Political Books Trump Trashy Fiction
Our favorite political authors range from Machiavelli to Woodward and Bernstein.
Summer reading always meant fiction, and often trashy fiction — the kind of books you'd buy at the airport to read on the beach and leave in your hotel room. But in this extensive presidential campaign season, books about politics are selling well, and fast, according to Dermot McEvoy, a senior editor of Publishers Weekly.
As McEvoy reports in his article, "Want Political Truth? Buy a Book", and discusses on Talk of the Nation, the latest crop of political books is issue-focused, with just a few political biographies thrown into the mix.
If your tastes run more toward the political classics, here's a list of some of our favorite books of all time.
Don Gonyea, White House correspondent:
All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren
What it Takes, by Richard Ben Cramer
And from my youth:
Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72, by Hunter S. Thompson
David Greene, White House correspondent:
This may make me sound like more of a history buff, but ...
Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939, by Lizabeth Cohen
Out of Order, by Thomas E. Patterson
In the Shadow of FDR, by William Leuchtenburg
Debbie Elliott, congressional correspondent:
The Senator and the Sharecropper: The Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and Fannie Lou Hamer, by Chris Myers Asch
David Welna, congressional correspondent:
This wonderful book is for anyone who wants a lively, engaging account of how the U.S. Constitution came into being — and what its authors worried about as they wrote it:
America's Constitution: A Biography, by Akhil Reed Amar
Beth Donovan, elections editor:
The only three political books you really need to read are de Tocqueville, Machiavelli and Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men. The more things change, the more they stay the same, right?
My summer reading is escapist from this world: I'm reading A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini right now. Next up, Run by Ann Patchett. I'm usually not so far behind on current literature. Blame the Democrats.
Brian Naylor, Capitol Hill correspondent:
All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren
Juan Williams, news analyst:
The Art of War, by Sun Tzu
The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
Native Son, by Ralph Ellison
The Making of the President, 1960, by Theodore Harold White
The Best and the Brightest, by David Halberstam
The Boys on the Bus, by Timothy Crouse
All the President's Men, by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency, by Mark Hertsgaard
Spin Cycle, by Howard Kurtz
Evie Stone, associate producer:
The Boys on the Bus, by Timothy Crouse
Laurel Wamsley, editorial assistant:
I loved David Foster Wallace's long, funny essay on traveling with the McCain campaign in 2000, called "Up, Simba" and found in his amazing book Consider the Lobster and Other Essays. What's fascinating is how many of the things that were said about McCain then (e.g., He's a person who you really believe in to deliver us from the old politics, etc.), are the exact things being said about Obama now. It's also important as media criticism, as it looks at how McCain holds court for a small circle of reporters aboard the old S.T. Express. They're reissuing that essay as a slim stand-alone book with an introduction by Jacob Weisberg, titled McCain's Promise: Aboard the Straight Talk Express with John McCain and a Whole Bunch of Actual Reporters, Thinking About Hope.
Thomas Pierce, production assistant:
Abraham Lincoln, by Carl Sandburg
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