A perfectly timed book release: The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy by Jeffrey Toobin.

“Toobin explores why the Founding Fathers gave the power of pardon to the President and recreates the behind-the-scenes political melodrama during the tumultuous period around Nixon’s resignation.”

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The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy

• Hardcover Book
• Toobin, Jeffrey (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 304 Pages - 02/11/2025 (Publication Date) - Simon & Schuster (Publisher)

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Next on my reading list: The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource by Chris Hayes.

“With the help of a few tech firms, we basically tore it down in about a decade.”

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The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource

• Hardcover Book
• Hayes, Chris (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 336 Pages - 01/28/2025 (Publication Date) - Penguin Press (Publisher)

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NBC News: “Biden plans to write another book, providing him with the opportunity to tell his version of his presidency and its conclusion.”

“Vice President Kamala Harris has a lot of options for her next act — including possible runs for governor of California in 2026 and president in 2028 — but writing a book may be first up,” NBC News reports.

Said literary agent Keith Urbahn: “Kamala Harris is poised to land the biggest book deal of any vice president in history. But the real question isn’t the advance — it’s whether the book can redefine her for 2028.”

Just published: The Origins of Elected Strongmen: How Personalist Parties Destroy Democracy from Within by Erica Frantz, Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Joe Wright.

Politico: “We’ve studied democratic erosion in countries around the world, and our research has found that the most important bulwark against an elected leader undermining democracy doesn’t come from opposition parties or pro-democracy activists. It comes from the ruling party — and particularly the powerful elites in that party — and their efforts to constrain their own leader.”

“The danger to democracy is particularly acute in political systems led by parties where leaders wield disproportionate influence relative to the political parties that back them — as is now the case in the Republican Party.”

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The Origins of Elected Strongmen: How Personalist Parties Destroy Democracy from Within

• Hardcover Book
• Frantz, Erica (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 240 Pages - 08/24/2024 (Publication Date) - Oxford University Press (Publisher)

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“The Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward forcefully denied making statements attributed to him by James Comer, the Republican chair of the powerful House oversight committee, in which Woodward supposedly said Joe Biden was financially corrupt,” The Guardian reports.

Said Woodward: “The statements attributed to me in what is apparently his book are false. I made none of those statements he attributes to me. I repeat none, and not even in a paraphrased form.”

“President-elect Donald Trump’s team was given the questions asked by Fox News anchors at an Iowa town hall last January in advance by someone inside the network, according to a forthcoming book, in what would be a serious breach of journalism ethics,” CNN reports.

Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump's Return to Power

• Amazon Kindle Edition
• Isenstadt, Alex (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 266 Pages - 03/18/2025 (Publication Date) - Grand Central Publishing (Publisher)

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A must-read: The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource by Chris Hayes.

Hayes writes in the New York Times: “Our attention is a wildly valuable resource, and some of the world’s most powerful corporations extract it at scale in increasingly sophisticated ways, leaving us feeling like bystanders to our minds. You might say we’ve built a machine for producing boredom and then entertainment to fill it in an endlessly accelerating and desperate cycle.”

“Boredom lurks around every corner in our lives.”

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The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource

• Hardcover Book
• Hayes, Chris (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 336 Pages - 01/28/2025 (Publication Date) - Penguin Press (Publisher)

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Melania Trump’s memoir has been on the New York Times bestseller list for 10 weeks and is back in the top position this week.

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Melania

• Hardcover Book
• Trump, Melania (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 256 Pages - 10/08/2024 (Publication Date) - Skyhorse (Publisher)

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Out early next year: Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History by Chris Whipple.

“A disastrous debate, a would-be assassin’s bullet, an electrifying eleventh hour candidate swap, dramatic and surprising VP selections, betrayals behind closed doors, charges of a stolen election, game-changing blunders—the history-making 2024 presidential election is a political saga of Shakespearean proportions.”

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Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History

• Hardcover Book
• Whipple, Chris (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 240 Pages - 04/08/2025 (Publication Date) - Harper Influence (Publisher)

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Oliver Darcy: “Two of the journalists toughest on Joe Biden are teaming up to write a campaign book focused largely on the president.”

“CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios national political correspondent Alex Thompson, both of whom have treated the president to an unrelenting stream of hawkish coverage, have started reaching out to figures in Bidenworld as they begin reporting out their book, I’m told.”

“Unlike many of the campaign books due out next year, which center mostly on President-elect Donald Trump’s astonishing return to power, I’m told that Tapper and Thompson are focusing most of their efforts on the drama that Biden’s initial insistence on staying in the 2024 race, followed by his eventual exit, gave way to in Democratic politics.”

Donald Trump campaign issued an unusual statement, preemptively saying it will not comment on forthcoming book from Michael Wolff:

“As a group, we have decided not to respond to his bad faith inquiries, and we encourage others to completely disregard whatever nonsense he eventually publishes. Consider this our blanket response to whatever he writes,” read the statement signed by 15 staffers.”

Wolff had recently told the Daily Beast that Jeffrey Epstein had photos of Trump with “topless young women” sitting in his lap.

Bill Clinton writes in his new book of his “frustration” at being questioned about his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky while acknowledging that he has never apologized to her directly, The Guardian reports.

Citizen: My Life After the White House

• Amazon Kindle Edition
• Clinton, Bill (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 442 Pages - 11/19/2024 (Publication Date) - Knopf (Publisher)

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