written by Lynn
Mid-term elections in the US on November 8 will determine all kinds of policy changes over the coming two years. In anticipation of the books that will be written about the outcome, we have a couple of recommendations for you in the meantime:
- Read about the rule of law, as this is the crux of the matter in current US politics. Here’s what The Guardian had to say about Geoffrey Berman’s widely praised book Holding the Line: Inside the Nation’s Preeminent Us Attorney’s Office and Its Battle with the Trump Justice Department.
“Five months before the 2020 election, Bill Barr fired Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney for the southern district of New York. The fired New York prosecutor has produced a classic of a modern literary genre: Trump alumni revenge porn. It is smart and crisp. It is full of bile and easy to read.”
- For a litany of smack-yourself-on-the-forehead moments, pick up The New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman’s book Confidence Man. In her role as a NYT reporter and White House correspondent, Haberman interviewed Trump several times—beginning in the 1990s—for this book.
Access was never a problem. Hearing that Trump said of her: “She’s like my psychiatrist,” Haberman responded in a September 2022 article in The Atlantic: “The reality is that he treats everyone like they are his psychiatrists—reporters, government aides, and members of Congress, friends and pseudo-friends and rally attendees and White House staff and customers. All present a chance for him to vent or test reactions or gauge how his statements are playing or discover how he is feeling. He works things out in real time in front of all of us. Along the way, he reoriented an entire country to react to his moods and emotions.”
- Former First Lady Michelle Obama is back with The Light We Carry, the follow-up to her bestselling 2018 memoir Becoming. Perhaps the sanest person populating the USA’s political landscape, Obama, according to her publishers, “shares practical wisdom and powerful strategies for staying hopeful and balanced in today’s highly uncertain world.” Just what the doctor ordered.
- Go back to the source by reading the Declaration of Independence and The US Constitution, the documents the Union was founded on.
