Books for Liberals
Bold Important
Contents
Government, Social Services and
Lifestyles
Increased Inequality and Private
Risk
Autobiographies and
Biographies
Recent Political History
2008 Elections and Barack Obama
Liberal Values
Raymond Arsenault (ed.), 1991, Crucible
of
Peter Beinart,
2006, The Good Fight, Why Liberals—and
Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror and Make
Alan Brinkley, 1998, Liberalism
and Its Discontents
Senator Robert C. Byrd, 2004, Losing
Glenn Greenwald, 2006, How Would a Patriot Act?
Defending American Values from a President Run Amok
Gary Hart,
2002, Restoration of the Republic, the
Jeffersonian Ideal in 21st-Century
Thom Hartman, 2004, What Would
Neil Jumonville and Kevin Mattson (eds.), 2007, Liberalism for a New
Century
Caroline Kennedy (Editor), 2003, A Patriot’s Handbook, Songs, Poems, Stories
and Speeches Celebrating the Land We Love
Richard C.
Leone and Greg Anrig, Jr. (eds.), 2003 , The
War on Our Freedoms, Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism
John McGowan, 2007, American Liberalism, An
Interpretation for Our Time
John E. Schwarz, 2005, Freedom Reclaimed, Rediscovering the American Vision
Harvard Sitkoff (ed), Perspectives
on Modern American, Making Sense of the Twentieth Century
Paul Starr, 2007, Freedom’s Power,
The True Force of Liberalism
Cass R. Sunstein, 2004, The Second Bill of Rights, FDR’s Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need
it More than Ever
Jules Witcover, 2003, Party of the People, A History of the Democrats
Randall B.
Woods, 2006, LBJ: Architect of American
Ambition
Donna Zajonc,
The Politics of Hope, Reviving the Dream
of Democracy
John
Zogby, 2008, The Way We’ll Be, The Zogby
Report on the Transformation of the American Dream
Duane
Joe Dominguez
and Vicki Robin, 1993, Your Money or Your
Life
Grass Roots Organizing
Saul
Alinsky, 1946, Reveille for Radicals.
Saul
Alinsky, 1972, Rules for Radicals.
The
following books about the
R.
Brian Stanfield, 1900, The Courage to
Lead
R. Brian Stanfield, 2002, The Workshop Book: From
Individual Creativity to Group Action
Laura Spencer, 1989, Winning Through Participation
Institute of Cultural Development, 1989, Approaches that Work
Paul
Rogat Loeb (ed.), 2004, The Impossible
Will Take a Little While, A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear
Paul Rogat Loeb, Soul
of a Citizen, Living with Conviction in a Cynical Time
Religious Liberalism
Dan Brown, The DaVinci Code
William Slone Coffin, Credo
Donna Cross, Pope Joan
Michael Lerner, The
Left Hand of God, Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
Bishop John Shelby Spong, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism
Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth
Clint Wallis
and Nate Hardcastle (eds.), Jesus is not
a Republican
Jim Wallis, 2005, God’s Politics, Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get
It. A New Vision for Faith and Politics
in
Liberal Political Strategy
Jerome
Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, 2006, Crashing the Gate, Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered
Politics
Paul Begala,
2002, It's Still the Economy, Stupid,
(George W. Bush, the GOP's CEO)
Jared
Bernstein, 2006, All Together Now, Common
Sense for a Fair Economy
James MacGregor
Burns, 2006, Running Alone, Presidential
Leadership, JFK to Bush II, Why It Has Failed and How We Can Fix It.
James
Carville and Paul Begala, 2006, Take It
Back, Our Party, Our Country, Our Future*
Earthworks
Action, 2006, 50 Simple Things You Can Do
to Fight the Right
Laura Flanders, 2007, Blue Grit, True Democrats Take Back Politics from the
Politicians
Mark Halperin
and John F. Harris, 2006, The Way to Win,
Taking the White House in 2008
Gary
Hart, 2006, The Courage of Our
Convictions, A Manifesto for Democrats
Don Hazen and Lakshmi Chaudhry, 2005, Start Making Sense, Turning the Lessons of
Election 2004 into Winning Progressive Politics
Glenn
Hurowitz, 2007, Fear and Courage in the
Democratic Party
Matthew
R. Kerbel, 2006, Get the Party Started,
How Progressives Can Fight Back and Win
Robert Kuttner, 1987, The
Life of the Party
Bill Lofy (ed.) Politics
the
Ted Rall, 2004, Wake Up, You’re Liberal
Thomas F. Schaller, 2006, Whistling
Past
Bill Scher, 2006, Wait! Don’t Move to
Chuck
Schumer, 2007, Positively American,
Winning Back the Middle-Class Majority One Family at a Time
Tony Schwartz, 1973, The Responsive Chord, How Radio and TV Manipulate You, Who You Vote
For, What You Buy, and How You Think
David Sirota, 2008, The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour
of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington
Joe Trippi, 2004,
The Revolution Will Not be
Televised. Democracy, the Internet, and
the Overthrow of Everything
Paul
Waldman, 2006, Being Right Is Not Enough,
What Progressives Must Learn from Conservative Success
Liberal Framing
George Lakoff,
2004, Don’t Think of an Elephant, Know
Your Values and Frame the Debate
George Lakoff,
2006, Whose Freedom, The
Geoffrey Nunberg, 2006, Talking Right
Jeffrey Feldman, 2007, Framing the Debate, Famous Presidential Speeches and how Progressives
Can Use Them to Change the Conversation (and Win Elections)
Jeffrey Feldman, 2008, Outright Barbarous, How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons
American Democracy
Bernie
Horn, 2008, Framing the Future, How
Progressive Values Can Win Elections and Influence People
Liberal
Political Policy
Peter Beinart, 2006, The Good Fight,
Why Liberals—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror and Make
Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon,
2005, The Next Attack, The Failure of the
War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting It Right
Barry
Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, 2000, Growing
Prosperity, The
Lester
R. Brown, 2003, Plan B, Rescuing a Planet
under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble
Rahm Emanuel and Bruce Reed, 2006, The Plan, Big Ideas for
John Kenneth Galbraith, 1996, The
Good Society
Norton Garfinkle,
2006, The American Dream vs. The Gospel
of Wealth: The Fight for a Productive Middle-Class Economy
Ted Halstead (ed.), 2004, The
Gary Hart, 2006, The Courage of Our Convictions, A Manifesto
for Democrats
John Kao, 2007, Innovation Nation, How
Jeff Madrick, 2002, Why Economies Grow, The Forces That Shape
Prosperity and How To Get Them Working Again
Matthew Miller, 2003, The 2%
Solution, Fixing
Randall Rothenberg, 1984, The
Neo-Liberals, Creating the New American Politics
Chuck
Schumer, 2007, Positively American,
Winning Back the Middle-Class Majority One Family at a Time
Gene Sperling,
2005, The Pro-Growth Progressive, An
Economic Strategy for Shared Prosperity
Election Reform
Douglas J. Amy,
1993, Real Choices New Voices, The Case
for Proportional Representation Elections in the
George Farah, 2004, No
Debate, How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the
Presidential Debates
Howard Friel and Richard Falk, 2004, The Record of the Paper, How the New York
Times Misreports US Foreign Policy
Corporations Aren’t People
·
Thom Hartman, 2002,
Unequal Protection, The Rise of Corporate
Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights
·
Marjorie Kelly,
2001, The Divine Right of Capital,
Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy
Government, Social
Services and Lifestyles
Influential
Environmental Books
Dean Baker, 2006, The
Mirian Wright Edelman, the Measure of Our Success, A Letter to My Children and Yours
Al Gore, Creating a Government that
Works Better and Costs Less, the Report of the National Performance Review
Jacob S. Hacker, 2002, The Divided Welfare State, The
Robert Haveman, Starting Even, an
Equal Opportunity Program to Combat the Nation’s New Poverty
Jill Quadgno, One
Nation Uninsured, Why the
Juliet B. Schor, 1993, The Overworked American, The Unexpected
Decline of Leisure
John E. Schwarz, America’s
Hidden Success, a Reassessment of Public Policy from Kennedy to Reagan
Harvard Sitkoff (ed), 1985, Fifty Years Later, The New Deal Evaluated
Barbara Ehrenreich, 2001, Nickel and
Dimed. On (Not) Getting By in
Barbara Ehrenreich, 2005, Bait and
Switch, The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
Lisbeth B. Schorr with Daniel Schorr, Within
Our Reach, Breaking the Cycle of Disadvantage
Juliet B. Schor, 1998. The Overspent
American, Why We Want What We Don’t Need
Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi, 2003, The Two-Income Trap, Why Middle-Class Parents Are Going Broke
Juliet B. Schor, 2004, Born to Buy
John de Graaf, David Wann and Thomas H. Naylor, 2005, Affluenza, The All-Consuming Epidemic
Mark Robert Rank, 2005, One Nation, Underprivileged. Why Poverty Affects Us
All
David Shipler, 2004, The Working
Poor. Invisible in
Catherine Crier, 2002, The Case Against Lawyers, How the Lawyers, Politicians and Bureaucrats
Have Turned the Law into an Instrument of Tyranny—and What We as Citizens Have
to Do About It
Charles J. Sykes, 1992, A Nation of
Victims, The Decay of the American Character
Increased Inequality and
Private Risk
Daniel Altman,
2004, Neoconomy, George Bush’s
Revolutionary Gamble with America’s Future
Jacob S. Hacker, 2006,
The Great Risk Shift, The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care, and
Retirement and How you can Fight back
Thom Hartmann,
2006, Screwed, The Undeclared War Against
the Middle Class – and What We Can Do About It
Michael A.
Hiltzik, 2005, The Plot Against Social
Security, How the Bush Plan is Endangering Our Financial Future
Max J.
Skidmore, 1999, Social Security and Its
Enemies, The Case for
James Lardner
and David A. Smith (eds.), 2005, Inequality
Matters, The Growing Economic Divide in
Louis
Uchitelle, 2006, The Disposable American,
Layoffs and Their Consequences
William H. Gates Sr. and Chuck Collins, 2002, Wealth and Commonwealth, Why
Autobiographies and Biographies
Colin Powell, 1995, My American Journey
Barack Obama, 1995, Dreams from My Father, A Story of Race and Inheritance
Barack
Obama, 2006, The Audacity of Hope,
Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
Hillary Clinton, 1996, It Takes a Village
Jesse Ventura, 1999, I Ain’t Got Time to Bleed
Bill Moyers,
2004, Moyers on
Hillary Clinton, 2004, Living History
Bill Clinton, 2004, My Life
Terry McAulife, 2007, What a Party! My Life among
Democrats: Presidents, Candidates, Donors, Activists, Alligators and other Wild
Animals
Naftali
Bendavid, 2007, The Thumpin’, How Rahm
Emanuel and the Democrats Learned to Be Ruthless and Ended the Republican
revolution
Recent Political History
The Nineteen Thirties – The New Deal
Arthur M. "Schlesinger,
Jr., 1957, The Crisis of the Old Order: 1919-33, The Age of
Arthur M. "Schlesinger,
Jr., 1958, The Coming of the New Deal: 1933-35, The Age of
Arthur M. "Schlesinger,
Jr., 1960, The Politics of Upheaval: 1935-36, The Age of
Harvard Sitkoff (ed), 1985, Fifty Years Later, The New Deal Evaluated
The Nineteen Sixties – The Golden Era
David Riesman,
Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney, 1950, The
Lonely Crowd, A Study of the Changing American Character
William H.
Whyte, Jr., 1956, The Organization Man
Vance Packard,
1957, The Hidden Persuaders
Betty Friedan,
1963, The Feminine Mystique
Alvin Toffler,
1970, Future Shock
Charles A.
Reich, 1970, The Greening of
John Kenneth Galbraith, 1958, The Affluent Society
John Kenneth Galbraith, 1967, The New
John Kenneth
Galbraith, 1973, Economics and the Public
Purpose
The Nineteen Seventies – End of Growth
Edmund S. Phelps, 1962, The Goal of Economic Growth
E. F.
Schumacher, 1973, Small Is Beautiful,
Economics as if People Mattered
Mancur Olson and Hans H. Landsberg (eds.),
1973, The No-Growth Society
Willis W. Harman, 1976, An Incomplete Guide to the Future
E. J. Mishan, 1977, The Economic Growth Debate, An Assessment
Hazel Henderson, 1980, Creating Alternative Futures, The End of Economics
Hazel Henderson, 1981, The Politics of the Solar Age: Alternatives to Economics
Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol (eds.),
1981, The Crisis in Economic Theory
Robert
Kuttner, 1984, The Economic Illusion,
False Choices Between Prosperity and Social Justice
Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William
M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven M. Tipton, 1985, Habits of the Heart
Thomas Michael Power, 1988, The Economic Pursuit of Quality
Herman E. Daly and John B. Cobb, Jr., 1989,
For the Common Good, Redirecting the
Economy Toward Community, the Environment and a Sustainable Future
Frances Moore Lappe, 1989, Rediscovering
1989, Redefining
Wealth and Progress, New Ways to Measure Economic, Social and Environmental
Change
Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William
M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven M. Tipton, 1991, The Good Society
George P. Brockway, 1991, The End of Economic Man, Principles of Any
Future Economics
George P. Brockway, 1995, Economists Can Be Bad for Your Health
Frank Ackerman, David Kiron,
Conservative Ascendency
Derek Leebaert, 2002, The Fifty-Year Wound, The True Price of
Milton and Rose Friedman, 1980, Free to Choose, A Personal Statement
Lou Cannon, 2003, Governor Reagan, His Rise to Power
Robert Kuttner, 1996, Everything
for
John Kenneth
Galbraith, 1992, The Culture of
Contentment
Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter
with
Domenick J. Maglio, 2005, Invasion Within, Overcoming the Elitists’ Attack on Moral Values and
the
Dean Baker,
2006, The
Brian
Mann, 2006, Welcome to the Homeland, A
journey to the Rural Heart of America’s Conservative Revolution
Alan Wolfe, 1998, One Nation, After All, What Middle-Class Americans Really Think About
Gertrude Himmelfarb, 1999, One Nation, Two Cultures, A Searching
Examination of American Society in the Aftermath of Our Cultural Revolution
Newt Gingrich,
1995, To Renew
Bill Clinton, 2004, My Life
Roger Morris, Partners
in Power, The
Haynes Johnson and David S. Broder, 1996, The System, The
Joseph Stiglitz, 2003, The Roaring Nineties
Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, the Hunting of the President, the Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and
Hillary Clinton
Newt Gingrich, To Renew
Joe
Scarborough, 2004,
D. J. Dionne Jr,
1996, They Only Look Dead, Why
Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era
Amy Goodman, The Exception to the Rulers
Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center, the Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American
Democracy
James
Bovard, 2003, Terrorism and Tyranny,
Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil
Daniel Altman,
2004, Neoconomy, George Bush’s
Revolutionary Gamble with America’s Future
Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten, 2006,
Philippe Sands,
2005, Lawless World, America and the
Making and Breaking of Global Rules from FDR’s Atlantic Charter to George W.
Bush’s Illegal War
Julian Eilperin, 2006, Fight Club Politics, How Partisanship is Poisoning the House of
Representatives
Conservative Deception
Eric Boehlert, 2006, Lapdogs, How the
Press Rolled Over for Bush
David Brock, The Republican Noise Machine, Right-Wing Media and How it Corrupts
Democracy
Senator Robert C. Byrd, 2004, Losing
Graydon Carter, 2004, What
We’ve Lost, How the Bush Administration Has Curtailed Our Freedoms, Mortgaged
Our economy, Ravaged Our Environment and Damaged Our Standing in the World
Joe Conason,
Big Lies, The Right-Wing Propaganda
Machine and How It Distorts the Truth
John W. Dean, 2004, Worse
than Watergate, The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush
Julian Eilperin, 2006, Fight Club Politics, How Partisanship is Poisoning the House of
Representatives
Ben Fritz,
Bryan Keefer, and Bendan Nyhan, 2004, All
the President’s Spin, George W. Bush, The Media, and the Truth
Al Gore, 2007, The Assault on Reason
Jack Huberman, 2007, The GOP-Hater’s Handbook, 378 Reasons Never Again to Vote for the Party
of Reagan, Nixon and Bush Again
Michael Isikoff
and David Corn, 2006. Hubris, The Inside
Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the
Mark
Crispin Miller, 2004, Cruel and Unusual,
Bush/Cheney’s
Frank Rich, 2006, The Greatest Story Ever Sold, The Decline and Fall of Truth From 9/11
to Katrina
Mark Halperin and
John F. Harris, 2006, The Way to Win,
Taking the White House in 2008
Glenn
Greenwald, 2008, Great American
Hypocrites, Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics
Eric Alderman,
2008, Why We’re Liberals, A Political
Handbook for Post-Bush America
Conservative Incompetence – Bush’s ‘War on
Terror’ and
James Fallows, 2006, Blind Into
George Packer, 2005, Assassins’
Philippe Sands, 2005, Lawless World,
America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules from FDR’s Atlantic Charter
to George W. Bush’s Illegal War
Julia E. Sweig, 2006, Friendly Fire, Losing Friends and Making Enemies in the Anti-American
Century
Mark Crispin Miller, 2004, Cruel and Unusual, Bush/Cheney’s
Thomas E. Rick, 2006, Fiasco,
The American Military Adventure in
James Risen, 2006, State of
Bob Woodward, 2006, State
of
Conservative Corruption
Kevin Phillips, 1994, Arrogant
Capital, Washington, Wall Street and the Frustration of American Politics
Marjorie Kelly, 2001, The Divine
Right of Capital
Mark Green, 2002, Selling Out, How
Big Corporate Money Buys Elections, Rams through Legislation, and Betrays Our
Democracy
Thom Hartmann, 2002, Unequal
Protection, The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights
Jim Hightower, 2003, Thieves
in High Places, They’ve Stolen Our Country and It’s Time to Take It Back
David Cay
Ted Nace, 2003, Gangs of
Charles
Derber, 2004, Regime Change Begins at
Home, Freeing America from Corporate Rule
Charles Lewis, 2004, The Buying of
the President 2004, Who’s Really Bankrolling Bush and His Democratic Challenger
– and What They Expect in Return
Roger Lowenstein, 2004, Origins of the Crash, The Great Bubble and its Undoing
T. Christian Miller, 2006, Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives,
and Corporate Greed in
Micah L. Sifry and Nancy Watzman, 2004, Is That Politician in Your Pocket?
David Sirota, 2006, Hostile Takeover,
How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government – and How We Take It Back
Christian Conservatives
Glenn Greenwald, 2007, A Tragic
Legacy, How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency
Chris Hedges, 2006, American Fascists, The Christian Right and
the War on
Esther Kaplan, 2004, With God on Their Side, How Christian
Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy, and Democracy in George W. Bush’s
White House
Mark Douglas McGarvie,
2004, One Nation Under
Ryan Sager, 2006, The Elephant in the
Room, Evangelicals, Libertarians, and the
Mel White, 2006, Religion
Gone Bad, The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right
Traditional Conservatives
Criticize New Conservatives
Bruce Bartlett, 2006, Impostor, How George W. Bush Bankrupted
Patrick Buchanan, 2004, Where the
Right Went Wrong, How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and
Hijacked the Bush Presidency
Stephen Slivinski,
2006, Buck Wild, How Republicans Brock
the Bank and Became the Party of Big Government
Michael D. Tanner,
2007, Leviathan on the Right, How
Big-Government Brought Down the Republican Revolution
Richard A. Viguerie,
2006, Conservatives Betrayed, How George
Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause
Joe Scarborough, 2004,
Others Criticize New Conservatives
James Bovard, 2003, Terrorism and Tyranny, Trampling Freedom,
Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil*
Graydon Carter, 2004, What We’ve Lost, How the Bush Administration
Has Curtailed Our Freedoms, Mortgaged Our economy, Ravaged Our Environment and
Damaged Our Standing in the World
Glenn Greenwald, 2006,
How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President
Run Amok
Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, 2006, Off Center, the Republican Revolution and
the Erosion of American Democracy*