History & Politics from the 2013 Summer Newsletter

Heaped with praise and honors, including the National Book Critics Circle Award, Caro’s epic biography series about Lyndon B. Johnson concludes with LBJ finally in the White House. “By writing the best presidential biography the country has ever seen, Caro has forever changed the way we think, and read, American history.” —NPR

Jeremy Scahill’s new book is a chilling, exhaustive record of how our country chooses to pursue and perpetuate the seemingly limitless and globe-encompassing “war on terror.” A milestone in real journalism and easily one of the most important books of the decade.

On the heels of his award-winning It Gets Better campaign, columnist and provocateur Dan Savage weighs in on such diverse issues as health care, gun control, and marriage equality with characteristic straight talk and humor. “Savage is that rarity, a liberal—verging on radical—who defends his positions with steel-trap logic and scornful humor laced with profanity and stripped of politically correct cant.”
—Publishers Weekly

Journalist George Packer, author of The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, looks at the last three decades of American history through the lives of a group of very different American citizens: a descendent of tobacco farmers from the South, a factory worker living in a city that is rapidly becoming post-industrial, a Washington D.C. political idealist with a fondness for money, and a billionaire from Silicon Valley who’s become disillusioned by the Internet. Mr. Packer not only examines the ways in which America is troubled, but more importantly, investigates the reasons why America is troubled. —The Observer