“Great books about senators aren’t especially plentiful,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The great heroes of modern American political history are presidents, not gifted inquisitors or master tacticians.”

“There are distinguished exceptions, of course: John A. Garraty’s Henry Cabot Lodge (1953) is a masterly rendering of a complicated figure; James T. Patterson’s biography of Robert Taft (Mr. Republican, 1972) is both graceful history and instructive political science. The trees felled to produce them may be said to have been sacrificed in a worthy cause.”

“And then there are three volumes (two memoirs, one biography) that fall somewhere short of the ideal, though that is not necessarily a reason to pass them by. The three senators under scrutiny, all Democrats, are well-known for different reasons. One is a party maverick, of sorts, much admired at home in West Virginia while ‘controversial’ in Washington (Joe Manchin). Another, from Nevada, was sufficiently distant from maverick status to have served as his party’s leader in the Senate for more than a decade (Harry Reid). The senator still in office is a Pennsylvania freshman whose singular status is both personal and political (John Fetterman).”

“Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, has long been known for his zany turns of phrase,” the New York Times reports.

“Despite being an Oxford-educated lawyer, his folksy quips, delivered with a lively twang, are so common that he was once the subject of a quiz: Readers were invited to guess whether a given quotation was uttered by him or Foghorn Leghorn, the loudmouthed, Southern-accented Looney Tunes rooster. Mr. Kennedy is perhaps most famous for a political advertisement in which he suggested that critics of law enforcement ‘call a crackhead’ the next time they found themselves in danger.”

“Now, somewhat improbably, he is one of the best-selling authors in the country.”

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How to Test Negative for Stupid: And Why Washington Never Will―A Senator's Funny and Perceptive Takedown of Washington Politics

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Out next month: American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union by Jon Meacham.

“America has had shining hours, and also dark ones.”

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American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union: An Anthology

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Just published: Firestorm: The Great Los Angeles Fires and America’s New Age of Disaster by Jacob Soboroff.

“How could it have happened? Is it inevitable something like it will happen again? This set Soboroff off on months of reporting—with firefighters, fire victims, political leaders, academics, earth scientists, wildlife biologists, meteorologists and more—that made him keenly aware of how the misfortune of seeing his past carbonize was also a form of time travel into the dystopian world his children will inhabit.”

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Firestorm: The Great Los Angeles Fires and America's New Age of Disaster – A Bestselling Personal Memoir From the Front Lines of an Unfolding Catastrophe

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Coming soon: The Elephants in the Room: How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leaders by Seth Masket.

“The 2024 nomination of Donald Trump was both predictable and wildly unusual. Parties almost never nominate someone who has previously lost the presidency – let alone a candidate who helped organize a riot and faced dozens of criminal indictments. Why, then, did Republicans nominate Trump for a third time?”

The Elephants in the Room: How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leaders

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Paul Farhi: “Not too long ago, books about Donald Trump were the safest bet in publishing. Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff’s tell-all about Trump’s chaotic first year in office, was a monster best seller in 2018, as were his subsequent Trump books in 2019 and 2021. Each volume of Bob Woodward’s three-part chronicle of Trump’s first term (Fear, Rage, and Peril) all reached the top of the New York Times nonfiction list.”

“Insider accounts (such as Unhinged, by Omarosa Manigault Newman, briefly a Trump-administration official), polemics (Triggered, by Donald Trump Jr.), and other journalistic narratives captivated readers, too. All told, during his first term, at least 20 Trump-related books hit the top spot on the Times list.”

“Now the best-seller lists tell a different story: The Trump-book bubble has burst. This is no doubt partly the result of reader fatigue—there are only so many Trump books any one politics junkie can be expected to buy. But the president himself might be personally undermining the value proposition of books about his favorite subject.”

Coming soon: Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed by Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff.

“Elon Musk isn’t a glitch in the system—he is the system. His worldview promises sovereignty through technology: plug in, power up, and become self-reliant. But the more you connect, the more he owns you.”

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Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed

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A good read: Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation by Zaakir Tameez.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) recommends the book saying it “tells the story I never knew, of how passionate abolitionist Charles Sumner, who hated politics and politicians, ended up in the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts in the first place and then came to be violently assaulted on the Senate floor by South Carolina Rep. Preston Brooks.”

He adds: “It then follows Summer’s difficult convalescence and the central role he played in the coming of the Civil War and everything to follow. Absolutely riveting.”

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Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation

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A must-read and National Book Award winner: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad.

After just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.”

This tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times.

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One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This: National Book Award

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Out next month: Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage by Heather Ann Thompson.

“Out of this dramatic moment would emerge an angry nation, in which Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post and later Fox News Network stoked the fear and the fury of a stunning number of Americans.”

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Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage

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Barack Obama released a list of his favorite books of the year:

• Paper Girl by Beth Macy
• Flashlight by Susan Choi
• We the People by Jill Lepore
• The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy
• There is No Place for Us by Brian Goldstone
• North Sun by Ethan Rutherford
• 1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin
• The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
• Dead and Alive by Zadie Smith
• What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
• The Look by Michelle Obama

There’s no word yet on Donald Trump’s favorite books of 2025.

“President Trump on Tuesday received and discussed a draft copy of a book by lawyer Alan Dershowitz that studies whether Trump could constitutionally serve a third term as commander in chief,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Dershowitz said he told Trump the Constitution wasn’t clear on the issue.”

Said Dershowitz: “He found it interesting as an intellectual issue. Do I think he’s going to run for a third term? No, I don’t think he will run for a third term.”

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Could President Trump Constitutionally Serve a Third Term?: My Nonpartisan Legal Analysis

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Just published: Trump vs. Jesus: The Unparallel Sayings by Keith Giles.

The eye-opening contrast between the teachings of Jesus Christ and the public statements of Donald J. Trump. 

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Trump vs. Jesus: The Unparallel Sayings (MAGA Versus)

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Just published: Chasing Chi: The FBI’s Groundbreaking Pursuit of China’s Most Prolific Spy Family by James E. Gaylord

“It began as furtive tip, grew to fevered investigation, and climaxed with midnight airport arrests to prevent US military secrets from being lost forever.”

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Chasing Chi: The FBI's Groundbreaking Pursuit of China's Most Prolific Spy Family

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