2011′s African American Political Bestsellers

1. The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity by Jeffrey D. Sachs
   (Random House, 2011-10-04, Hardcover)
   

   For more than three decades, Jeffrey D. Sachs has been at the forefront of international economic problem solving.  But Sachs turns his attention back home in The Price of Civilization, a book that is essential reading for every American. In a forceful, impassioned, and personal voice, he offers not only a searing and incisive diagnosis of our country’s economic ills but also an urgent call for Americans to restore the virtues of fairness, honesty, and foresight as the foundations of national prosperity.As he has done in dozens of countries around the world in the midst of economic crises, Sachs turns his unique diagnostic skills to what ails the American economy. He finds that both political parties—and many leading economists—have missed the big picture, offering shortsighted solutions such as stimulus spending or tax cuts to address complex economic problems that require deeper solutions. Sachs argues that we have profoundly underestimated globalization’s long-term effects on our country, which create deep and largely unmet challenges with regard to jobs, incomes, poverty, and the environment. America’s single biggest economic failure, Sachs argues, is its inability to come to grips with the new global economic realities.Yet Sachs goes deeper than an economic diagnosis. By taking a broad, holistic approach—looking at domestic politics, geopolitics, social psychology, and the natural environment as well—Sachs reveals the larger fissures underlying our country’s current crisis. He shows how Washington has consistently failed to address America’s economic needs. He describes a political system that has lost its ethical moorings, in which ever-rising campaign contributions and lobbying outlays overpower the voice of the citizenry. He also looks at the crisis in our culture, in which an overstimulated and consumption-driven populace in a ferocious quest for wealth now suffers shortfalls of social trust, honesty, and compassion. Finally, Sachs offers a plan to turn the crisis around. He argues persuasively that the problem is not America’s abiding values, which remain generous and pragmatic, but the ease with which political spin and consumerism run circles around those values. He bids the reader to reclaim the virtues of good citizenship and mindfulness toward the economy and one another. Most important, he bids each of us to accept the price of civilization, so that together we can restore America to its great promise.  The Price of Civilization is a masterly road map for prosperity, founded on America’s deepest values and on a rigorous understanding of the twenty-first-century world economy.

    

2. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
   (Viking Adult, 2011-04-04, Hardcover)
   

   Years in the making–the definitive biography of the legendary black activist. Of the great figure in twentieth-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins’ bullets at age thirty-nine. Through his tireless work and countless speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man. In death he became a broad symbol of both resistance and reconciliation for millions around the world. Manning Marable’s new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement. Filled with new information and shocking revelations that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a sweeping story of race and class in America, from the rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties and sixties. Reaching into Malcolm’s troubled youth, it traces a path from his parents’ activism through his own engagement with the Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the never-before-told true story of his assassination. Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of the most singular forces for social change, capturing with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.

    

3. Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Means to Be Black Now by Touré
   (Free Press, 2011-09-13, Hardcover)
   

   In the age of Obama, racial attitudes have become more complicated and nuanced than ever before. Inspired by a president who is unlike any Black man ever seen on our national stage, we are searching for new ways of understanding Blackness. In this provocative new book, iconic commentator and journalist TourÉ tackles what it means to be Black in America today.TourÉ begins by examining the concept of “Post-Blackness,” a term that defines artists who are proud to be Black but don’t want to be limited by identity politics and boxed in by race. He soon discovers that the desire to be rooted in but not constrained by Blackness is everywhere. In Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness? he argues that Blackness is infinite, that any identity imaginable is Black, and that all expressions of Blackness are legitimate.Here, TourÉ divulges intimate, funny, and painful stories of how race and racial expectations have shaped his life and explores how the concept of Post-Blackness functions in politics, society, psychology, art, culture, and more. He knew he could not tackle this topic all on his own so he turned to 105 of the most important luminaries of our time for frank and thought-provoking opinions, including the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Cornel West, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Malcolm Gladwell, Michael Eric Dyson, Melissa Harris-Perry, Harold Ford Jr., Kara Walker, Kehinde Wiley, Glenn Ligon, Paul Mooney, New York Governor David Paterson, Greg Tate, Aaron McGruder, Soledad O’Brien, Kamala Harris, Chuck D, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and many others. By engaging this brilliant, eclectic group, and employing his signature insight, courage, and wit, TourÉ delivers a clarion call on race in America and how we can change our perceptions for a better future. Destroying the notion that there is a correct way of being Black, Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness? will change how we perceive race forever.

    

4. Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family by Condoleezza Rice
   (Three Rivers Press, 2011-10-11, Paperback)
   

   Condoleezza Rice has excelled as a diplomat, political scientist, and concert pianist.  Her achievements run the gamut from helping to oversee the collapse of communism in Europe and the decline of the Soviet Union, to working to protect the country in the aftermath of 9-11, to becoming only the second woman – and the first black woman ever — to serve as Secretary of State.  But until she was 25 she never learned to swim. Not because she wouldn’t have loved to, but because when she was a little girl in Birmingham, Alabama, Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor decided he’d rather shut down the city’s pools than give black citizens access. Throughout the 1950′s, Birmingham’s black middle class largely succeeded in insulating their children from the most corrosive effects of racism, providing multiple support systems to ensure the next generation would live better than the last.  But by 1963, when Rice was applying herself to her fourth grader’s lessons, the situation had grown intolerable.  Birmingham was an environment where blacks were expected to keep their head down and do what they were told — or face violent consequences. That spring two bombs exploded in Rice’s neighborhood amid a series of chilling Klu Klux Klan attacks.  Months later, four young girls lost their lives in a particularly vicious bombing. So how was Rice able to achieve what she ultimately did? Her father, John, a minister and educator, instilled a love of sports and politics.  Her mother, a teacher, developed Condoleezza’s passion for piano and exposed her to the fine arts.  From both, Rice learned the value of faith in the face of hardship and the importance of giving back to the community.  Her parents’ fierce unwillingness to set limits propelled her to the venerable halls of Stanford University, where she quickly rose through the ranks to become the university’s second-in-command.  An expert in Soviet and Eastern European Affairs, she played a leading role in U.S. policy as the Iron Curtain fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated.  Less than a decade later, at the apex of the hotly contested 2000 presidential election, she received the exciting news – just shortly before her father’s death – that she would go on to the White House as the first female National Security Advisor.   As comfortable describing lighthearted family moments as she is recalling the poignancy of her mother’s cancer battle and the heady challenge of going toe-to-toe with Soviet leaders, Rice holds nothing back in this remarkably candid telling. This is the story of Condoleezza Rice that has never been told, not that of an ultra-accomplished world leader, but of a little girl – and a young woman — trying to find her place in a sometimes hostile world and of two exceptional parents, and an extended family and community, that made all the difference.From the Hardcover edition.

    

5. The President’s Girlfriend by Mallory Monroe
   (AUSTIN BROOK PUBLISHING, 2011-08-16, Kindle Edition)
   

   When Regina Lansing, an activist attorney from Newark, New Jersey, catches the eye of the President of the United States, she assumes it’s because of her outspoken stance against his tough policies. But when they meet, and sparks fly, she discovers the soul mate she never dreamed would come her way. Walter “Dutch” Harber, the gorgeous bachelor president, has his hands full with a combative Congress and an upcoming reelection bid. But when he meets Gina, this voluptuous black woman with all the right curves, he finds in her a strong, independent equal who keeps him intellectually-challenged publicly and sexually-energized privately, so much so that he becomes convinced that he has finally met the love of his life.But Washington politics won’t give this interracial couple an easy ride, as they must battle forces from within and forces from without that seek to tear down everything they have fought so hard to build up. And just when they thought they had endured every knockout punch imaginable, another curve is tossed their way with the kind of implications, the kind of jarring reality, that can not only destroy a love affair, but can bring down an entire presidency.

    

6. The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World by Dave Zirin
   (Haymarket Books, 2011-10-04, Hardcover)
   

   Seen around the world, John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s Black Power salute on the 1968 Olympicpodium sparked controversy and career fallout. Yet their show of defiance remains one of the most iconicimages of Olympic history and the Black Power movement. Here is the remarkable story of one of the menbehind the salute, lifelong activist John Carlos.John Carlos is an African American former track and field athlete, professional football player, and a founding member of the Olympic Project for Human Rights. He won the bronze medal in the 200 meters race at the 1968 Olympics, where his Black Power salute on the podium with Tommie Smith caused much political controversy. The John Carlos Story is his first book.Dave Zirin is the author of four books, including Bad Sports, A People’s History of Sports in the United States, and What’s My Name, Fool? He writes the popular weekly online sports column “The Edge of Sports” and is a regular contributor to SportsIllustrated.com, SLAM, Los Angeles Times, and The Nation, where he is the publication’s first sports editor.

    

7. Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America by Melissa V. Harris-Perry
   (Yale University Press, 2011-09-20, Hardcover)
   

   Jezebel’s sexual lasciviousness, Mammy’s devotion, and Sapphire’s outspoken anger—these are among the most persistent stereotypes that black women encounter in contemporary American life. Hurtful and dishonest, such representations force African American women to navigate a virtual crooked room that shames them and shapes their experiences as citizens. Many respond by assuming a mantle of strength that may convince others, and even themselves, that they do not need help. But as a result, the unique political issues of black women are often ignored and marginalized.In this groundbreaking book, Melissa V. Harris-Perry uses multiple methods of inquiry, including literary analysis, political theory, focus groups, surveys, and experimental research, to understand more deeply black women’s political and emotional responses to pervasive negative race and gender images. Not a traditional political science work concerned with office-seeking, voting, or ideology, Sister Citizen instead explores how African American women understand themselves as citizens and what they expect from political organizing. Harris-Perry shows that the shared struggle to preserve an authentic self and secure recognition as a citizen links together black women in America, from the anonymous survivors of Hurricane Katrina to the current First Lady of the United States. (20110314)

    

8. The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency by Randall Kennedy
   (Pantheon, 2011-08-16, Hardcover)
   

   Timely—as the 2012 presidential election nears—and controversial, here is the first book by a major African-American public intellectual on racial politics and the Obama presidency. Renowned for his cool reason vis-à-vis the pitfalls and clichés of racial discourse, Randall Kennedy—Harvard professor of law and author of the New York Times best seller Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word—gives us a keen and shrewd analysis of the complex relationship between the first black president and his African-American constituency. Kennedy tackles such hot-button issues as the nature of racial opposition to Obama, whether Obama has a singular responsibility to African Americans, electoral politics and cultural chauvinism, black patriotism, the differences in Obama’s presentation of himself to blacks and to whites, the challenges posed by the dream of a postracial society, and the far-from-simple symbolism of Obama as a leader of the Joshua generation in a country that has elected only three black senators and two black governors in its entire history. Eschewing the critical excesses of both the left and the right, Kennedy offers a gimlet-eyed view of Obama’s triumphs and travails, his strengths and weaknesses, as they pertain to the troubled history of race in America.

    

9. Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding Home by Anita Hill
   (Beacon Press, 2011-10-04, Hardcover)
   

   From the heroic lawyer who spoke out against Clarence Thomas in the historic confirmation hearings twenty years ago, Anita Hill’s first book since the best-selling Speaking Truth to Power.In 1991, Anita Hill’s courageous testimony during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings sparked a national conversation on sexual harassment and women’s equality in politics and the workplace. Today, she turns her attention to another potent and enduring symbol of economic success and equality—the home. Hill details how the current housing crisis, resulting in the devastation of so many families, so many communities, and even whole cities, imperils every American’s ability to achieve the American Dream. Hill takes us on a journey that begins with her own family story and ends with the subprime mortgage meltdown. Along the way, she invites us into homes across America, rural and urban, and introduces us to some extraordinary African American women. As slavery ended, Mollie Elliott, Hill’s ancestor, found herself with an infant son and no husband. Yet, she bravely set course to define for generations to come what it meant to be a free person of color. On the eve of the civil rights and women’s rights movements, Lorraine Hansberry’s childhood experience of her family’s fight against racial restrictions in a Chicago neighborhood ended tragically for the Hansberry family. Yet, that episode shaped Lorraine’s hopeful account of early suburban integration in her iconic American drama A Raisin in the Sun.  Two decades later, Marla, a divorced mother, endeavors to keep her children safe from a growing gang presence in 1980s Los Angeles. Her story sheds light on the fears and anxiety countless parents faced during an era of growing neighborhood isolation, and that continue today. In the midst of the 2008 recession, hairdresser Anjanette Booker’s dogged determination to keep her Baltimore home and her salon reflects a commitment to her own independence and to her community’s economic and social viability. Finally, Hill shares her own journey to a place and a state of being at home that brought her from her roots in rural Oklahoma to suburban Boston, Massachusetts, and connects her own search for home with that of women and men set adrift during the foreclosure crisis.  The ability to secure a place that provides access to every opportunity our country has to offer is central to the American Dream. To achieve that ideal, Hill argues, we and our leaders must engage in a new conversation about what it takes to be at home in America. Pointing out that the inclusive democracy our Constitution promises is bigger than the current debate about legal rights, she presents concrete proposals that encourage us to reimagine equality. Hill offers a twenty-first-century vision of America—not a vision of migration, but one of roots; not one simply of tolerance, but one of belonging; not just of rights, but also of community—a community of equals.

    

10. American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation by Michael Kazin
    (Knopf, 2011-08-23, Hardcover)
    

    A panoramic yet intimate history of the American left—of the reformers, radicals, and idealists who have fought for a more just and humane society, from the abolitionists to Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky—that gives us a revelatory new way of looking at two centuries of American politics and culture. Michael Kazin—one of the most respected historians of the American left working today—takes us from abolitionism and early feminism to the labor struggles of the industrial age, through the emergence of anarchists, socialists, and communists, right up to the New Left in the 1960s and ’70s. While the history of the left is a long story of idealism and determination, it has also been, in the traditional view, a story of movements that failed to gain support from mainstream America. In American Dreamers, Kazin tells a new history: one in which many of these movements, although they did not fully succeed on their own terms, nonetheless made lasting contributions to American society that led to equal opportunity for women, racial minorities, and homosexuals; the celebration of sexual pleasure; multiculturalism in the media and the schools; and the popularity of books and films with altruistic and antiauthoritarian messages. Deeply informed, at once judicious and impassioned, and superbly written, American Dreamers is an essential book for our times and for anyone seeking to understand our political history and the people who made it.

     

11. The Black History of the White House (City Lights Open Media) by Clarence Lusane
    (City Lights Publishers, 2011-01-01, Paperback)
    

    “Clarence Lusane is one of America’s most thoughtful and critical thinkers on issues of race, class and power.”—Manning Marable”Barack Obama may be the first black president in the White House, but he’s far from the first black person to work in it. In this fascinating history of all the enslaved people, workers and entertainers who spent time in the president’s official residence over the years, Clarence Lusane restores the White House to its true colors.” –Barbara EhrenreichThe Black History of the White House presents the untold history, racial politics, and shifting significance of the White House as experienced by African Americans, from the generations of enslaved people who helped to build it or were forced to work there to its first black First Family, the Obamas.Clarence Lusane juxtaposes significant events in White House history with the ongoing struggle for democratic, civil, and human rights by black Americans and demonstrates that only during crises have presidents used their authority to advance racial justice. He describes how in 1901 the building was officially named the “White House” amidst a furious backlash against President Roosevelt for inviting Booker T. Washington to dinner, and how that same year that saw the consolidation of white power with the departure of the last black Congressmember elected after the Civil War. Lusane explores how, from its construction in 1792 to its becoming the home of the first black president, the White House has been a prism through which to view the progress and struggles of black Americans seeking full citizenship and justice.Dr. Clarence Lusane has published in The Washington Post, The Miami Herald, The Baltimore Sun, Oakland Tribune, Black Scholar, and Race and Class. He often appears on PBS, BET, C-SPAN, and other national media. The author of several books and former

     

12. At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance–A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power (Vintage) by Danielle L. McGuire
    (Vintage, 2011-10-04, Paperback)
    

    Rosa Parks was often described as a sweet and reticent elderly woman whose tired feet caused her to defy segregation on Montgomery’s city buses, and whose supposedly solitary, spontaneous act sparked the 1955 bus boycott that gave birth to the civil rights movement. The truth of who Rosa Parks was and what really lay beneath the 1955 boycott is far different from anything previously written. In this groundbreaking and important book, Danielle McGuire writes about the rape in 1944 of a twenty-four-year-old mother and sharecropper, Recy Taylor, who strolled toward home after an evening of singing and praying at the Rock Hill Holiness Church in Abbeville, Alabama. Seven white men, armed with knives and shotguns, ordered the young woman into their green Chevrolet, raped her, and left her for dead. The president of the local NAACP branch office sent his best investigator and organizer to Abbeville. Her name was Rosa Parks. In taking on this case, Parks launched a movement that ultimately changed the world.The author gives us the never-before-told history of how the civil rights movement began; how it was in part started in protest against the ritualistic rape of black women by white men who used economic intimidation, sexual violence, and terror to derail the freedom movement; and how those forces persisted unpunished throughout the Jim Crow era when white men assaulted black women to enforce rules of racial and economic hierarchy. Black women’s protests against sexual assault and interracial rape fueled civil rights campaigns throughout the South that began during World War II and went through to the Black Power movement. The Montgomery bus boycott was the baptism, not the birth, of that struggle. At the Dark End of the Street describes the decades of degradation black women on the Montgomery city buses endured on their way to cook and clean for their white bosses. It reveals how Rosa Parks, by 1955 one of the most radical activists in Alabama, had had enough. “There had to be a stopping place,” she said, “and this seemed to be the place for me to stop being pushed around.” Parks refused to move from her seat on the bus, was arrested, and, with fierce activist Jo Ann Robinson, organized a one-day bus boycott.The protest, intended to last twenty-four hours, became a yearlong struggle for dignity and justice. It broke the back of the Montgomery city bus lines and bankrupted the company.We see how and why Rosa Parks, instead of becoming a leader of the movement she helped to start, was turned into a symbol of virtuous black womanhood, sainted and celebrated for her quiet dignity, prim demeanor, and middle-class propriety—her radicalism all but erased. And we see as well how thousands of black women whose courage and fortitude helped to transform America were reduced to the footnotes of history.A controversial, moving, and courageous book; narrative history at its best.From the Hardcover edition.

     

Bestselling Books on Barack Obama in 2011

1. Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America by Ann Coulter
   (Crown Forum, 2011-06-07, Hardcover)
   

   Citing the father of mob psychology, Gustave Le Bon, Coulter catalogs the Left’s mob behaviors: the creation of messiahs, the fear of scientific innovation, the mythmaking, the preference for images over words, the lack of morals, and the casual embrace of contradictory ideas. Coulter traces the history of the liberal mob to the French Revolution and Robespierre’s revolutionaries (delineating a clear distinction from America’s founding fathers), who simply proclaimed that they were exercising the “general will” before slaughtering their fellow citizens “for the good of mankind.” Similarly, as Coulter demonstrates, liberal mobs, from student radicals to white-trash racists to anti-war and pro-ObamaCare fanatics today, have consistently used violence to implement their idea of the “general will.” This is not the American tradition; it is the tradition of Stalin, of Hitler, of the guillotine — and the tradition of the American Left. As the heirs of the French Revolution, Democrats have a history that consists of pandering to mobs, time and again, while Republicans, heirs to the American Revolution, have regularly stood for peaceable order. Hoping to muddy this horrifying truth, liberals slanderously accuse conservatives of their own crimes — assassination plots, conspiracy theorizing, political violence, embrace of the Ku Klux Klan. Coulter shows that the truth is the opposite: Political violence — mob violence — is always a Democratic affair. Surveying two centuries of mob movements, Coulter demonstrates that the mob is always destructive. And yet, she argues, beginning with the civil rights movement in the sixties, Americans have lost their natural, inherited aversion to mobs. Indeed, most Americans have no idea what they are even dealing with. Only by recognizing the mobs and their demonic nature can America begin to defend itself.

    

2. The Killing of Osama Bin Laden: How the Mission to Hunt Down a Terrorist Mastermind was Accomplished by Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff
   (Glenneyre Press, 2011-05-06)
   

   The courier was the key. A mid-level al-Qaeda operative who played a small part in the planning of the 9/11 attacks and was with Bin Laden when he escaped the battle of Tora Bora. Find out who the courier was, and how with one phone call, he eventually led the CIA to Bin Laden’s fortress-like mansion in the affluent suburbs of Abbottabad, Pakistan. Years after the trail had gone cold, Osama Bin Laden, was once again within our sights. Finally the largest manhunt in U.S. counterterrorism history was headed to its singular and bloody conclusion if only the President and his team could figure out how to get him before he vanished once again. The gut punch Osama Bin Laden landed on 9/11 still stings. What he took from country on that terrible day can never be replaced, nor can the lives of the thousands of innocent men, women and children murdered in the name of some crusade. And even though it will still be a long time until we Americans fully heal from the pain of the worst terrorist attacks on our soil, we can rest assured that the man who became the epitome of evil in the modern world will never do this again.This commemorative ebook edition of the events that led to Bin Laden’s death includes details about the courier whose phone call doomed the al-Qaeda leader and the detective work that led the CIA to the front door of his fortress-like mansion compound in an affluent neighborhood of suburban Pakistan.

    

3. A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother by Janny Scott
   (Riverhead Hardcover, 2011-05-03, Hardcover)
   

   A major publishing event: an unprecedented look into the life of the woman who most singularly shaped Barack Obama-his mother. Barack Obama has written extensively about his father, but little is known about Stanley Ann Dunham, the fiercely independent woman who raised him, the person he credits for, as he says, “what is best in me.” Here is the missing piece of the story. Award-winning reporter Janny Scott interviewed nearly two hundred of Dunham’s friends, colleagues, and relatives (including both her children), and combed through boxes of personal and professional papers, letters to friends, and photo albums, to uncover the full breadth of this woman’s inspiring and untraditional life, and to show the remarkable extent to which she shaped the man Obama is today. Dunham’s story moves from Kansas and Washington state to Hawaii and Indonesia. It begins in a time when interracial marriage was still a felony in much of the United States, and culminates in the present, with her son as our president- something she never got to see. It is a poignant look at how character is passed from parent to child, and offers insight into how Obama’s destiny was created early, by his mother’s extraordinary faith in his gifts, and by her unconventional mothering. Finally, it is a heartbreaking story of a woman who died at age fifty-two, before her son would go on to his greatest accomplishments and reflections of what she taught him.

    

4. The Other Barack: The Bold and Reckless Life of President Obama’s Father by Sally H. Jacobs
   (PublicAffairs, 2011-07-07, Kindle Edition)
   

   Barack Obama, father of the American president, was part of Africa’s “independence generation” and in 1959 it seemed his star would shine brightly. He came to the U.S. from Kenya and was given a university scholarship. While in the Hawaii, he met Ann Dunham in 1961, and his son Barack was born. He left his young family to gain a master’s degree from Harvard.After that, Obama’s life became progressively more complicated. He was a brilliant economist, yet never held the coveted government job he felt should have been his. He was a polygamist, an alcoholic, and an ardent African nationalist unafraid to tell truth to power at a time when that could get you killed. Father of eight, nurturer of none, he was an unlikely person to father the first African American president of the United States. Yet he was, like that son, a man moved by the dream of a better world.Now, thanks to dozens of exclusive new interviews, prodigious research, and determined investigation, Sally Jacobs tells his full story.

    

5. Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World! by Andrew Breitbart
   (Grand Central Publishing, 2011-04-15, Hardcover)
   

   Known for his network of conservative websites that draws millions of readers everyday, Andrew Breitbart has one main goal: to make sure the “liberally biased” major news outlets in this country cover all aspects of a story fairly. Breitbart is convinced that too many national stories are slanted by the news media in an unfair way. In RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION, Breitbart talks about the key issues that Americans face, how he has aligned himself with the Tea Party, and how one needs to deal with the liberal news world head on. Along the way, he details his early years, working with Matt Drudge, the Huffington Post, and so on, and how Breitbart developed his unique style of launching key websites to help get the word out to conservatives all over. A rollicking and controversial read, Breitbart will certainly raise your blood pressure, one way or another.

    

6. The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America by Nick Gillespie
   (PublicAffairs, 2011-06-28, Hardcover)
   

   Everywhere in America, the forces of digitization, innovation, and personalization are expanding our options and bettering the way we live. Everywhere, that is, except in our politics. There we are held hostage to an eighteenth century system, dominated by two political parties whose ever-more-polarized rhetorical positions mask a mutual interest in maintaining a stranglehold on power.The Declaration of Independents is a compelling and extremely entertaining manifesto on behalf of a system better suited to the future–one structured by the essential libertarian principles of free minds and free markets. Gillespie and Welch profile libertarian innovators, identify the villains propping up the ancien regime, and take aim at do-something government policies that hurt most of those they claim to protect. Their vision will resonate with a wide swath of frustrated citizens and young voters, born after the Cold War’s end, to whom old tribal allegiances, prejudices, and hang-ups about everything from hearing a foreign language on the street to gay marriage to drug use simply do not make sense.

    

7. Where’s the Birth Certificate?: The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President by Jerome Corsi
   (WND Books, 2011, Hardcover)
   

   Is Barack Obama Illegally Occupying the Oval Office?The question is jarring, surreal, and intensely controversial: Is Barack Obama a natural-born citizen of the United States and therefore constitutionally eligible to be president? Repeated national polls suggest tens of millions of Americans don’t think he is, despite his release of an online image of his purported birth document.In Where’s the Birth Certificate? two-time No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Jerome Corsi demonstrates conclusively that no legal authority has ever verified Obama’s legal eligibility to be president, that glaring inconsistencies, blackouts, and outright fabrications in his life narrative have generated widespread doubts, and that, in fact, a compelling body of evidence says Obama is not a natural-born citizen as is required of all presidents by Article 2, Section 1, of the Constitution.You’ll read how:Obama was born a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States, a circumstance the Constitution’s framers considered an iron-clad roadblock to the presidencyAs a boy, Obama was officially registered in school as a Muslim and Indonesian citizen, another barrier to U.S. natural-born citizenshipThe press and blogosphere widely reported Obama was born at Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu – before deciding he was born across town at Kapi’olani Women’s and Children’s HospitalThe Congressional Research Service, a public policy arm of Congress, officially admits no one in the government ever vetted Obama’s constitutional eligibilityIn preparation for the 2012 election, more than a dozen states are considering legislation to force all presidential candidates to prove they are constitutionally qualified before they can be placed on that state’s ballotThe result of three years of exhaustive research, Where’s the Birth Certificate? establishes the case not only that Barack Obama isn’t legally qualified to be president, but that, aided by his media co-conspirators, he has conducted one of the most audacious cover-ups ever perpetrated at the highest level of American politics.

    

8. Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind by Tim Groseclose PhD
   (St. Martin’s Press, 2011-07-19, Hardcover)
   

   Dr. Tim Groseclose, a professor of political science and economics at UCLA, has spent years constructing precise, quantitative measures of the slant of media outlets. He does this by measuring the political content of news, as a way to measure the PQ, or “political quotient” of voters and politicians. Among his conclusions are: (i) all mainstream media outlets have a liberal bias; and (ii) while some supposedly conservative outlets — such the Washington Times or Fox News’ Special Report — do lean right, their conservative bias is less than the liberal bias of most mainstream outlets. Groseclose contends that the general leftward bias of the media has shifted the PQ of the average American by about 20 points, on a scale of 100, the difference between the current political views of the average American, and the political views of the average resident of Orange County, California or Salt Lake County, Utah. With Left Turn readers can easily calculate their own PQ — to decide for themselves if the bias exists. This timely, much-needed study brings fact to this often overheated debate.

    

9. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism (Politically Incorrect Guides) by Kevin D Williamson
   (Regnery Publishing, 2011-01-10, Paperback)
   

   Stalin’s gulag, impoverished North Korea, collapsing Cuba…it’s hard to name a dogma that has failed as spectacularly as socialism. And yet leaders around the world continue to subject millions of people to this dysfunctional, violence-prone ideology. In The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism, Kevin Williamson reveals the fatal flaw of socialism—that efficient, complex economies simply can’t be centrally planned. But even in America, that hasn’t stopped politicians and bureaucrats from planning, to various extents, the most vital sectors of our economy: public education, energy, and the most arrogant central–planning effort of them all, Obama’s healthcare plan. In this provocative book, Williamson unfolds the grim history of socialism, showing how the ideology has spawned crushing poverty, devastating famines, and horrific wars. Lumbering from one crisis to the next, leaving a trail of economic devastation and environmental catastrophe, socialism has wreaked more havoc, caused more deaths, and impoverished more people than any other ideology in history—especially when you include the victims of fascism, which Williamson notes is simply a variant of socialism. Williamson further demonstrates:Why, contrary to popular belief, socialism in theory is no better than socialism in practiceWhy socialism can’t exist without capitalismHow the energy powerhouse of Venezuela, under socialism, has become an economic basket case subject to rationing and blackouts How socialism, not British colonialism, plunged the bountiful economy of India into stagnation and dysfunction—and how capitalism is rescuing itWhy socialism is inextricably linked to communismIf you thought socialism went into the dustbin of history with the collapse of the Soviet Union, think again. Socialism is alive and kicking, and it’s already spread further than you know.

    

10. The Great American Awakening: Two Years that Changed America, Washington, and Me by Jim DeMint
    (B&H Books, 2011-07-04, Paperback)
    

    Following his New York Times best seller, Saving Freedom, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint’s The Great American Awakening chronicles two tumultuous years from the presidential election of 2008 through the mid-term elections of 2010. Untold insider views of the controversial stimulus bill passage, corporate takeovers, and lesser-known executive actions that epitomize political paybacks and moral decay will further motivate DeMint’s fellow citizens to reclaim their government and country in 2012. Just as fascinating, the South Carolina official talks openly about his seized upon high profile moments — from that “Waterloo” comment regarding health care reform to becoming known as “Senator Tea Party.” He also addresses close-to-home disappointments such as the infidelity of Christian friends like Governor Mark Sanford and Senator John Ensign, and shares personal spiritual insights that came from being part of such public battles. But more than anything, The Great American Awakening champions the American people who now feel a powerful stirring in their souls to take on Washington and realign politics in this nation. DeMint tracks grass-roots developments, and new movements like the Freedom Congress, fully expecting a fundamental sea change for the better to happen soon.Acclaim for The Great American Awakening:”I have Senator DeMint on my show often because Americans know he’ll tell the truth about what’s wrong in Washington. His latest book is a riveting account about the fight for fiscal sanity in Congress. It’s essential reading for anyone who wants to understand why so many Americans clued in and got involved with the Tea Party Movement in the last election. Senator DeMint was a huge part of this and I only hope he is as involved in the 2012 race for the White House as he was this past election.”Sean Hannity, host of the nationally syndicated Sean Hannity Radio show and “Hannity” on Fox News

     

11. Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues by Bill Moyers
    (New Press, The, 2011-05-17, Hardcover)
    

    One of the highest-rated public affairs programs on public television, Bill Moyers Journal drew up to two million weekly viewers from 2007 to 2010. Through incisive, morally engaging conversations with some of the leading political figures, writers, activists, poets, and scholars at work today, the Journal captured the essence of the past three pivotal years in American life and politics, including the final act of the Bush Administration and the early years of Obama.Now, Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues brings this groundbreaking work to the page. From Michael Pollan, David Simon, and Jane Goodall to John Grisham, Karen Armstrong, and Barbara Ehrenreich, Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues introduces the ideas that matter today — on subjects as diverse as the politics of food, race in the age of Obama, aging in America, the power of poetry, wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the conflict over gay marriage, and the fate of the American newspaper.With extensive new commentary from Bill Moyers — in the tradition of his national bestsellers A World of Ideas and Healing and the Mind — here is an unparalleled guide to the debates, the cultural currents, and above all the fascinating people who have so powerfully shaped the world we live in.

     

12. The Terrorist Next Door: How the Government is Deceiving You About the Islamist Threat by Erick Stakelbeck
    (Regnery Publishing, 2011-05-02, Hardcover)
    

    Al-Qaeda doesn’t care about “Hope” and “Change”The threat of terrorism in America, the Obama administration assures us, is contained and controlled. Recent attempted attacks like the Times Square bombing, the “underwear bombing” on a flight over Detroit, and the attack on a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Oregon were all isolated plots that failed anyway. In the words of Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano, “The system worked.”Don’t believe it. In The Terrorist Next Door, investigative reporter Erick Stakelbeck exposes the staggering truth about our national security: the Obama administration is concealing and whitewashing the enormous terrorist threat growing right here within America’s borders. If you believe terrorism is only a problem for other countries, Stakelbeck’s on-the-ground reporting will open your eyes. He has been inside America’s radical mosques, visited U.S.-based Islamic enclaves, and learned about our enemies by going straight to the source—interviewing al-Qaeda-linked terrorists themselves. In this shocking book, Stakelbeck reveals:How Islamic radicals have established separatist compounds and even jihadist training camps throughout rural AmericaThat an overt disciple of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini now leads one of the largest mosques in America How mega-mosques aren’t just planned for Ground Zero—they’re being built in the heart of the Bible Belt as part of a plan for Islamic dominationWhat a former U.S. covert agent inside the Iranian regime says about Iran’s program to recruit Americans into terror groupsHow the Obama administration’s beguiling counter-terrorism policies are increasing the threat of another 9/11 The Terrorist Next Door sounds the alarm on a growing threat to every American—one that the U.S. government refuses to face honestly or even to name. As we struggle against a relentless and adaptable Islamist enemy that is committed to destroying our nation, we can’t say we weren’t warned.

     

13. The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy: How the New World Order, Man-Made Diseases, and Zombie Banks Are Destroying America by Jim Marrs
    (Harper Paperbacks, 2011-07-05, Paperback)
    

    America’s economy is in shambles . . . Its citizens are terrified and dissatisfied . . . Could it all have been planned by a secret elite one hundred years ago? The New World Order. Hitler referred to it in his diaries. President George H. W. Bush foretold of it in his speeches. Formed by a secretive global elite, the group seeking this new order has taken hold of the nation — and perhaps the world. Its influence pervades every aspect of American society, from the products we buy at the grocery store to the topics of evening news programs. But could it also be true that the New World Order caused one of the greatest financial catastrophes of our time? Bestselling author and legendary conspiracy researcher Jim Marrs has yet again exposed information that the mainstream corporate media has refused to report, unearthing the lies to expose the insidious alliances that make up a secret world. In the explosive The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy, Marrs digs beneath the media noise surrounding the financial bailouts of 2008 and 2009 while exploring the back rooms and shadowy deals of our nation’s past to craft a frightening history that no one else is brave enough to tell.

     

14. The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress by Chris Hedges
    (Nation Books, 2011-04-12, Hardcover)
    

    Drawing on two decades of experience as a war correspondent and based on his numerous columns for Truthdig, Chris Hedges presents The World As It Is, a panorama of the American empire at home and abroad, from the coarsening effect of America’s War on Terror to the front lines in the Middle East and South Asia and the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Underlying his reportage is a constant struggle with the nature of war and its impact on human civilization. “War is always about betrayal,” Hedges notes. “It is about betrayal of the young by the old, of cynics by idealists, and of soldiers and Marines by politicians. Society’s institutions, including our religious institutions, which mold us into compliant citizens, are unmasked.”

     

15. The New Arab Revolt: What Happened, What It Means, and What Comes Next by Council on Foreign Relations/Foreign Affairs
    (Council on Foreign Relations/Foreign Affairs, 2011-04-27, Paperback)
    

    The New Arab Revolt: What Happened, What It Means, and What Comes Next sets the intellectual stage for understanding the revolutions in the Middle East. This collection brings together more than sixty articles, interviews, congressional testimony, and op-eds from experts and thought leaders, including Bernard Lewis, Fouad Ajami, Richard Haass, Lisa Anderson, Martin Indyk, Isobel Coleman, Aluf Benn, Dirk Vandewalle, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The volume includes seminal pieces from Foreign Affairs, ForeignAffairs.com, and CFR.org. In addition, major public statements by Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Hosni Mubarak, Muammar al-Qaddafi, and others are joined by Egyptian opposition writings and relevant primary source documents. Even if you have been paying close attention to the extraordinary events unfolding in the Middle East, this book pulls together what is needed to understand the origins and significance of the new Arab revolt, including a special introduction by Foreign Affairs editor Gideon Rose.

     

16. Ladder to the Moon by Maya Soetoro-Ng
    (Candlewick Press, 2011-04-12, Hardcover)
    

    From Maya Soetoro-Ng, sister of President Obama, comes a lyrical story relaying the loving wisdom of their late mother to a young granddaughter she never met.Little Suhaila wishes she could have known her grandma, who would wrap her arms around the whole world if she could, Mama says. And one night, Suhaila gets her wish when a golden ladder appears at her window, and Grandma Annie invites the girl to come along with her on a magical journey. In a rich and deeply personal narrative, Maya Soetoro-Ng draws inspiration from her mother s love for family, her empathy for others, and her ethic of service to imagine this remarkable meeting. Evoking fantasy and folklore, the story touches on events that have affected people across the world in our time and reaffirms our common humanity. Yuyi Morales s breathtaking artwork illuminates the dreamlike tale, reminding us that loved ones lost are always with us, and that sometimes we need only look at the moon and remember.

     

17. Saving the Bill of Rights: Exposing the Left’s Campaign to Destroy American Exceptionalism by Frank Miniter
    (Regnery Publishing, 2011-06-28, Hardcover)
    

    We’re in a fight to save our liberties—and we’re losingFor most of us, the Bill of Rights is sacred. It enshrines, defines, and protects the liberties we take for granted as Americans. But almost unnoticed, a dedicated minority of special interests is chipping away at the Bill of Rights to the point that, while the words might remain in the Constitution, the rights themselves will be lost.Frank Miniter, New York Times bestselling author of The Ultimate Man’s Survival Guide, has seen firsthand—and exposed as a journalist—the relentless assaults that are stripping away our Second Amendment rights. Now he reports on the broad, radical offensive that targets not just our right to bear arms, but all our rights, including the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech and religion.In Saving the Bill of Rights, you’ll learnWhy you could be guilty of “thought crimes”—thanks to a bill signed into law by President ObamaHow liberals in the federal government are using “net neutrality” to stifle free speechWhy the Founders would be appalled at how “separation of church and state” (a phrase not found in the Constitution) has been manipulated to drive Christianity out of the public squareHow your right to property, guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment, has been put at risk by government greedWhy opponents of the aggressive interrogation of terrorists are false civil libertariansHow the Ninth Amendment is deliberately misread in order to increase government powerHow liberals have tried to kill the Constitution through endless violations of the Tenth Amendment—and how restoring the Tenth Amendment could help save some of our imperiled libertiesThorough, thought-provoking, and engaging, Frank Miniter’s Saving the Bill of Rights could be the most important book you read this year.

     

18. Be the People: A Call to Reclaim America’s Faith and Promise by Carol M. Swain Ph.D.
    (Thomas Nelson, 2011-06-14, Hardcover)
    

    An insightful analysis of the forces of deception rapidly reshaping America’s morals, social policies, and culture, with a call to specific action, written by a thoughtful and courageous Christian social scientist on the front lines of today’s issues. Cultural elites in the media, academia, and politics are daily deceiving millions of Americans into passively supporting policies that are detrimental to the nation and their own best interest. Although some Americans can see through the smokescreen, they feel powerless to redirect the forces inside and outside government that radically threaten cherished values and principles. Drawing on her training in political science and law, Dr. Swain thoughtfully examines the religious significance of the founding of our nation and the deceptions that have infiltrated our daily lives and now threaten traditional families, unborn children, and members of various racial and ethnic groups-as well as national sovereignty itself–and provides action points for the people of this country to make the political system more responsive. The book is divided into two sections: Forsaking what we once knew Re-embracing truth and justice in policy choices It also covers key topics such as: America’s shift to moral relativism America’s religious roots Abortion’s fragile facade Historical and biblical views on families and children Erosion of rule of law, national security, and immigration Racial and ethnic challenges Reclaiming the future

     

All About the Beat

All about the Beat: Why Hip-Hop Can’t Save Black America
John McWhorter – Author

Available June 2008

Hip-hop is often extolled as an urgent “political” message to mainstream America about the realities of life in black communities. But is there really any meaningful connection between hip-hop and politics? Could there actually be a hip-hop revolution?

In All About the Beat: Why Hip-Hop Can’t Save Black America, bestselling author John McWhorter argues that the vast majority of hip-hop music—despite claims to the contrary—has nothing real or significant to offer black America in terms of political activism that can make a meaningful difference.

In this measured, impassioned work, McWhorter maintains that hip-hop, while infectious and finely-crafted music, is overly inflated with a sense of social and political importance. He argues that activism and acting up aren’t the same thing, that hip-hop politics often amount to an upturned middle finger—which is different from really working on how to help people. “A hundred years from now, what will interest people about us today is how we solved our problems, not how eloquently we complained about what caused them,” writes McWhorter.

All About the Beat is not about putting hip-hop down for the violence and misogyny it extols. Instead, McWhorter calls for a new politics for black America, one not based on the false hope that a form of music—no matter how good or inspiring— can lead blacks to advancement.