Every contender for the presidency in 2008–Democrat and Republican alike–ran against the record of George W. Bush, and none more so than Barack Obama, the self-anointed “change” candidate. And whether on substance or style, it’s hard to imagine a more different man or politician.

Yet, as campaign manager David Plouffe writes in his new book The Audacity to Win, a thorough an insider’s account of the 2008 presidential race, there was one trait that Obama unapologetically shared with his maligned predecessor. When it came to maintaining discipline and keeping everyone on message, the campaign decided early on that it would, in Plouffe’s words, “follow the Bush model.” Read More

In Googled: The End of the World As We Know It, author Ken Auletta quotes Google co-founder Larry Page breezily declaring that the company has become “part of people’s lives, like brushing their teeth.”

As Auletta’s exhaustive narrative of the company shows, that’s not an empty boast. With an unbending faith in algorithms and a sincere user-first philosophy, the company has shrewdly inserted itself into every nook of the media technology landscape and earned an astonishing level of trust from its customers. Yet its pervasiveness has also irked both public advocates and business competitors, who claim Google is overstepping its bounds, eroding privacy and threatening to wantonly devastate entire industries.

Here’s a look at five Google products that have shaken up the media landscape and stirred controversy in the process.

Read More

British newspaper editor and writer Harold Evans talks about the books that have most influenced him in the latest edition of Progressive Book Club’s Open Books video series. Evans’ memoir, My Paper Chase, recounts the story of his life and career, on both sides of the Atlantic, over five decades of experience in the ever-changing media landscape.

The novel American Rust by Philipp Meyer follows the difficult lives of out-of-work steel factory employees and their families in a Pennsylvania town following the collapse of the American steel industry. Many reviews of American Rust put Philipp Meyer in the same category as other great authors whose work chronicles the hardships of the working class. Here are some excerpts from books that do an exceptional job of illustrating those struggles.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

“It ain’t that big. The whole United States ain’t that big. It ain’t that big. It ain’t big enough. There ain’t room enough for you an’ me, for your kind an’ my kind, for rich and poor together all in one country, for thieves and honest men. For hunger and fat.”

Empire Falls by Richard Russo

“‘If you paid me for work,’ continued Max, whose rhetoric was more sophisticated than you might expect from a man with food in his beard, ‘I wouldn’t have to feel worthless. There’s not law says old people have to feel worthless all the while, you know. You paid me, I’d have some dignity.’

Now it was Mile’s turn to nod and smile agreeably. ‘I think the dignity ship set sail a long time ago, Dad.’”

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

“Day was shining radiantly upon the town then, and the bells were going for the morning work. Domestic fires were not yet lighted, and the high chimneys had the sky to themselves. Puffing out their poisonous volumes, they would not be long in hiding it; but, for half an hour, some of the many windows were golden, which showed the Coketown people a sun eternally in eclipse, through a medium of smoked glass.”

Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O’Nan.

“It’s just green ink on paper, and not worth a man’s honor, his abuelita would say, but, never having had money, he can’t help but think that’s what this whole deal is about.”

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

“They were beaten; they had lost the game, they were swept aside. It was not less tragic because it was so sordid, because that it had to do with wages and grocery bills and rents. They had dreamed of freedom; of a chance to look about them and learn something; to be decent and clean, to see their child group up to be strong. And now it was all gone-it would never be!”

The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell

“We of the sinking middle class may sink without further struggles into the working classes where we belong, and probably when we get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared, for, after all, we have nothing to lose but our aitches.”

What a life Harold Evans has had! And what a career! From shoe-leather reporting for a weekly newspaper in a Lancashire mill town, to the editorship of the Sunday Times, where he redefined investigative journalism, broke story after story, sought and won redress for victims of injustice, and got laws changed (for the better), leaving an indelible mark on British society; then to New York, where as a stunningly successful book publisher he published a record number of bestsellers and found the time to write a few himself. In 2001, British journalists voted him the greatest all-time British newspaper editor, and three years later Queen Elizabeth II made him a knight. Evans’s new book, a memoir, is My Paper Chase: True Stories of Vanished Times. In it Evans tells the amazing story of his life and career and, along the way, demonstrates what journalism at its best can be. Below is an excerpt:

My Paper Chase: True Stories of Vanished Times

By Harold Evans

Chapter 1

Grains of Truth

The most exciting sound in the world for me as a boy was the slow whoosh-whoosh of the big steam engine leaving Manchester Exchange station for Rhyl in North Wales. Every year as summer neared I counted the days to when the whole family—six of us then—would escape the bleakness of northern winters, taking the train for a week at the seaside, buckets and spades in hand.

I was nearly twelve the summer I saw the bodies of the soldiers scattered about the sands.

The soldiers were so still, their clothing so torn, their faces so pale, they looked as if they had died where they fell. And yet they had escaped death, unlike thousands of their comrades left on the battlegrounds of northern France; thousands more were on their way to years in German internment camps. The men I saw were the lucky ones, a few hundred of the 198, 229 of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) who just days before in May-June 1940 had fought their way to Dunkirk. Twenty-four hours before we saw them, they had been on that other beach, being hammed from the air by Stuka dive-bombers, strafed by the machine guns of Messerschmitts, rescue ships ablaze offshore, and every hour the German panzers closing the ring. They were a forlorn group, unshaven, some in remnants of uniforms, some in makeshift outfits of pajamas and sweaters, not a hat between them, lying apart from the rows of deck chairs and the Punch-and-Judy show and the pier and the ice-cream stands. Most of the men who were evacuated had been sent to bases and hospitals in the south of England, but several thousand had been put on trains to seaside resorts in North Wales, where there were army camps and spare beds in the boardinghouses. The bulk of the men sprawled on the Rhyl beach were members of the Royal Corps of Signals attached to artillery regiments; some sixty-four officers and twenty-five hundred other ranks had been sent to the Second Signal Training Center at Prestatyn, which shared six miles of sand with Rhyl. Read More

Richard Hofstadter’s 1964 classic The Paranoid Style in American Politics has never been more relevant. As Paul Krugman writes today:

The state of mind visible at recent right-wing demonstrations is nothing new. Back in 1964 the historian Richard Hofstadter published an essay titled, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” which reads as if it were based on today’s headlines: Americans on the far right, he wrote, feel that “America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion.” Sound familiar?

But while the paranoid style isn’t new, its role within the G.O.P. is.

When Hofstadter wrote, the right wing felt dispossessed because it was rejected by both major parties. That changed with the rise of Ronald Reagan: Republican politicians began to win elections in part by catering to the passions of the angry right.

Time was, writes Krugman, the angry right could be appeased with empty symbolism (a la Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas: vote for repeal of Roe; get tax cuts for the wealthy); but no longer. The Democratic sweep has called time on that strategy and the hard right has lost patience: extremists can no longer be fobbed off with promises of future glory.”

For more about The Paranoid Style, see here.

Hendrik Hertzberg, who writes the Comment piece in the New Yorker, is one of the most respected political commentators around. In his new book ¡Obámanos!: The Birth of a New Political Era, he charts the rise and triumph of Barack Obama in the 2008 campaign, bringing to the task his customary wit, insight, and feel for political history, as well as his incomparably limpid prose style. Here’s an excerpt:

¡Obámanos!: The Rise of a New Political Party

By Hendrik Hertzberg

From the Introduction

My Barack Obama

The presidential election that put Barack Obama in the White House has been variously called the most important, the most exciting, the most surprising, the most significant, the most consequential, and the most expensive in the modern history of the United States. The most expensive it certainly was, as was the one before and the one before that. What about the rest?

I’ve been counting, and it turns out that this presidential election was the fifteenth since I started paying attention. The fifteenth! More than one-quarter of all the fifty-six presidential elections in all of American history! And I’ve been a participant of sorts in every single one of them, beginning as a nine-year-old fourth grader in 1952 (when I “helped” my mother stuff envelopes and pass out buttons at a storefront Stevenson headquarters in our bucolically Republican suburban village) and then, every four years since, as a volunteer, a reporter, a speechwriter, or a purveyor of observation and opinion. I can honestly say that this one—the campaign and election of 2007 and 2008—was, whatever its historical importance and the rest, the most nerve-wracking I’ve ever experienced. Also, in the end, the most satisfying.

I cast my first vote in 1964, for Lyndon Johnson, and have voted for every Democratic nominee since. It’s never been a difficult call—not even in 1968, when, like a lot of people my age (I was in the Navy at the time, but stationed in lower Manhattan and spending evenings doing dogwork at Bobby Kennedy’s midtown headquarters), I hated the Vietnam War and loved R.F.K. I looked upon Hubert Humphrey with a mixture of contempt and pity, but come November I voted for him anyway; I felt sure there was still a good heart under all that cringing, and I thought he’d probably make a decent president. Also, remember his Republican opponent. Read More

Obama Nears Decision on Sending More Troops to Afghanistan

“This is not going to be an easy sell, especially with the fight over health care and the [Democratic] party’s losses”

- A White House official referring to the challenge facing President Obama in making the case for sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan in the middle of health reform negotiations and following Democratic losses in two gubernatorial races last week. Obama reportedly is nearing a decision to send more than 30,000 additional troops next year. (McLatchy)

* Related Title: The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism by Andrew J. Bacevich

Pro-Choice Democrats Might Block Health Reform

“There’s going to be a firestorm here. Women are going to realize that a Democratic-controlled House has passed legislation that would prohibit women paying for abortions with their own funds. . . . We’re not going to let this into law.”

- Rep. Diana DeGette (Colo.) referring to dismay among abortion-rights supporters over antiabortion provisions inserted into the House health reform bill that passed on Saturday. DeGette said she had collected more than 40 signatures from House Democrats vowing to oppose any final bill that includes the amendment — enough to block passage. (Washington Post)

* Related Title: When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women From 1960 to the Present by Gail Collins

Iranians Balking at Nuclear Deal

“If you listen to what the Iranians have said publicly and privately over the past week. it’s evident that they simply cannot bring themselves to do the deal.”

- A senior administration official said Sunday. The Obama administration has reportedly told Iran’s leaders in back-channel messages that it is willing to allow the country to send its stockpile of enriched uranium to any of several nations, including Turkey, for temporary safekeeping. But officials say the overtures have all been ignored.

* Related Title: The Inheritance: The World Obama Inherits and the Challenges to American Power by David E. Sanger

In the introduction to his new book Obamanos: The Birth of a New Political Era, the New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg recollects that he “picked up Dreams from My Father, and by the time I put it down again I was a supporter of Barack Obama for President.”

“The library of books by men who later become president is not large, and little of merit can be found there. The important exceptions before the end of the nineteenth century are Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia (1787) and Theodore Roosevelt’s voluminous works of natural and naval history; in the twentieth the standout is Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage (1955), though the extent of its author’s authorship is disputed. In recent decades a ghostwritten autobiography has become as normal a part of laying the groundwork for a presidential campaign as a quick trip to Israel. Some are entertaining in a mild way (Reagan’s Where’s the Rest of Me?, 1955) and some are simply stupefying (W’s A Charge to Keep, 1999), but as pieces of writing none could truly be called good. Carter’s Why Not the Best? (1975), which he wrote without professional assistance, is an outlier of sorts–a homely, sturdy construction, like one of the tables he makes in his home woodworking shop. But there’s never been anything quite like Dreams from My Father.”

David Plouffe managed one of the most original and successful presidential campaigns in American history, one that vaulted a little-known African-American with limited political experience to the White House, overcoming Democratic political royalty (Hillary Clinton), and a bona fide Republican war hero (John McCain) along the way. The Audacity to Win is the riveting inside story of how the Obama campaign pulled it off. Here’s an excerpt:

The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama’s Historic Victory

By David Plouffe

What surprised me at [our first meeting to discuss the vice presidency] was that Obama was clearly thinking more seriously about picking Hillary Clinton than Ax and I had realized. He said if his central criterion measured who could be the best VP, she had to be included in that list. She was competent, could help in Congress, would have international bona fides and had been through this before, albeit in a different role. He wanted to continue discussing her as we moved forward. We met again a couple of weeks later in mid-June and winnowed the list down to about 10 names.

At our next meeting, we narrowed the list down to six. Barack continued to be intrigued by Hillary. “I still think Hillary has a lot of what I am looking for in a VP,” he said to us. “Smarts, discipline, steadfastness. I think Bill may be too big a complication. If I picked her, my concern is that there would be more than two of us in the relationship.”

Neither Ax nor I were fans of the Hillary option. We saw her obvious strengths, but we thought there were too many complications, both pre-election and post-election, should we be so fortunate as to win. Still, we were very careful not to object too forcefully. This needed to be his call. Read More