Politics & Current Affairs

By title | By author | Most recent first

The Military Error
By Thomas Powers

Why did George W. Bush invade Iraq? Thomas Powers uses a broad perspective to examine the American tendency to respond to political crises with military force. An expert on CIA intelligence, Powers explains how the Bush administration made its case for war, using faulty intelligence to argue that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and posed a mounting threat to the Middle East.

Price: $11.96 (20% off)


Miami and the Siege of Chicago
By Norman Mailer
Introduction by Frank Rich

1968 was one of the most tumultuous years in American politics and society, the effects of which reverberate today. Norman Mailer was on the ground, covering Nixon's relentlessly stage-managed nomination in Miami as well as the Democratic convention in Chicago—where the violence at the heart of the American dream exploded on the streets.

Price: $11.21 (25% off)


Justice at War
By David Cole

David Cole takes a critical look at John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, and David Addington, the men who made the decisions that shaped America's war on terror. Cole argues that America can prevail against the threat of terror not by dismantling the checks and balances that guarantee the fairness of our justice system, but by restoring them.

Price: $11.96 (20% off)


The Consequences to Come
Edited by Robert B. Silvers

This collection of essays from The New York Review of Books looks back at the legacy of Bush, Cheney, and Rove, and ahead to the challenges and opportunities that will face America during the next administration. Contributors include Mark Danner, Joan Didion, Jonathan Freedland, Peter Galbraith, Joseph Lelyveld, Jonathan Raban, Frank Rich, Arthur Schlesinger Jr, and Michael Tomasky.

Price: $11.96 (20% off)


The Supreme Court Phalanx
By Ronald Dworkin

Ronald Dworkin analyzes the partisan decisions of the current Supreme Court and argues that Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas have created a conservative alliance bent on rewriting constitutional law, leaving past decisions on issues such as abortion, affirmative action, and campaign financing vulnerable to reversal in the next several years.

Price: $10.36 (20% off)


The Struggle for Iran
By Christopher de Bellaigue

Who rules Iran, and how secure is their grip on a young and restless society? How should the world respond to allegations that the Islamic Republic is building nuclear weapons and supporting terrorists? Bellaigue addresses these and other questions in this essential guide to a nation that is certain to be in the headlines for some time to come.

Price: $18.36 (20% off)


Welcome to Doomsday
By Bill Moyers
Preface by Bill McKibben

Welcome to Doomsday is an investigation into the coupling of ideology and theology, in particular the intrusion of religion into political life, in America today.

Price: $6.36 (20% off)


Bush's Fringe Government
By Garry Wills
Preface by James Carroll

One of America's foremost historians looks at the state of American democracy and the influence of the Catholic Church.

Price: $6.36 (20% off)


Trust is Not Enough
By David J. Rothman
Sheila M. Rothman

Two healthcare experts investigate the intersections of human rights and medicine, looking at case studies of such issues as AIDS, organ trafficking, healthcare rationing, medical research in the third world, and South Africa's constitutionally guaranteed right of access to healthcare.

Price: $19.96 (20% off)


The Secret Way To War
By Mark Danner
Preface by Frank Rich

An award-winning investigative journalist evaluates the controversial American and British stratagem for the Iraq war.

Price: $9.56 (20% off)


My Holy War
By Jonathan Raban

Ranging from Seattle to Cairo, from the high seas to the US presidential campaign, Raban brings a distinctive and often unexpected perspective to the issues facing post–September 11 America.

Price: $17.56 (20% off)


America Goes Backward
By Stanley Hoffmann

"Wrong assumptions, immoderate and confused ends, served by a mixture of counterproductive, inadequate, mismanaged, and, at times, scandalous means": Stanley Hoffmann's verdict on the US invasion of Iraq carries an uneasy echo of his view of the US failure in Vietnam.

Price: $7.16 (20% off)


Torture and Truth
By Mark Danner

Read together, these memos and reports should make us confront, as a democratic society, the urgent questions that Mark Danner poses in this book, and that remain unanswered: Does fighting a "new kind of war" on terror justify torture? Who will we hold responsible for deciding to pursue such a policy, and what will be the moral and political costs to the country?

Price: $19.96 (20% off)


Now They Tell Us
By Michael Massing
Preface by Orville Schell

Michael Massing describes the American press coverage of the war in Iraq as "the unseen war," an ironic reference given the number of reporters in Iraq and in Doha, Qatar, the location of the Coalition Media Center with its $250,000 stage set.

Price: $7.96 (20% off)


Fear and Loathing in George W. Bush's Washington
By Elizabeth Drew
Preface by Russell Baker

Russell Baker in his preface writes: "In Washington an age of moral and philosophical sterility is deeply entrenched, and as Elizabeth Drew's reporting attests, the result is not pretty. "

Price: $6.36 (20% off)


Glory and Terror
By Steven Weinberg
Preface by Anthony Lewis

Steven Weinberg, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, writes that America today "has an unprecedented opportunity to begin to escape from the risk of nuclear annihilation." But, he warns, President Bush is not only letting this opportunity slip away, he is, in some respects, moving in the wrong direction.

Price: $6.36 (20% off)


Intelligence Wars (Revised and Expanded Edition)
By Thomas Powers

No one outside the intelligence services knows more about their culture than Thomas Powers. In this book he tells stories of shadowy successes, ghastly failures, and, more often, gripping uncertainties.

Price: $15.16 (20% off)


The Reckless Mind (paperback)
By Mark Lilla

How can intellectuals, who should be alert to the evils of tyranny, betray the ideals of freedom and independent inquiry? How can they take positions that, implicitly or not, endorse oppression and human suffering on a vast scale?

Price: $13.56 (20% off)


China's New Rulers (paperback)
By Andrew J. Nathan
Bruce Gilley

China's New Rulers contains the first insights into matters of great importance to the West: who will lead China, what changes they may bring to their country, and how they may act as international partners and competitors.

Price: $13.56 (20% off)


Fixed Ideas: America Since 9.11
By Joan Didion
Preface by Frank Rich

Joan Didion describes how, since September 11, 2001, there has been a determined effort by the administration to promote an imperial America—a "New Unilateralism"—and how, in many parts of America, there is now a "disconnect" between the government and citizens.

Price: $6.36 (20% off)


To the Finland Station
By Edmund Wilson
Foreword by Louis Menand

Wilson combines his polymathic talents as critic, journalist, historian, and novelist, making this one of the greatest works by twentieth-century America's greatest man of letters.

Price: $14.96 (25% off)


Looking Back
By Russell Baker

In these eleven essays, all originally published in The New York Review of Books, Russell Baker looks back on a group of iconic public figures from his own past.

Price: $15.96 (20% off)


Striking Terror
Edited by Barbara Epstein
Robert B. Silvers

A collection of pieces by some of The New York Review of Books most distinguished writers on America's new war against terror.

Price: $11.96 (20% off)


A Handbook on Hanging
By Charles Duff
Introduction by Christopher Hitchens

With barbed insouciance, Charles Duff writes not only of hanging but of electrocution, decapitations, and gassings; of innocent men executed and of executions botched; of the bloodlust of mobs and the shabby excuses of the great.

Price: $9.71 (25% off)


India: A Mosaic
Introduction by Arundhati Roy
Edited by Barbara Epstein
Robert B. Silvers

Nine essays on India, all originally published in The New York Review of Books.

Price: $19.96 (20% off)