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Books We Recommend
January 24, 2008
Here at NDN we have been privileged to come across some magnificent books that we wanted to share with progressives like you. We're going to be adding to this page, so keep checking back every now and again to see what's new. In the meantime, check out our favorites below. If you have any suggestions as to books we should add, contact us!
Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics
by Morley Winograd and Mike Hais
Not Yet Published
Description: It happens in America every four decades and it is about to happen again. America's demand for change in the 2008 election will cause another of our country's periodic political makeovers. This realignment, like all others before it, will result from the coming of age of a new generation of young Americans-the Millennial Generation-and the full emergence of the Internet-based communications technology that this generation uses so well.
Learn more.
Futurecast: How Superpowers, Populations, and Globalization Will Change the Way You Live and Work
by Robert J. Shapiro
Not yet published
Description: As everyone’s lives across the world are become increasingly interconnected by globalization and new technologies quicken the pace of everything, the answer to that question depends on the fate and paths of the world’s major nations. In Futurecast, Robert Shapiro, former U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce and Chairman/Co-founder of Sonecon, looks into the future to tell us what our world will over the next dozen years. Read more.
The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics
by Matt Bai
Read the New York Times book review.
Description: Drawing on remarkable access to myriad factions of the Democratic Party, The New York Times Magazine writer Matt Bai distills the party's future prospects and current dilemmas in this raucous and devastating account of the party's search for The Argument that fits the twenty-first century
Read more.
The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America
by Ronald Brownstein
Read the New York Times book review.
Description: From one of America's most respected political commentators, an epic, shrewd, and important big-picture analysis of the forces that have made this era in American politics as divisive and bitterly partisan as any since the Civil War.
Read more.
The Blue Way: How to Profit by Investing in a Better World
by Daniel de Faro Adamson and Joe Andrew
Read the reviews
Description: Turning conventional wisdom on its head, The Blue Way shows why socially progressive companies that make political contributions to "blue" politicians and causes outperform "red" companies.
The idea that progressives are better at businesses than conservatives will surprise most people - including many progressives. But as The Blue Way shows, in nearly every sector of the economy, blue companies are the top performers. Read more.
The True Patriot: A Pamphlet
by Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer
Authors' Description: We are the authors of a pamphlet called “The True Patriot.” We wrote this little book to wrest patriotism back from those on the far right who have hijacked it, to awaken those on the far left who have ceded it, and to remind those of every stripe what being American calls on us to be.
Our frustration was that politics now is all tactics and not first principles. Our contention is that when you unpack true American patriotism — the idea of “country above self” — what you discover is a moral framework that goes back to the founding, and that is inherently progressive. Our challenge to you is to join us — or do us one better. Read more.
The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future
by Vali Nasr
Read the New York Times book review.
Description: As nations around the world struggle with the threat of militant Islam, Vali Nasr, one of the leading scholars on the Middle East, provides us with the rare opportunity to understand the political and theological antagonisms within Islam itself. The Shia Revival is a penetrating historical account of sectarian conflicts in the Muslim world, showing that the future rests in finding a peaceful solution to the ancient rivalries between the Shias and the Sunnis.
Read more.
How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok
by Glenn Greenwald
Check out Digby's review
Description: the New York Times best seller by political blogger Glenn Greenwald, is one man’s transformation from apolitical centrist to citizen activist in defense of our Constitution. How would a patriot act today? Greenwald has some ideas. “Over the past five years, a creeping extremism has taken hold of our federal government that is threatening to alter our system and who we are as a nation.”
Read more.
Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House
by Valerie Plame Wilson
Read the LA Times book review
Description: On July 6, 2003, four months after the United States invaded Iraq, former ambassador Joseph Wilson's now historic op-ed, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," appeared in The New York Times. A week later, conservative pundit Robert Novak revealed in his newspaper column that Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, was a CIA operative. The public disclosure of that secret information spurred a federal investigation and led to the trial and conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, and the Wilsons' civil suit against top officials of the Bush administration. Read more.
Saving the Americas: The Dangerous Decline of Latin America and What The U.S. Must Do
by Andres Oppenheimer
Read the Foreign Affairs review
Description: As an acknowledged expert on Latin America, Oppenheimer uses his experience and reporting skills to show how this region is becoming increasingly less important on the world stage, and the resulting negative effects on the lives of Americans. “This book began as a message to Latin Americans about the decline of their region into global irrelevance. But it soon became clear to me that what I was learning was equally important to people in the United States,” says Oppenheimer. Read more.
