Books, Culture & the Arts

The Moral Center by David Callahan (Harcourt, 260 pages, $24.00) Ever since the 2004 exit polls, progressives have been puzzling over how to reclaim so-called values voters. Or, to put the problem another way, how can Democrats satisfy Americans’ interests (the economy, stupid, and bring those troops home alive) while also appealing to […]

The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff (Knopf, 518 pages, $30.00) On February 6, 1956, Peter Kihss of The New York Times was covering the enrollment of the first black student, Autherine Lucy, at the University of Alabama. Mobs of racist […]

Last summer, I made the mistake of asking a Los Angeles Times reporter how he felt about life in a wholly owned subsidiary of the Tribune Company. He made a sour face and said he was worried about his pension. Dinner was ruined for a while. Reporters are used to holding their breath at the […]

Building Red America: The New Conservative Coalition and the Drive for Permanent Power by Thomas B. Edsall (Basic Books, 320 pages, $26.00) The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care, and Retirement, and How You Can Fight Back by Jacob S. Hacker (Oxford University Press, 240 pages, $26.00) […]

Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge by Cass Sunstein (Oxford University Press, 288 pages, $25.00) The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler (Yale University Press, 520 pages, $40.00) Internet utopianism can seem so 1998. The future was silicon in the late Clinton years, […]

Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches by Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal (MIT Press, 240 pages, $35.00) L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement by Ruth Milkman (Russell Sage Foundation, 264 pages, $24.95) In the face of pronounced income and […]

“It’s Baltimore, gentlemen. The gods will not save you.” — The police commissioner to his commanders on The Wire The Baltimore Police Department’s 2005 annual report is crammed with statistics that tell a story. Violent crime is down in every category measured by the department. The city witnessed 269 murders in 2005, or seven […]

The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences by Louis Uchitelle (Alfred A. Knopf, 283 pages, $25.95) All Together Now: Common Sense For a Fair Economy by Jared Bernstein (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 154 pages, $12.00) America Back on Track by Senator Edward M. Kennedy (Viking, 210 pages, $24.95) When it comes […]

America turns 50 this year — the America, that is, that we recognize as ours. It was half a century ago that our new founding fathers made their debut on the national stage: Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Elvis Presley. The latter, per Life‘s August 27, 1956, issue, was “Elvis — A Different […]

The Motherhood Manifesto: What America’s Moms Want — And What To Do About It by Joan Blades and Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner (Nation Books, 248 pages, $14.95) Leaving Women Behind by Kimberley A. Strassel, Celeste Colgan, and John C. Goodman (Rowman and Littlefield, 215 pages, $21.95) Kiki, a single mother of two and a legal secretary, had […]