American Politics Audiobooks | Politics

Historic Supreme Court cases that impact modern-day issues of American liberty, in a short, accessible volume as part of the new Penguin Liberty series. A Penguin Classic Penguin Liberty is a curated series of historical, political and legal classic texts relevant to constitutional rights. This collection will include canonical and major cases that are often taught and that are not featured in our Civic Classics Supreme Court Decisions volume. Each Penguin Liberty volume will feature a series introduction and volume introduction by series editor Corey Brettschneider.

Corey Brettschneider (Author), Patty Nieman (Narrator)

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How A President Is Elected: An Article from the June 1900 issue of Scribner's Magazine, Volume 27, N

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice. British journalist A. Maurice Low (1860-1829), in an article published in the June 1900 issue of Scribner's Magazine, describes the national conventions held by the political parties, and the process of nominating candidates for the office of president of the nation.

Maurice Low (Author), Digital Voice Archie G (Narrator)

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Bridgebuilders: How Government Can Transcend Boundaries to Solve Big Problems

Our government is in crisis, mired in bureaucracy and often unable to fix tough problems. This book provides an essential new model for transforming the system and getting things done. COVID. Climate change. Refugee resettlement. Global supply chains. We're facing a new generation of complex problems, stretching across the public and private sectors. Historically we've looked to government for big solutions, but the reality is, the government we have now is a poor match for the problems we face. We need a fresh, new approach. As William D. Eggers and Donald F. Kettl show in this indispensable book, we need a government of bridgebuilders-public managers and leaders who collaborate with partners, both inside and outside government, to get the job done. They manage horizontally instead of vertically, they see their role as connectors, and they identify which players have the assets needed to solve the problems at hand. Each chapter examines one of the ten core principles of bridgebuilding and features practical tips and dynamic cases of how effective leaders have put each principle to work. Also included is a special section on creating a hundred-day bridgebuilding plan.

Donald F. Kettl, William D. Eggers (Author), Paul Heitsch (Narrator)

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Why Congress

Like it or not, our country’s future depends on Congress. The Founding Fathers made a representative, deliberative legislature the indispensable pillar of the American constitutional system, giving it more power and responsibility than any other branch of government. Yet today, contempt for Congress is nearly universal. To a large extent, even members of Congress themselves are unable to explain and defend the value of their institution. Why Congress takes on this challenge squarely, explaining why our increasingly divided politics demand a legislature capable of pitting factions against each other and forcing them to work out accommodations. This book covers the past, present, and future of the institution to understand how it has become so dysfunctional, but also to suggest how it might be restored. Philip Wallach vividly shows how a healthy Congress made it possible for the country to work through some of its most difficult challenges, including World War II and the struggle for civil rights. But transformations that began in the 1970s ultimately empowered congressional leaders to suppress dissent within their own parties and frame a maximally divisive agenda. In stark contrast to the earlier episodes, where legislators secured durable political resolutions, in facing contemporary challenges, such as immigration and COVID-19, Congress has exacerbated divisions rather than searching for compromises with broad appeal. But Congress’ power to organize itself suggests a way out. Wallach deftly explains that while Congress could accept its descent into decrepitude or cede its power to the president, a Madisonian revival of deliberation can yet restore our system of government’s ability to work through deep divides.

Phillip A. Wallach (Author), Brian Wiggins (Narrator)

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An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford

?Gerald Ford is probably remembered more for how he got to the presidency than for what he did there. In this brilliant book, Richard Norton Smith tells the rest of the story. On every other page I found something I didn?t know, bringing new and important insights into how Ford kept the nation together and moved it past its most severe political crisis since the Civil War. It will become the definitive work on Ford and his presidency.' -- Bob Schieffer, CBS News From the preeminent presidential scholar and acclaimed biographer of historical figures including George Washington, Herbert Hoover, and Nelson Rockefeller comes this eye-opening life of Gerald R. Ford, whose presidency arguably set the course for post-liberal America and a post-Cold War world. For many Americans, President Gerald Ford was the genial accident of history who controversially pardoned his Watergate-tarnished predecessor, presided over the fall of Saigon, and became a punching bag on Saturday Night Live. Yet as Richard Norton Smith reveals in a book full of surprises, Ford was an underrated leader whose tough decisions and personal decency look better with the passage of time. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents, Smith recreates Ford?s hardscrabble childhood in Michigan, his early anti-establishment politics and lifelong love affair with the former Betty Bloomer, whose impact on American culture he predicted would outrank his own. As president, Ford guided the nation through its worst Constitutional crisis since the Civil War and broke the back of the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression?accomplishing both with little fanfare or credit (at least until 2001 when the JFK Library gave him its prestigious Profile in Courage Award in belated recognition of the Nixon pardon). Less coda than curtain raiser, Ford's administration bridged the Republican pragmatism of Eisenhower and Nixon and the more doctrinaire conservatism of Ronald Reagan. His introduction of economic deregulation would transform the American economy, while his embrace of the Helsinki Accords hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union. This definitive biography, a decade in the making, will change history?s views of a man whose warning about presidential arrogance (?God help the country?) is more relevant than ever.

Richard Norton Smith (Author), Fred Sanders (Narrator)

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Life Sentence: The Brief and Tragic Career of Baltimore’s Deadliest Gang Leader

In this unprecedented deep dive into inner-city gang life, Mark Bowden takes readers inside a Baltimore gang, offers an in-depth portrait of its notorious leader, and chronicles the 2016 FBI investigation that landed eight of its members in prison Sandtown is one of the deadliest neighborhoods in the world; it earned Baltimore its nickname Bodymore, Murderland, and was made notorious by David Simon’s classic HBO series The Wire. Drug deals dominate street corners, and ruthless, casual violence abounds. Montana Barronette grew up in the center of it all. He was the leader of the gang “Trained to Go,” or TTG, and when he was finally arrested and sentenced to life in prison, he had been labeled “Baltimore’s Number One Trigger Puller.” Under Tana’s reign, TTG dominated Sandtown. After a string of murders are linked to TTG, each with dozens of witnesses too intimidated to testify, three detectives set out to put Tana in prison for life. For them, this was never about drugs: it was about serial murder. An acclaimed journalist who spent his youth in the white suburbs of Baltimore, Mark Bowden returns to the city with exclusive access to the FBI files and unprecedented insight into one of the city’s deadliest gangs and its notorious leader. As he traces the rise and fall of TTG, Bowden uses wiretapped drug buys, police interviews, undercover videos, text messages, social media posts, trial transcripts, and his own ongoing conversations with Tana’s family and community to create the most in-depth account of an inner-city gang ever written. With his signature precision and propulsive narrative, Mark Bowden positions Tana—as a boy, a gang leader, a killer, and now a prisoner—in the context of Baltimore and America, illuminating his path for what it really was: a life sentence.

Mark Bowden (Author), L.J. Ganser (Narrator)

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Power Players: Sports, Politics, and the American Presidency

A colorful look at how modern presidents play sports, have used sports to play politics, and what our fan-in-chief can often tell us about our national pastimes. POWER PLAYERS tells all the great stories of presidents and the sports they played, loved and spectated as a way to better understand what it takes to be elected to lead a country driven by sports fans of all stripes. While every modern president has used sports to relate to Joe Q. Public, POWER PLAYERS turns the lens around to examine how sports have shaped our presidents and made for some amazing moments in White House history, including: - Dwight Eisenhower played so much golf he had a putting green built outside the Oval Office! (He also almost died on a golf course while in office.) - How John F. Kennedy's touch-football games with family were knowing plays to polish the Camelot mystique. - People might not have related to the aloof and awkward Richard Nixon but, hey, he would bowl a few frames just like them. - Ronald Reagan didn't just play the part of "The Gipper" for the silver screen, but truly adopted the famous footballer's never-say-die persona. - George H.W. Bush once ran a horseshoe league from the White House - with a commissioner and brackets! (He would later claim to have come up with the fan expression, "You da man.") - Bill Clinton's Arkansas Razorback fandom was so intense that he could be found shouting at the referees from a box at the basketball national championship game in 1994. - George W. Bush's not only owned the Texas Rangers but also threw out the most iconic first pitch ever in the 2001 World Series. - What really went down when Barack Obama played pickup hoops with the North Carolina Tarheels. (He later won the state by .3 percent of the vote.) - Donald Trump is the only president ever featured in a professional wrestling storyline-and everything real and fake that went with that. In the pages of POWER PLAYERS, a love of sports shines through as the key to understanding who these presidents really were and how they chose to play by the rules, occasionally bluff or cheat, all the while coaching the country into a few quality wins and some notorious losses.

Chris Cillizza (Author), Chris Cillizza (Narrator)

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Capitalist Punishment: How Wall Street Is Using Your Money to Create a Country You Didn't Vote For

A Wall Street cartel has quietly seized control of the American economy, and they are forcing governments and businesses to bow down to their political agenda—using your money to do it. Three Wall Street firms have quietly amassed more money than Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Andrew Carnegie, and John Rockefeller combined. But the money isn’t even theirs. These asset managers have accumulated all their power through “passive funds,” as most investors no longer believe anyone can reliably pick stocks. Yet the Big Three have decided that they can reliably pick the right social policies instead. As entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy reveals, the results are all bad—and working their way into every corner of the economy. They force US companies to adopt “racial equity audits” and “emissions caps” while supporting human rights atrocities in China. They coerce Western companies to produce less oil while shifting production to dirtier places like Russia. They allow companies like FTX to take victory laps on good management while collapsing like a house of cards. They charge high fees to mom-and-pop investors for so-called sustainable funds that are effectively identical to lower-fee index funds. Worst of all, they’re celebrated as heroes—at least so far. Capitalist Punishment lifts the veil on the largest fiduciary breaches, antitrust abuses, and First Amendment violations of the twenty-first century, misdeeds that are hiding in plain sight. This isn’t just a threat to capitalism. It’s a threat to democratic self-governance itself. Capitalist Punishment is an easy-to-follow educational tour de force for every participant in financial markets—which, to the surprise of most Americans, includes nearly every single one of them.

Vivek Ramaswamy (Author), Timothy Andrés Pabon (Narrator)

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Scalia: Rise to Greatness: 1936 - 1986

The bestselling historian and journalist James Rosen provides the first comprehensive account of the brilliant and combative Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, whose philosophy and judicial opinions defined our legal era. With SCALIA: Rise to Greatness, 1936-1986, the opening installment in a two-volume biography, acclaimed reporter and bestselling historian James Rosen provides the first comprehensive account of the life of Justice Antonin Scalia, whose singular career in government-including three decades on the Supreme Court-shaped American law and society in the twenty-first century. A decade in the making, Rise to Greatness tells the story of the kid from Queens who became the first Italian American on the Court and one of the most profoundly influential figures of our time. This volume takes us from Scalia's birth to his ascension to the Court, providing a fresh and probing look at his Catholic upbringing and education; his stints in academia and published works, some of them obscure and long-overlooked; and his service in the Nixon and Ford administrations, when Scalia played a central role in reforming the U.S. intelligence community and in the approval of sensitive covert operations. Deeply researched and based on unparalleled access to documentary and personal sources, and written with an intellectual rigor and wit befitting its subject, Rosen's narrative reads like a novel while presenting startling new insight into the life, mind, career, faith, and legacy of the man whom family and friends called "Nino." The result is a compelling portrait of an American legend with whom the author personally corresponded, broke bread, drank wine, and braved the streets of the capital as a (nervous) passenger in the justice's famously speedy BMW. Rosen has unearthed previously unpublished writing from every phase of Scalia's career, including private Supreme Court emails, and has interviewed Scalia's family, classmates, students, colleagues from the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations, priests, poker buddies, hunting companions, and fellow judges and justices. Rise to Greatness is a landmark of modern biography, a rich and moving study, accessible to lay readers, that brings to life a towering figure of American history. It is the book Scalia fans, and all citizens interested in history and the law, have long awaited.

James Rosen (Author), John Mclain (Narrator)

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Crooked: The Roaring '20s Tale of a Corrupt Attorney General, a Crusading Senator, and the Birth of

The riveting, forgotten narrative of the most corrupt attorney general in American history and the maverick senator who stopped at nothing to take him down Many tales from the Jazz Age reek of crime and corruption. But perhaps the era's greatest political fiasco-one that resulted in a nationwide scandal, a public reckoning at the Department of Justice, the rise of J. Edgar Hoover, and an Oscar-winning film-has long been lost to the annals of history. In Crooked, Nathan Masters restores this story of murderers, con artists, secret lovers, spies, bootleggers, and corrupt politicians to its full, page-turning glory. Newly elected to the Senate on a promise to root out corruption, Burton "Boxcar Burt" Wheeler sets his sights on ousting Attorney General Harry Daugherty, puppet-master behind President Harding's unlikely rise to power. Daugherty is famous for doing whatever it takes to keep his boss in power, and his cozy relations with bootleggers and other scofflaws have long spawned rumors of impropriety. But when his constant companion and trusted fixer, Jess Smith, is found dead of a gunshot wound in the apartment the two men share, Daugherty is suddenly thrust into the spotlight, exposing the rot consuming the Harding administration to a shocked public. Determined to uncover the truth in the ensuing investigation, Wheeler takes the prosecutorial reins and subpoenas a rogue's gallery of witnesses-convicted felons, shady detectives, disgraced officials-to expose the attorney general's treachery and solve the riddle of Jess Smith's suspicious death. With the muckraking senator hot on his trail, Daugherty turns to his greatest weapon, the nascent Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose eager second-in-command, J. Edgar Hoover, sees opportunity amidst the chaos. Packed with political intrigue, salacious scandal, and no shortage of lessons for our modern era of political discord, Nathan Masters' thrilling historical narrative shows how this intricate web of inconceivable crookedness set the stage for the next century of American political scandals.

Nathan Masters (Author), David H Lawrence Xvii (Narrator)

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The Case Against the Supreme Court

Both historically and in the present, the Supreme Court has largely been a failure In this devastating book, Erwin Chemerinsky-"one of the shining lights of legal academia" (The New York Times)-shows how, case by case, for over two centuries, the hallowed Court has been far more likely to uphold government abuses of power than to stop them. Drawing on a wealth of rulings, some famous, others little known, he reviews the Supreme Court's historic failures in key areas, including the refusal to protect minorities, the upholding of gender discrimination, and the neglect of the Constitution in times of crisis, from World War I through 9/11. No one is better suited to make this case than Chemerinsky. He has studied, taught, and practiced constitutional law for thirty years and has argued before the Supreme Court. With passion and eloquence, Chemerinsky advocates reforms that could make the system work better, and he challenges us to think more critically about the nature of the Court and the fallible men and women who sit on it.

Erwin Chemerinsky (Author), Philip Hernandez (Narrator)

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The U.S. Congress: A Very Short Introduction

Donald A. Ritchie, a congressional historian for forty years, takes listeners on a fascinating, behind-the-scenes tour of Capitol Hill, pointing out the key players, explaining their behavior, and translating parliamentary language into plain English. He also explores the essential necessity of compromise to accomplish anything significant in the legislative arena. However, recent events show that political polarization has hardened and produced gridlock. The 2020 election also produced a more diverse membership in terms of gender, ethnicity, religion, and ideology, with primary elections resulting in the defeat of moderate candidates, making bipartisan compromise harder to achieve. Among the most significant events, the Senate ignored President Obama's last nomination to the Supreme Court and then adopted a 'nuclear option' to streamline future Supreme Court confirmations. The House also twice impeached President Trump, processes that starkly expose the differences between the majority-rule requirements of the House and the super-majority requirements of the Senate. This new edition explains how the parties have changed in light of the unprecedented politics of the past four years, culminating in the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and how this development has affected both the House and the Senate.

Donald A. Ritchie (Author), Sean Runnette (Narrator)

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