Recommended Reading

Take a break from tv “news” and radio “talk shows” and READ BOOKS.

Here are books I suggest you read —  what follows is

  • suggested readings
  • links to other pages on this site
  • other sites
  • pages on this site that describe suggested readings

BOOKS BY THOM HARTMANN at this link

Thomas Carl Hartmann (born May 7, 1951) is a progressive national and internationally syndicated talk show host whose shows are available in over a half-billion homes worldwide. He is a four-time Project Censored, Award-winning, New York Times best-selling author of 25 books currently in print in over a dozen languages on five continents.

Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count Paperback 

by David Daley
David Daley’s “extraordinarily timely” (New York Times Book Review) account uncovers the fundamental rigging of our House of Representatives and state legislatures nationwide.
Lauded as a “compelling” (The New Yorker) and “eye-opening tour of a process that many Americans never see” (Washington Post), David Daley’s Ratf**ked documents the effort of Republican legislators and political operatives to hack American democracy through an audacious redistricting plan called REDMAP. Since the revolutionary election of Barack Obama, a group of GOP strategists has devised a way to flood state races with a gold rush of dark money, made possible by Citizens United, in order to completely reshape Congress―and our democracy itself. “Sobering and convincing” (New York Review of Books), Ratf**ked shows how this program has radically altered America’s electoral map and created a firewall in the House, insulating the Republican party and its wealthy donors from popular democracy. While exhausted voters recover from a grueling presidential election, a new Afterword from the author explores the latest intense efforts by both parties, who are already preparing for the next redistricting cycle in 2020. 5 maps.

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

by Jane Mayer

Very Fine People 

A.R. Moxon

For some people, the rise of Donald Trump’s MAGA cult represented only ongoing proof of a supremacist nation they had endured all along. Author A.R. Moxon was not one of them. He was caught unaware. Thus begins this confession of an American fool, a methodical mapping of the nation the author failed to see-a nation of “very fine people” too convinced they are exceptionally good to acknowledge the ways they participate in abuse and harm.

The Jack Smith Report: Volumes I & 2

John Luman Smith is an American attorney who has held various roles within the United States Department of Justice, including assistant U.S. attorney, acting U.S. attorney, and head of the department’s Public Integrity Section. He was also the chief prosecutor at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, an international tribunal at The Hague tasked with investigating and prosecuting war crimes in the Kosovo War. In November 2022, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith as an independent special counsel to oversee two preexisting Justice Department criminal investigations into former President Donald Trump.

Smith’s investigation into Trump focused on two main areas: Trump’s role in the January 6 U.S. Capitol attack and the alleged mishandling of government records, including classified documents. The documents case resulted in a 37-count indictment of Trump in June 2023, with three additional counts added in July. However, the classified documents case was dismissed in July 2024 on the grounds that Smith was unlawfully appointed as special counsel. The investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election also led to an indictment on four charges in August 2023. Despite the legal challenges, Smith’s investigation highlighted significant evidence against Trump, although the cases were ultimately dismissed following Trump’s re-election in 2024.

Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success  By Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig.

Why I Am a Democrat 

By Theodore C. Sorensen

The late President Kennedy’s principal policy adviser and speechwriter articulates the strengths and aims of the Democratic party, explaining the party’s basic platform and his own reasons for staying to true to the party line.

White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy 

By Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A searing portrait and damning takedown of America’s proudest citizens—who are also the least likely to defend its core principles

“This is an important book that ought to be read by anyone who wants to understand politics in the perilous Age of Trump.”—David Corn, New York Times bestselling author of American Psychosis

White rural voters hold the greatest electoral sway of any demographic group in the United States, yet rural communities suffer from poor healthcare access, failing infrastructure, and severe manufacturing and farming job losses. Rural voters believe our nation has betrayed them, and to some degree, they’re right. In White Rural Rage, Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman explore why rural Whites have failed to reap the benefits from their outsize political power and why, as a result, they are the most likely group to abandon democratic norms and traditions. Their rage—stoked daily by Republican politicians and the conservative media—now poses an existential threat to the United States.

Hit ‘Em Where It Hurts: How to Save Democracy by Beating Republicans at Their Own Game 

By Rachel Bitcofer

A radical, urgent plan for how the Democratic Party and its supporters can win elections at one of the most pivotal moments in the history of our nation’s democracy

“Bitecofer hits hard against the GOP tactics of fear and anger and the Democrats’ status quo narratives around political engagement and winning elections.”—Michael Steele, former RNC chair

Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism 

by Rachel Maddow

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story 

By Nikole Hannah-Jones

American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper

By Jacob Hacker and Pal Pierson.

 

We Were Eight Years in Power, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

“We were eight years in power” was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America’s “first white president.”

But the story of these present-day eight years is not just about presidential politics. This book also examines the new voices, ideas, and movements for justice that emerged over this period—and the effects of the persistent, haunting shadow of our nation’s old and unreconciled history. Coates powerfully examines the events of the Obama era from his intimate and revealing perspective—the point of view of a young writer who begins the journey in an unemployment office in Harlem and ends it in the Oval Office, interviewing a president.

We Were Eight Years in Power features Coates’s iconic essays first published in The Atlantic, including “Fear of a Black President,” “The Case for Reparations,” and “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” along with eight fresh essays that revisit each year of the Obama administration through Coates’s own experiences, observations, and intellectual development, capped by a bracingly original assessment of the election that fully illuminated the tragedy of the Obama era. We Were Eight Years in Power is a vital account of modern America, from one of the definitive voices of this historic moment.