Those of you who have been following OpenLeft for awhile know that I started writing the book about a year ago. It's been a fun and exciting thing to do, made especially so because I am so fascinated by the topic: the history of how progressives and conservatives have been battling each other since 1776, and how progressives have broken through in what I call "Big Change Moments" that have fundamentally remade our country for the better. I relate all of this to the political battles I have been fighting my whole career, and to the present moment of opportunity for progressivism to once again break through in a major way. The book develops a coherent, compelling narrative about the historic battle between progressive and conservative thinking, and makes the case that when our side has won the day, the big changes that happened moved America forward and built a country we can be proud of: the Bill of Rights, the abolition of slavery, the national park system, women's suffrage, the New Deal, the civil rights movement, the New Deal, the civil rights movement- all part of a progressive heritage that is the best of America.
I have always been a big believer in building progressive infrastructure, in promoting the groups and media voices and bloggers and books that are part of our broader progressive movement in any way I can. I am heartened now to see the favor returned by so many people at different blogs who are helping me push this out through donated ad space. The folks at FDL are having me on their book salon. Friends like Arianna Huffington, Tom Daschle, Paul Begala, Donna Brazile, Wes Boyd, David Brock and David Sirota have done blurbs for me. Others like Drew Westen, Victoria Hopper, Digby, Max Bernstein, Waymon Hudson, James Boyce, Mike Connery, and Sara Robinson have agreed to do reviews for me. Netroots Nation, USAction, Media Matters, Campaign for Community Change, ACORN, and others are helping me in a wide variety of ways. It's heartening to get all their support.
I hope I will get yours, too. As I've written time after time over the years in the support of other progressive authors, books need to get off to a fast start to have a chance of making an impact. If they do, it gives the author an even better chance of getting their message out through the extra media attention a successful book brings.
My entire point in writing this book is to build the movement, to give progressives the narrative and the facts about history to carry the day in their debates. Please buy a copy, and spread the word, through your Facebook page, your listservs, and through whatever political groups you are a part of. Every dollar I make on the book will go back into supporting politics in one way or another, so I need your help.
Here's Karl Rove, bragging about Bush's literary tastes.
Mr. Bush's 2006 reading list shows his literary tastes. The nonfiction ran from biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, Babe Ruth, King Leopold, William Jennings Bryan, Huey Long, LBJ and Genghis Khan to Andrew Roberts's "A History of the English Speaking Peoples Since 1900," James L. Swanson's "Manhunt," and Nathaniel Philbrick's "Mayflower." Besides eight Travis McGee novels by John D. MacDonald, Mr. Bush tackled Michael Crichton's "Next," Vince Flynn's "Executive Power," Stephen Hunter's "Point of Impact," and Albert Camus's "The Stranger," among others.
Turning to the Bush clan, we learn in Kitty Kelley's book The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty that New Yorker writer Brendan Gill was once a guest of George H.W. and Barbara Bush at their summer house in Kennebunkport, Maine. Stumbling through the place late at night in search of something to read, the only volume he could find was The Fart Book.
I sort of understand Rove's strategy of insisting that George W. Bush is an intellectual heavyweight, even though he's obviously just a dolt that loves fart jokes. Rove enjoys tweaking liberals by preying on their insecurities, which he used to do when he was powerful and the Bush administration was taken seriously by insisting that they were effete eggheads out of touch with the real America. Only, now, there's nothing whatsoever admirable about the Bush Presidency and no one really believes Rove is a political genius, and so Rove is reduced to pretending that Bush is some sort of bookworm. Take that, liberals! Or something like that.
I think someone should establish a musty hospice for the careers of dated political operatives, and stick Rove there. Oh wait, an embarrassing political attic already exists, and it's called Fox News.
In a diary yestrerday, "Mainstreaming Crazy", Digby writes about how the Jerome Corsi book has been factually rebutted, but that that hardly matters:
the job of a book like this isn't necessarily to get people to buy the book, but rather to legitimize some of these existent themes by having it be publicly discussed. It's another way of getting out the word, that's all. They don't care if the media is refuting it or not --- after all it's the "liberal media." Why would anyone think they would tell the truth? in that respect, regardless of the factual pushback, they have already succeeded.
Indeed, they're "debating it" right now on Lou Dobbs. Dobbs just made the point that none of the "attack" books about John McCain are on the NY Times best seller list like Corsi's book and that must tell you something. Mission Accomplished.
She then goes on to make the point that Corsi is a true nutcase--and it doesn't seem to matter--the books sell like hotcakes, because there's an infrastructure out there set to gobble them up. She quotes Tim Ruttan in the LA Times:
Corsi's book is published by Threshold Editions, a division of Simon & Schuster, which hired right-wing political operative Mary Matalin to edit the imprint. Random House has a similar imprint in Crown Forum, and Penguin Group USA has Sentinel. Their business model -- and this is all about business -- is predicated on the existence of an echo chamber of right-wing radio and television shows willing to promote these publishers' products -- however noxious. Beyond that is a network of conservative book clubs and organizations willing to place the sort of advance bulk orders for controversial books that will guarantee them a place on the bestseller lists.
This is what hegemony looks like. Rightwing foundations have been funding this for years, and rightwing entreprenuers have been making money in synergy with them: creating a far-flung infrastructure that can support any sort of ideological content that's poured into it. Nothing could be more dramatically different than the way that left is "organized" in America.
I'm always amazed by the clarity of his writing and his ability to indict the conservative mindset with well-articulated factual patterns, but this book is written with such vicious joy that it is just really fun to read.
Last week we had a suggestion about a top 10 political book thread. I think 10 is too many to digest at once, and we'd be better served if it were focussed by topic. So, I had to jump the gun and put up a couple of my favorite political history books.
How, why and where civilizations rise. Short answer: Food and technology. More specifically: complex societies require the availability of sufficient and diverse protein and carbohydrates, or else they have no opportunity to arise, let alone develop. Anthropology, linguistic analysis, genetic tracking, movements of historic populations, these are all ideas that have progressed enormously since I was in High School. Diamond's GG&S provides an essential foundational reading to understand the rest of history.
Why did North America become highly developed, despite the poverty of resources on the Eastern Seaboard? Conversely, why is South America poorly developed despite the huge wealth discovered by the Incas and exploited by the Spanish conquistadors? Uruguayan journalist, Eduardo Galeano's question ends up describing the answer. This book is a great manifesto of exploitation vs development, and a great introductory history of Latin America.
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