The events of September 11, 2001, caused a major national crisis, but according to New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer, they also created an almost unprecedented opportunity for Bush administration leaders to enact a long-held ideological agenda to centralize power. In The Dark Side, the first female Wall Street Journal White House correspondent describes how high officials including Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff, David Addington, acted decisively in ways that violated the Constitution and traditional American values. According to Mayer, these decisions not only undermined our legal system, they also weakened our struggle against Al Qaeda.
An admission: I’m not a very nice board game player. As a child I sulked when I lost, crowed when I won, and cheated when I could, and as an adult I just barely manage to slap a thin veneer of politeness and fair play over the savage brat within. So when I hear families talk […]
There’s a lot of pressure on the first book of a new year. It’s a fresh start, a clean slate, a way out of your holiday reading slump. You want a book that’s meaty enough to cleanse the decadence of the last two months, but you still want it to be gripping. Enter this month’s top picks in […]
This month’s top history picks have a decidedly political tinge, just in time for primary season. There are books about war (Mark Bowden’s The Three Battles of Wanat), terrorism (Michael V. Hayden’s Playing to the Edge and Peter Bergen’s United States of Jihad), shady money practices (Jane Mayer’s Dark Money), and funny and not-at-all funny books on the American presidency (Brady […]