But just because it will be a boring book doesn't mean that its existence isn't interesting.

Thiessen is a very poor Washington Post opinion columnist who wrote a book in which he strung together a series of distortions in support of the thesis that torture is great. Before the book and the column gig, he was a speechwriter for George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. (Before that, Thiessen spent six years as a spokesperson and "policy adviser" to unreconstructed white supremacist Sen. Jesse Helms, which is another thing that should effectively bar him from participating in civilized society.)

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

It is common for operatives to spend much of their time trying to figure out what the opposition is up to, but Quinn’s fixation on Rove had risen to the level of obsession. She kept easily accessible on her computer desktop the video of a 1972 CBS News report in which Dan Rather visits the Committee for the Re-Election of the President to marvel at the latest techniques being used to support Richard Nixon’s reelection, including the earliest efforts at data-driven direct-mail fundraising. The correspondent then travels to the basement, where he meets the executive director of the College Republicans, busy plotting Nixon’s youth registration efforts. “Young people have got to reach other young people, and that’s what we’re seeking to do,” says a 21-year-old Karl Rove, decorated with glasses, a tie and vest combination, and luxurious sideburns.

Continue Reading...

View the slide show to see which books earned Bill Clinton's highest reviews.

[slide_show id=12991962]

Continue Reading...

In fact, what's most noteworthy aren't the discrepancies Maraniss found in Obama's official story, but how many right-wing lies he debunked. The president was born in Hawaii. He is not a secret Muslim; in fact, his Kenyan father owed his education and his American sojourn to evangelical Christians. Those mysterious New York years? Not mysterious, just kind of dull. Which unsavory sponsor paid for his Ivy League education? Mostly his grandmother, along with some student loans.

Continue Reading...

In an interview with Salon, she talked about Rick Perry's abstinence, poked fun at the Alamo and assessed the Mitt Romney campaign.

You don't seem like you're all that crazy about Texas.

Well, I'm certainly crazy about the people in Texas. They're kind of amazing. But as I said in the book, Texas has both managed to lead the country in paranoia about the federal government and dictate a great chunk of this national agenda over the last 30 years, which is kind of a strange combination.

Continue Reading...

It could be worse, I realized. I could live here.

Cold comfort, perhaps, but comfort nonetheless. And so, for providing the enforced monotony that only a dull road trip can provide, and the bleak void to which to compare my own relatively full life, I am grateful to the state of Nebraska. Nebraska has a special place in my heart.

It has no place, however, on a map of the United States.

Let me explain: California is a state. New York is a state. Texas, for the time being at least, is a state. And they deserve to be. They’re big, they’re boisterous — but most crucially, they’re populated. Thirty-seven million people live in California, four million in Los Angeles alone. New York is home to almost 20 million people. If California were a country, it would have the eighth largest economy in the world. If New York City were its own state, it would be the 12th largest — and in my humble New Yorker opinion, the best.

Continue Reading...

"If you have already got 96 percent of what you want," Ferguson told Salon, "why not take the remaining 4? That's where the culture of American finance is right now, and I think it's really dangerous for the country."

Continue Reading...

By stripping down Lyndon Baines Johnson to his essence, Robert Caro has himself become an American legend. Since the publication of "The Path to Power" in 1982, Caro has transformed LBJ’s life into a cautionary tale of Shakespearean dimensions. In some wonky circles, the release of a new volume is heralded like the Summer of Love release of “Sgt. Pepper's.” Can Caro possibly top his “Revolver"?”

I am proud to be one of those wonks.  Anticipating the release of "The Passage of Power," I went full-metal LBJ, and reread every word of the previous 1,040 page “prequel” – “Master of the Senate.” Much like catching up on the last season of “Mad Men” before the new one begins, I time-traveled like the hero from the new Stephen King JFK-themed novel back to 1958, as the Master Senator (and Master Biographer) prepared for their rendezvous with world history.

Continue Reading...

Every politician's memoir, especially if written while the author is still in office, is a series of self-serving half-truths. There's really not much benefit to total and complete honesty, and most politicians are convinced enough of their own righteousness that they probably don't even think of their omissions and distortions as dishonest. So, everyone Haley trashes in her book says she is lying. That is not that surprising!

Among the points of contention:

Continue Reading...

Who are these people? What business do they know? I am going to go out on a limb and say that these people know the business of political punditry. Part of the business of political punditry, like most jobs in media and publishing, is logrolling.

The back of Matthews' "Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero" features advance praise from historian and frequent "Hardball" guest Doris Kearns Goodwin ("Chris Matthews is a masterful storyteller"); historian, writer and occasional "Hardball" guest Douglas Brinkley ("I give it ten gold stars!"); biographer and Aspen Institute president Walter Isaacson ("an awesome and delightful book"); and frequent MSNBC commentator and batty old aunt Peggy Noonan ("an insightful piece of work and a great time!" italics hers); My favorite blurb of all is from NBC anchor and amateur comedian Brian Williams: "Chris Matthews takes on a giant of American life—and triumphs." So in this book, Chris Matthews ... fights JFK? And beats him?

Continue Reading...

This is defining adult down. Mitt Romney is tall and has nice hair. He looks like a dad in a Cialis commercial. He's on a stage with smug adulterer Newt Gingrich, serial sexual harassment clown Herman Cain, crazy-eyed witch-burner Michele Bachmann, and out-of-date George W. Bush impression Rick Perry. So, sure, Romney, why not?

What went wrong for Perry, though? I mean besides the fact that he is pretty obviously both dimwitted and lazy. According to Shrum, who quotes the book at length, what went wrong for Perry is that he did not prepare for the debate by reading Chris Matthews' "lyrical new book 'Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero,'" which Shrum quotes at length.

Continue Reading...

Abramoff pleaded guilty to defrauding his lobbying clients through over-billing and double-dealing. He admitted to bribery and wire fraud. In his interview, Abramoff explained basically How He Did It, and it turns out that it's really not that hard to "bribe" a member of Congress. Offer their staffers jobs and give the members lots of gifts and campaign donations. Then you can write whatever you want into pending legislation, more or less.

Continue Reading...

• She has done drugs.
• She had sex with a basketball player before she married Todd.
• She is mean and petty.
• She is a bad mother.
• She had an affair after she married Todd.

There is also, obviously, some stuff about Trig's birth, but I have not yet read the book, so I couldn't tell you how far down the rabbit hole that goes.

Here's my reaction to those revelations: Sarah Palin is a person! She's done drugs and pissed people off and slept with people, like 90 percent of American humans. If Sarah Palin was smart she'd dismiss the book with a chuckle, say nobody's perfect, laugh off the "gossip," and move on.

Sarah Palin might not be smart.

The Palins always prefer grand self-pitying martyrdom to quiet dignity, of course, which is why picking on them can be so profitable: They will always respond, and always help you drum up more publicity for your Palin-attacking venture. Instead of depriving the book of oxygen, they launched a multimedia attack on Joe McGinniss before he'd finished the first draft, and what they accomplished was ... giving him more material and ensuring that even more breathless anticipation awaited the book's release.

Continue Reading...

Dick Cheney's memoir apparently mentions a lot of books he read and enjoyed. Mostly books about wars and frontier settlers and so on. Good Republican books. But the Washington Post's nonfiction book editor notes that Cheney doesn't mention reading anything while actually in office as vice president:

Continue Reading...

The Newsweek Michele Bachman cover posted newsstand sales no higher than most other Newsweek covers. The "crazy eyes" cover moved 47,225 copies, according to Newsweek, though AdWeek says other industry sources say it sold somewhere between 35,000 and 48,000. Is that good? Well, "the magazine's single copy sales averaged 46,561 per issue in the first half of 2011."

We are talking only about newsstand sales, not total circulation, but this does mean that Bachmann's incredibly controversial and very buzzy crazy eyes did not "move the needle," as annoying people say. Of course, the actual article about Bachmann, inside of the eye-grabbing cover, was pretty bland. But since when does the quality of the journalism have anything to do with newsstand sales?

Continue Reading...

The reports are in about the books President Obama is looking at on his annual trip to Martha’s Vineyard. According to reports from the Los Angeles Times and the AP, Obama purchased five books on his trip to the Vineyard bookseller Bunch of Grapes: Marianna Baer’s Frost, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Daniel Woodrell’s Bayou Trilogy, Emma Donoghue’s Room, and Ward Just’s Rodin’s Debutante.

The second wave came when, according to Alexis Simendinger, White House aides listed for reporters the three books Obama brought with him to the Vineyard: two more novels — Abraham Verghese’s Cutting for Stone and David Grossman’s To the End of the Land — and one nonfiction work — Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.

Continue Reading...

That's what she told the crowd assembled at Women's National Republican Club in New York, where she was apparently booked to speak at the same time that she was booked to be interviewed on cable news by that guy from "The Apprentice." The New York Observer was there:

Continue Reading...