Wednesday, May 14, 2007
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
Barack Obama

Publisher Comments:
In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man—has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey—first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.

Review:
"[A] poignant, probing memoir of an unusual life....Obama leaves some lingering questions — his mother is virtually absent — but still has written a resonant book." Publishers Weekly
Review:
"Obama argues with himself on almost every page of this lively autobiographical conversation....Obama is candid about racism and poverty and corruption, in Chicago and in Kenya. Yet he does find community and authenticity..." Hazel Rochman, Booklist
Review:
"Fluidly, calmly, insightfully, Obama guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race." Washington Post Book World
Review:
"Obama's writing is incisive yet forgiving. This is a book worth savoring." Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here
Synopsis:
The son of a black African father and white American mother discusses his divided ancestry and his place in America's racial society, analyzing the demands of racial identity and culture, multiculturalism, and the quest for his own racial identity.

From Powell's.Com

Wednesday, April 9, 2008
The Truth, With Jokes
Al Franken

Synopsis: Nearly a year after the presidential election of 2004, Al Franken is still checking facts, exposing lies, and trying to clear the record as he sees it. Sneering at President Bush's declaration of a mandate after a two-and-a-half percent victory, he deconstructs Bush's 2004 platform of "fear, smear, and queers," and explains how the president has done some flip-flopping of his own. He offers comment on well-known stories, including the Terri Schiavo case, and some more obscure, such as reports of forced prostitution, indentured servitude, and squalid conditions at clothing factories in Saipan (which is part of the American Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands). Franken focuses on Tom DeLay's connection to the territory and his efforts to prevent bills from being passed that would have required Saipan to follow U.S. labor laws. Iraq, too, is discussed, from its planning stages to the huge sum of money currently unaccounted for, including $8.8 billion missing from the Coalition Provisional Authority's coffers.
On the home front, Franken covers President Bush's attempt at Social Security reform, explaining how they came up with the projected shortfall figure of $11 trillion. For one thing, they adjusted life expectancy to 150 years, while leaving the retirement age at 67: "That's an eighty-three-year retirement. They're never gonna get to that without stem cell research." He also takes some wickedly funny swipes at Karl Rove, lobbyist Jack Abramoff, pundits and hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Tim Russert, and Sean Hannity, and, of course, President Bush. The Truth succeeds in providing ammunition to liberals and others dissatisfied with the current power base in Washington, D.C.--only this time (with jokes). --Shawn Carkonen

From Amazon.com

Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Campaign Boot Camp: Basic Training for Future Leaders
Christine Pelosi

Look here! Christine Pelosi is someone who has been getting dirt under her fingernails in grassroots politics since she was in the stroller. "Boot Camp" is not the result of just another pundit or academic writing about politics. Christine really gives you both the promise and blessings of fighting for something you believe in while she also tells the truth about the planning and hard work it takes to succeed. She should know because there are at least three generations of Pelosi's who have risen to the top of the political ladder -- a grandfather who was mayor of Baltimore, a mother who is Speaker of the U.S. House, and herself as a 10-year elected veteran of the Democratic National Committee from California. Practical is what the Pelosis know and live; commitment to cause is what fuels them.
Anyone who wants to win an issue or office should put this on their early reading list.

Step aside, Colbert - Christine Pelosi has a real strategy for running for office, and anyone, she says, can do it. I listened to Pelosi on the radio the other day and she was so exciting, I checked out her book the same afternoon. She makes practical and worthwhile suggestions for being politically active - and her advice is valuable for anyone. I'm just a copy editor but I feel like even Clinton's senior staffers could learn a thing or three from "Campaign Boot Camp."

From Amazon Customer Reviews

Wednesday, February 13
Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government--And How We Take It Back
by David Sirota

Synopsis:Do you ever wonder if there’s a connection between the corruption scandals in the news and the steady decline in the quality of life for millions of Americans?

Do you ever wonder what corporations get for the millions of dollars they pour into the American political system?

Do you ever think the government has been hijacked by forces hostile to average Americans?

Do you ever want to fight back?

Millions of Americans lack health care and millions more struggle to afford it. Politicians claim they care, then pass legislation that just sends more cash to the HMOs. Wages have been stagnant for thirty years, even as corporate profits skyrocket. Politicians say they want to fix the problem and then pass bills written by lobbyists that drive wages even lower and punish those crushed by debt. Jobs are being shipped overseas, pensions are being cut, and energy is becoming unaffordable. And our government, more concerned about maintaining its corporate sponsorship than protecting its citizens, does nothing about it.

In Hostile Takeover, David Sirota, a major new voice in American politics, seeks to open the eyes of ordinary Americans to the fact that corporate interests have undermined democracy, aided and abetted by their lackeys in our allegedly representative government. At a time when more and more of America’s major political leaders are being indicted or investigated for corruption, Sirota takes readers on a journey that shows how all of this nefarious behavior happened right under our noses—and how the high-profile scandals are merely one product of a political system and debate wholly owned by Big Money interests. Sirota considers major public issues that feel intractable—like spiraling health care costs, the outsourcing of jobs, the inequities of the tax code, and out-of-control energy prices—and shows how in each case workable solutions are buried under the lies of lobbyists, the influence of campaign cash, and the ubiquitous spin machine financed by Big Business.

With fiery passion, pinpoint wit, and lucid analysis, Hostile Takeover reveals the true enemies of reform and their increasingly sophisticated—and hostile—tactics. It’s an essential guidebook for those of us tired of the government selling us out—and determined to take our country back. (More)

From Powell's.Com

Wednesday, January 9
The Assault On Reason
by Al Gore

Synopsis: A heady mix of passion and intellect, Gore’s follow-up to An Inconvenient Truth discusses global warming, but in the context of the Bush administration’s "instinct for deception." The book is a scathing exposé of what Gore calls the White House’s "unprecedented and sustained campaign of mass deception," but goes beyond partisan bickering to ask, "Why do reason, logic, and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions?" Gore begins by positing that our Founders’ revolutionary trust in "the rule of reason" (rather than in a monarch) can be "traced straight back to Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press." But, he argues, the "open and free public discussion and debate… central to the operation of our democracy" that has always been supported by a free and accessible press is now threatened by television, with its one-way, entertainment-oriented communication and concentrated ownership, coupled with political exploitation of the mass media to instill a "politics of fear." Drawing from diverse disciplines, including history, neuroscience, and immune system research, and philosophers ranging from Aristotle, Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, Frederick Douglass and Hannah Arendt, Gore argues that the decentralized, text-oriented internet, which empowers individuals to form communities and publish their own video clips, is "perhaps the greatest source of hope for reestablishing an open communications environment in which the conversation of democracy can flourish." But he also warns that protecting the free market and free speech online while "making allowances for adequate investment incentives" is essential. The book may not convince detractors, but those sympathetic to Gore's view of democracy will likely be challenged and inspired.

From The Publisher's Weekly

Date: October 10, 2007
Book: You Have the Power
Author: Howard Dean
Location:Tattered Cover Highlands Ranch

Synopsis: Iyou are worried about the way America is being governed and want to reclaim the country you know and love, now is the time to take it back. Governor Howard Dean argues that you have the power to change the future course of America.

You Have the Power is an energetic and detailed guide to restoring American democracy. It exposes the radical extremism of today's "mainstream" Republicans and shows Democrats how to be Democrats again. By reigniting hope, by tapping into the energy and ideals of the American people, Dean writes, the Democrats can restore America's strength and standing at home and abroad.

Drawing on his experience in the 2004 presidential election and the hope and inspiration of the people he met on the campaign trail, Dean shows how real people — ordinary Americans like himself — can come together to take their party, the political process, and their country back.

http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9780743291491-0

Date: Sept.12, 2007
Book: "Overthrow"
Author: Stephen Kinzer
url:
Location: Tattered Cover Highlands Ranch

Synopsis: Publisher Comments:
A fast-paced narrative history of the coups, revolutions, and invasions by which the United States has toppled fourteen foreign governments — not always to its own benefit.

" Regime change" did not begin with the administration of George W. Bush, but has been an integral part of U.S. foreign policy for more than one hundred years. Starting with the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 and continuing through the Spanish-American War and the Cold War and into our own time, the United States has not hesitated to overthrow governments that stood in the way of its political and economic goals. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 is the latest, though perhaps not the last, example of the dangers inherent in these operations.

In Overthrow, Stephen Kinzer tells the stories of the audacious politicians, spies, military commanders, and business executives who took it upon themselves to depose monarchs, presidents, and prime ministers. He also shows that the U.S. government has often pursued these operations without understanding the countries involved; as a result, many of them have had disastrous long-term consequences.
In a compelling and provocative history that takes readers to fourteen countries, including Cuba, Iran, South Vietnam, Chile, and Iraq, Kinzer surveys modern American history from a new and often surprising perspective.

(More at http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780805082401-0)

Month: June
Date: June 13,2007
Book:"Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media"
Author: Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman
Location: Tattered Cover Highlands Ranch

Synopsis:In this pathbreaking work, now with a new introduction, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society, the state, and the global order.
Based on a series of case studies — including the media?s dichotomous treatment of ?worthy? versus ?unworthy? victims, ?legitimizing? and ?meaningless? Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against Indochina — Herman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the media?s behavior and performance. Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. These include the manner in which the media covered the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and subsequent Mexican financial meltdown of 1994-1995, the media?s handling of the protests against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1999 and 2000, and the media?s treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. What emerges from this work is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way. More...(www.powells.com)

Month: April
Date: April 11, 2007
Book: Common Sense
Author: Thomas Paine
Location: Tattered Cover Highlands Ranch

Common Sense and Other Writings
by Thomas Paine, and Gordon S. Wood. Random House.

From the publisher: "In 1776, America was a hotbed of enlightenment and revolution. Thomas Paine not only spurred his fellow Americans to action but soon came to symbolize the spirit of the Revolution. His elegantly persuasive pieces spoke to the hearts and minds of those fighting for freedom. He was later outlawed in Britain, jailed in France, and finally labeled an atheist upon his return to America. " (http://classiclit.about.com/)

Wednesday, March 14, 2007
The Audacity of Hope
by Barack Obama

The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com:

Why, just two years after being elected to the Senate, has Barack Obama set so many Democratic -- and some Republican -- imaginations on fire? The Illinois Democrat is certainly a magnetic speaker who delivers original phrases in composed yet passionate tones. His life, as told in the powerful memoir Dreams From My Father, seems a model for the globalized future: The only child of a biracial, bicontinental union, he grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia, then went on to become a community organizer in Chicago and the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review. And his athletic good looks have landed him on the cover of a major fashion magazine, with a spread by Annie Leibovitz. Not since John F. Kennedy has a junior senator so quickly become a national celebrity and a possible candidate for the White House. More...

Location: Tattered Cover Highlands Ranch

Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Confessions Of An Economic Hitman
by John Perkins

From Publishers Weekly

Perkins spent the 1970s working as an economic planner for an international consulting firm, a job that took him to exotic locales like Indonesia and Panama, helping wealthy corporations exploit developing nations as, he claims, a not entirely unwitting front for the National Security Agency. He says he was trained early in his career by a glamorous older woman as one of many "economic hit men" advancing the cause of corporate hegemony. He also says he has wanted to tell his story for the last two decades, but his shadowy masters have either bought him off or threatened him until now. The story as presented is implausible to say the least, offering so few details that Perkins often seems paranoid, and the simplistic political analysis doesn’t enhance his credibility. Despite the claim that his work left him wracked with guilt, the artless prose is emotionally flat and generally comes across as a personal crisis of conscience blown up to monstrous proportions, casting Perkins as a victim not only of his own neuroses over class and money but of dark forces beyond his control. His claim to have assisted the House of Saud in strengthening its ties to American power brokers may be timely enough to attract some attention, but the yarn he spins is ultimately unconvincing, except perhaps to conspiracy buffs.

Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc

Location: Tattered Cover Highlands Ranch

Wednesday,January 10, 2006
Israelis and Palestinians - Why Do They Fight? Can they Stop?
By Bernard Wasserstein

From Publishers Weekly

As of this fall a professor of history at the University of Chicago, Wasserstein (Divided Jerusalem: The Struggle for the Holy City) finds that, despite reports to the contrary, "neither Jews nor Arabs, in their collective behaviour, are animated by crazed psychopathy. They fight over definable interests, motivated by comprehensible value-systems, in pursuit of identifiable goals." Both, Wasserstein argues, are focused on "population, land, work, security, and dignity," and the bulk of the book is devoted to clearly and substantively laying out the specifics. And with good reason, since each nationalism "is now near the end of its tether."
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Location: Tattered Cover Highlands Ranch

September 13, 2006
The World Is Flat
by Thomasa L Friedman

History of the world twenty years from now, and they come to the chapter "Y2K to March 2004," what will they say was the most crucial development? The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the Iraq war? Or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest nations, giving them a huge new stake in the success of globalization? And with this "flattening" of the globe, which requires us to run faster in order to stay in place, has the world gotten too small and too fast for human beings and their political systems to adjust in a stable manner?

(Reviews on http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/worldisflat.htm)

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Postponed to August 9 , 2006
Reading Lolita in Tehran
by Azar Nafizi

Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the girls in Azar Nafisi's living room risked removing their veils and immersed themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov.

In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading. "Reading Lolita in Tehran is a remarkable exploration of resilience in the face of tyranny and a celebration of the liberating power of literature.

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May 10 , 2006
Ishmael
by Daniel Quinn

Now available in paperback for the first time, Ishmael is the winner of the Turner Tomorrow Award--a prize for fiction that offers solutions to global problems. When a man in search of truth answers an ad in a local newspaper from a teacher looking for serious students, he finds himself alone in an abandoned office with a gorilla named Ishmael.

April 12, 2006
Silent Spring
by Rachel Carson

First published by Houghton Mifflin in 1962, Silent Spring alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of indiscriminate use of pesticides, spurring revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. "Silent Spring became a runaway bestseller, with international reverberations . . . It is well crafted, fearless and succinct . . . Even if she had not inspired a generation of activists, Carson would prevail as one of the greatest nature writers in American letters" (Peter Matthiessen, for Time"s 100 Most Influential People of the Century).

This fortieth anniversary edition celebrates Rachel Carson"s watershed book with a new introduction by the author and activist Terry Tempest Williams and a new afterword by the acclaimed Rachel Carson biographer Linda Lear, who tells the story of Carson"s courageous defense of her truths in the face of ruthless assault from the chemical industry in the year following the publication of Silent Spring and before her untimely death in 1964.

March 8 , 2006
The Assassins' Gate:
America's in Iraq
by George Packer

"The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq recounts how the United States set about changing the history of the Middle East and became ensnared in a guerrilla war in Iraq. It tells the story of the people and ideas that created the Bush administration's war policy and led America to the Assassin's Gate--the main point of entry into the American zone in Baghdad. The consequences of that policy are shown in the author's vivid reporting on the ground in Iraq, where he made several tours on assignment for "The New Yorker. We see up close the struggles of individual American soldiers and civilians and Iraqis from all backgrounds, including returning exiles, thrown together by a war that followed none of the preconceived scripts.

"The Assassin's Gate also describes the effect of the Iraq war on American life, including the ordeal of a fallen soldier's family and the shortcomings of a political culture too impoverished in its knowledge of the world and too bitterly polarized to debate complex moral and strategic questions. George Packer's intimate first-person narrative navigates this journey through the landscapes of America and Iraq while tracing the author's own evolving views, bringing to the page the full range of ideas and emotions stirred up by our most controversial foreign-policy venture since Vietnam.

February 8, 2006
Our Endangered Values:
America's Moral Crisis
by Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter has written importantly about his spiritual life and faith. Now he describes quite personally his own involvement and reactions to disturbing societal trends involving both the religious and political worlds as they become intertwined.

Notes by Carrie Lecakes-Lewis

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November 7, 2005
The Devil's Highway
Book Review by Karen Hart
by Luis Alberto Urrea
Review by Karen Hart coming soon


After reading this book you will watch illegals crossing the border on the nightly news with a much deeper understanding. The author follows both the immigrants and the border patrol and does his best to give the most accurate and balanced view possible. A very good story and one that you will never forget.

• Click Here to read the article on the Jurist Legal and Research web site
• Click Here For A Complete Text Of The Final Draft Of The Constitution
• Review and Book Recommendations by Karen Hart

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September 13
Gods Politics : How the Right gets it wrong and the Left doesn't get it
by Jim Wallis

Book Review by Karen Hart

As you are reading the book - try to think of 2-3 questions/topics of discussion. We'll chose future books at upcoming meetings, so feel free to give us more ideas.

July 13
THE TIPPING POINT: How Little Things can Make a Big Difference
by Malcolm Gladwell

Book Review by Karen Hart

Why did crime in New York drop so suddenly in the mid-90s? How does an unknown novelist end up a bestselling author? Why is teenage smoking out of control, when everyone knows smoking kills? What makes TV shows like Sesame Street so good at teaching kids how to read? Why did Paul Revere succeed with his famous warning?

As you are reading the book - try to think of 2-3 questions/topics of discussion. We'll chose future books at upcoming meetings, so feel free to give us more ideas.

June 8

Crimes Against Nature
by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Book Review by Karen Hart

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May 11th
Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your values and Frame the Debate
by George Lakoff

Book review by Karen Hart

April 13th
The Crisis Of Islam, Holy War and Unholy Terror
by Bernard Lewis

Book review by Karen Hart