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service edited by Michael Lewis This 2025 title — a collection of previously-published Washington Post articles — is an attempt to put a face to the American federal government and the ranks of civil servants who work on complicated problems for immeasurable benefit …
Book Review: The Art of Power: My Story as America’s First Woman Speaker of the House by Nancy Pelosi
Book #45 of 2025: The Art of Power: My Story as America’s First Woman Speaker of the House by Nancy Pelosi An interesting overview of the author’s time in politics, though this is mostly a matter of emphasizing what had been obfuscated or ignored in the public record, rather than providing any revelatory new insights. …
Book Review: The January 6th Report by The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol
Book #132 of 2024: The January 6th Report by The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol An incredibly damning account of the January 2021 riot and then-President Donald Trump’s role in fomenting it, as meticulously assembled by the members of a bipartisan congressional committee and their staff who …
Book Review: On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service by Anthony Fauci, M.D.
Book #122 of 2024: On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service by Anthony Fauci, M.D. Dr. Anthony Fauci may not have become a household name until the recent COVID-19 pandemic, but that experience capped off a long and distinguished career in patient care, scientific research, and public health policy. In this 2024 autobiography, the …
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Book Review: One Way Back by Christine Blasey Ford
Book #112 of 2024: One Way Back by Christine Blasey Ford Author Christine Blasey Ford doesn’t spend much time in this new memoir belaboring the sexual assault she experienced as a teenager at the hands of future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. As she notes, the whole world watched her testimony at his confirmation hearing …
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Book Review: Romney: A Reckoning by McKay Coppins
Book #55 of 2024: Romney: A Reckoning by McKay Coppins A remarkable inside look at a complicated political figure: the 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who as a senator during the Trump presidency then became one of the few members of that party willing to publicly stand against the president’s erratic, abusive, and outright …
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Book Review: It’s OK to Be Angry about Capitalism by Bernie Sanders
Book #73 of 2023: It’s OK to Be Angry about Capitalism by Bernie Sanders This new release is the third book I’ve read from Senator Bernie Sanders, following 2016’s Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In and 2018’s Where We Go from Here: Two Years in the Resistance. If that first title laid out the …
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Book Review: Watergate: A New History by Garrett M. Graff
Book #14 of 2023: Watergate: A New History by Garrett M. Graff This 2022 publication is a clear and exceedingly thorough account of the various misdeeds, investigations, and cover-ups that dogged the end of Richard Nixon’s presidency. Historian and journalist Garrett M. Graff has conducted no fresh interviews — which would not necessarily be possible …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 