In just two years, MSNBC host Olbermann (The Worst Person in the World) has become one of the most recognized critics of the George W. Bush administration. This book explains how and why Olbermann's televised special comments began, then reprints them from September 2005 through July 2007, with postcomment explanations. Before becoming a Bush administration critic, Olbermann had achieved fame as a sports commentator on the ESPN cable network. The genesis of commentator Olbermann as pol...

Are we more than the sum of our parts? Perhaps, but it's fascinating nonetheless to look at our noses, ears, feet, and other bits as isolated evolutionary stories. That's just what Michael Sims does in Adam's Navel, an amusing collection of bodily facts. Sims wrote the book while laid out recovering from back surgery, jotting free association musings about whatever body part he had in mind. The result is a set of chapters with such titles as "Skin Deep," "The Not-Quite-Naked Ape," and ...

During their eight years in the White House, Bill and Hillary Clinton worked together more closely than the public ever knew. Their intertwined personal and professional lives had far-reaching consequences–for politics, domestic policy, and international affairs–and their marital troubles became a national soap opera. Based on unparalleled access to scores of Clinton insiders–cabinet officers, top administration officials, close personal friends–and skilled analysis of...

Journalist and language expert Erard believes we can learn a lot from our mistakes. He argues that the secrets of human speech are present in our own proliferating verbal detritus. Erard plots a comprehensive outline of verbal blunder studies throughout history, from Freud's fascination with the slip to Allen Funt's Candid Camera. Smoothly summarizing complex linguistic theories, Erard shows how slip studies undermine some well-established ideas on language acquisition and speech. Incl...

He doesn't have an exploratory committee, but the former Democratic senator and one-time presidential hopeful certainly has a platform in this thoughtful policy agenda. Bradley (Time Present, Time Past) scathingly critiques Republican ideology and presents a liberal-centrist program for change that advances a multilateralist foreign policy, spending cuts (including Pentagon sacred cows) and tax hikes to reduce the deficit. There are also detailed, often far-reaching proposals to shore ...

Accusations of selling out—of betraying or neglecting the interests of blacks to curry favor with whites—are among the most damaging that African-Americans level at each other, according to Harvard law professor Kennedy. Called a sellout himself after his book Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word appeared, Kennedy here explores the charge's potency. He recounts the centuries-long history of sellout rhetoric—sometimes rooted in real betrayals by blacks who echoed white supre...

"Few observers are as steeped as Winters is in the theory and practice of polities in both the Roman Catholic Church and the United States of America, and few are as passionately engaged in seeking a redemptive common ground." -- Hendrik Hertzberg

A dynamic young scholar and journalist explains how the Democrats lost the Catholic vote, and how they must win it back in order to survive in the twenty-first century.

In 1960, Democrats and Catholics united to elect John F. ...