"A brilliantly funny novel about ambition and marriage from the best selling author of Girls in White Dresses, The Better Half tells the story of a young wife who follows her husband and his political dreams to D.C., a city of idealism, gossip, and complicated friendships among young Washington's aspiring elite. When Beth arrives in Washington, D.C., she hates everything about it: the confusing traffic circles, the ubiquitous Ann Taylor suits, the...

History does not repeat, but it does instruct. In the twentieth century, European democracies collapsed into fascism, Nazism and communism. These were movements in which a leader or a party claimed to give voice to the people, promised to protect them from global existential threats, and rejected reason in favour of myth. European history shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary people can find themselves...

In a climate of culture wars and tremendous economic uncertainty, America is often reduced to a simplistic schism between red states and blue states. In response to that oversimplification, journalist Dante Chinni teamed up with political geographer James Gimpel to launch the Patchwork Nation project, using on-the-ground reporting and statistical analysis to get past generalizations and probe American communities in depth. The result is Our Patchwork...

For decades the liberal class was a defense against the worst excesses of power. But the pillars of the liberal class -- the press, universities, the labor movement, the Democratic Party, and liberal religious institutions -- have collapsed. In its absence, the poor, the working class, and even the middle class no longer have a champion. In this searing polemic Chris Hedges indicts liberal institutions, including his former employer, the New York...

"From MSNBC correspondent Steve Kornacki, a lively and sweeping history of the 1990s--one that brings critical new understanding to our current political landscape"--

"Military fiction that imagines a geopolitical conflict in the year 2054"-- It is twenty years after the catastrophic war between the United States and China that brought down the old American political order. A new party has emerged in the US, one that's held power for over a decade. Efforts to cement its grip have resulted in mounting violent resistance. The American president has control of the media, but he is beginning to lose control of the...

A demagogue is a tyrant who owes his initial rise to the democratic support of the masses. Huey Long, Hugo Chavez, and Moqtada al-Sadr are all clear examples of this dangerous byproduct of democracy. Demagogue takes a long view of the fight to defend democracy from within, from the brutal general Cleon in ancient Athens, the demagogues who plagued the bloody French Revolution, George W. Bush's naïve democratic experiment in Iraq, and beyond. This...

Examines how free speech in the United States has been corrupted by the politically powerful and how the contemporary landscape of social media and social polarization have eroded the safeguards built into the Constitution to protect speech.