Books, Culture & the Arts

Neoconomy: George Bush’s Revolutionary Gamble with America’s Future by Daniel Altman (PublicAffairs, 290 pages, $26.95) Innovation and its Discontents: How Our Broken Patent System is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What to Do About It by Adam Jaffe and Josh Lerner ()Princeton University Press, 256 pages, $29.95) Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican […]

The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy by T.R. Reid (Penguin Books, 305 pages, $25.95) It is easy to scoff at the trappings of the European Union. Its flag of 12 gold stars on blue is bland. Its national holiday — Europe Day, commemorating the Schuman […]

Eugene McCarthy: The Rise and Fall of Postwar American Liberalism by Dominic Sandbrook (Knopf, 416 pages, $25.95) The Fall of the House of Roosevelt: Brokers of Ideas and Power from FDR to LBJ by Michael Janeway (Columbia University Press, 284 pages, $27.50) The Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment […]

January brings the annual rituals of the National Football League (NFL) playoffs and the major college bowl games, and if any more evidence were needed about how football-obsessed a nation ours has become, consider the following: Of the top 10 television programs for 2003, three were football games, and a fourth was the Super Bowl […]

Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights at Wal-Mart By Liza Featherstone • Basic Books • 336 pages • $25.00 When Betty Dukes, a 56-year-old African-American Wal-Mart worker in Pittsburg, California, first read about Sam Walton, the founder of the world’s largest retailer, she felt inspired. “I learned […]

The Hammer: Tom DeLay, God, Money, and the Rise of the Republican Congress By Lou Dubose and Jan Reid • Public Affairs • 306 pages • $26.00 On Capitol Hill: The Struggle to Reform Congress and Its Consequences, 1948–2000 By Julian E. Zelizer • Cambridge University Press • 376 […]

“Who knows?” Ken Cordier asked, by way of an answer. It was a moment of uncharacteristic uncertainty for the Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth member and former Vietnam War prisoner of war, who had just been asked by an audience member whether there are any POWs remaining under Vietnamese control. Cordier and his […]

American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation’s Drive to End Welfare By Jason DeParle • Viking • PAGES • $25.95 Remarkably little has been heard about the poor from the Bush administration during the past four years. The administration has focused more on rewarding its base — “the haves and the have-mores” […]

Historians of the mad pageant in which Americans chose their president in 2004 will someday note with astonishment that the quote-unquote Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, many of its members inveterate liars more swift than truthful, succeeded in hijacking the presidential campaign for the better part of the month of August, nearly one-third of the […]