American Politics Audiobooks | Politics

Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years

Remember when presidents spoke in complete sentences instead of in unhinged tweets? David Litt does. In his comic, coming-of-age memoir, he takes us back to the Obama years - and charts a path forward in the age of Trump. More than any other presidency, Barack Obama's eight years in the White House were defined by young people - twenty-somethings who didn't have much experience in politics (or anything else, for that matter), yet suddenly found themselves in the most high-stakes office building on earth. David Litt was one of those twenty-somethings. After graduating from college in 2008, he went straight to the Obama campaign. In 2011, he became one of the youngest White House speechwriters in history. Until leaving the White House in 2016, he wrote on topics from healthcare to climate change to criminal justice reform. As President Obama's go-to comedy writer, he also took the lead on the White House Correspondents' Dinner, the so-called "State of the Union of jokes." Now, in this refreshingly honest memoir, Litt brings us inside Obamaworld. With a humorists' eye for detail, he describes what it's like to accidentally trigger an international incident or nearly set a president's hair aflame. He answers questions you never knew you had: Which White House men's room is the classiest? What do you do when the commander in chief gets your name wrong? Where should you never, under any circumstances, change clothes on Air Force One? With nearly a decade of stories to tell, Litt makes clear that politics is completely, hopelessly absurd. But it's also important. For all the moments of chaos, frustration, and yes, disillusionment, Litt remains a believer in the words that first drew him to the Obama campaign: "People who love this country can change it." In telling his own story, Litt sheds fresh light on his former boss's legacy. And he argues that, despite the current political climate, the politics championed by Barack Obama will outlive the presidency of Donald Trump. Full of hilarious stories and told in a truly original voice, Thanks, Obama is an exciting debut about what it means - personally, professionally, and politically - to grow up.

David Litt (Author), David Litt (Narrator)

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A Preface to Politics

Walter Lippmann still stands today as one of the foremost figures of American political journalism, social commentary, and cultural criticism. At the age of 24, he published A Preface to Politics; that same year, along with Herbert Croly and Walter Weyl, he founded The New Republic magazine. In short, he burst upon the scene. He went on to become an advisor to Woodrow Wilson and was involved in drafting Wilson's famous "Fourteen Points." He won the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964, the Pulitzer Prise in 1958 and again in 1961. The fundamental message of A Preface to Politics is that statesmanship cannot succeed if it focuses merely on the forms and mechanics of government and the technical development and administration of policy. Political leadership can only be successful if political leaders attune themselves to the human beings they lead, keeping themselves abreast of their wants and needs and the social and cultural movements among them. No political mechanism can function without intelligent, perceptive, and responsive people to make it work. It is startling to see how relevant, indeed important, Lippmann's message still is, over a century after it was written. In our day as in his, deliberate lies and deception is the rule in the highest offices of our government. He saw the same fundamental corruption at work in our national politics as still pollutes it today. Then, as now, he emphasizes the vital importance of informal leadership exercised by educated, informed, energetic people who function as activists and visionaries in the endless process of maintaining a responsive society and government. Over and over again, Lippmann's message will make us open our eyes to what is still critically important. Enjoy!

Walter Lippmann (Author), Robert Bethune (Narrator)

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The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore: A Story of American Rage

On June 14, 2016, Jared Yates Sexton reported from a Donald Trump rally in Greensboro, North Carolina. One of the first journalists to attend these rallies and give mainstream readers an idea of the raw anger that occurred there, Sexton found himself in the center of a maelstrom. Following a series of tweets that saw his observations viewed well over a million times, his reporting was soon featured in the Washington Post, NPR, Bloomberg, and Mother Jones, and he would go on to write two pieces for the New York Times. Sexton gained over eighteen thousand followers on Twitter in a matter of days, and received online harassment, campaigns to get him fired from his university professorship, and death threats that changed his life forever. The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore is a firsthand account of the events that shaped the 2016 Presidential Election and the cultural forces that powered Donald Trump into the White House. Featuring in-the-field reports as well as deep analysis, Sexton's book is not just the story of the most unexpected and divisive election in modern political history. It is also a sobering chronicle of our democracy's political polarization-a result of our self-constructed, technologically-assisted echo chambers.

Jared Yates Sexton (Author), P.J. Ochlan (Narrator)

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Brainwashed: Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth

When parents send their children off to college, mom and dad hope they'll return more cultivated, knowledgeable, and astute-able to see issues from all points of view. But, according to Ben Shapiro, there's only one view allowed on most college campuses: a rabid brand of liberalism that must be swallowed hook, line, and sinker.In this explosive exposé, Ben Shapiro, a UCLA graduate, reveals how America's university system is one of the largest brainwashing machines on the planet. Examining this nationwide problem from firsthand experience, Shapiro shows how the leftists who dominate the universities-from the administration to the student government, from the professors to the student media-use their power to mold impressionable minds.Fresh and bitterly funny, this book proves that the universities, far from being a place for open discussion, are really dungeons of the mind that indoctrinate students to become socialists, atheists, race-baiters, and narcissists.

Ben Shapiro (Author), Chris Abell (Narrator)

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Rogue Spooks: The Intelligence War on Donald Trump

In Rogue Spooks, bestselling authors Dick Morris and Eileen McGann uncover the facts behind allegations of foreign meddling in the 2016 presidential election. This groundbreaking exposé will leave listeners questioning the motives of U.S. Intelligence agencies, leftover partisans within our government, and members of the mainstream press. Donald Trump's first 100 days in office were roiled by allegations of treasonous contacts between his campaign team and the Kremlin to rig the election. These outrageous charges first surfaced in the notorious “Trump Dossier,” an unverified document of suspect provenance, full of wild and salacious accusations. This dossier—filled with little more than gossip, rumor, and innuendo––was compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence operative who teamed up with the FBI and anti-Trump partisans. Hillary Clinton supporters paid for Steele’s work. When no news media would publish the unverified dossier, the ex-spook enlisted the help of a former UK ambassador to Russia, who arranged in turn for a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State to get the document to Senator John McCain, in the hope that he would then bring it to FBI Director James Comey’s attention. McCain did just that. Comey himself played a critical role in the dossier ultimately going public, giving a confidential summary to President Obama and Congressional leaders. It was immediately leaked by rogue spooks in order to demean, destabilize, and destroy Donald Trump’s nascent presidency. The dossier and this mythical intelligence are the basis for the phony claims about a Russia/Trump collusion to steal the election. No proof was found. No substantiation uncovered. Even Comey told Trump he was not under investigation for the Russian meddling charges. But that didn’t end the leaks or the allegations. Working in concert with liberal news outlets, these rogue spooks have formed a new intel/media complex that threatens our democracy. Rogue Spooks will reveal how it works. Listeners will be shocked to learn the truth about the false accusations against President Trump in the flawed dossier. They’ll be interested to know how leaks to the media fueled the phony scandal, and how intelligence agencies will try to use the newly appointed special prosecutor to oust President Trump. They will also learn what we can do—specifically—to stop them.

Dick Morris, Eileen McGann (Author), John Pruden (Narrator)

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A Farewell to Justice; Jim Garrison, JFK's Assassination, and the Case That Should Have Changed Hist

Working with thousands of previously unreleased documents and drawing on more than one thousand interviews, with many witnesses speaking out for the first time, Joan Mellen revisits the investigation of New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, the only public official to have indicted, in 1969, a suspect in President John F. Kennedy's murder. Garrison began by exposing the contradictions in the Warren Report, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was an unstable pro-Castro Marxist who acted alone in killing Kennedy. A Farewell to Justice reveals that Oswald, no Marxist, was in fact working with both the FBI and the CIA, as well as with US Customs, and that the attempts to sabotage Garrison's investigation reached the highest levels of the US government. Garrison's suspects included CIA-sponsored soldiers of fortune enlisted in assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, an anti-Castro Cuban asset, and a young runner for the conspirators, interviewed here for the first time by the author. Building upon Garrison's effort, Mellen uncovers decisive new evidence and clearly establishes the intelligence agencies' roles in both a president's assassination and its cover-up. In this revised edition, to be published in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the president's assassination, the author reveals new sources and recently uncovered documents confirming in greater detail just how involved the CIA was in the events of November 22, 1963. More than one hundred new pages add critical evidence and information into one of the most significant events in human history.

Joan Mellen (Author), Joyce Bean (Narrator)

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The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

In this challenging work, Christopher Lasch makes an accessible critique of what is wrong with the values and beliefs of America's professional and managerial elites. The distinguished historian argues that democracy today is threatened not by the masses, as Jose Ortega y Gasset (The Revolt of the Masses) had said, but by the elites. These elites-mobile and increasingly global in outlook-refuse to accept limits or ties to nation and place. As they isolate themselves in their networks and enclaves, they abandon the middle class, divide the nation, and betray the idea of a democracy for all America's citizens. This is Lasch's clarion call for a return to the virtues of community, responsibility, and religion.

Christopher Lasch (Author), David De Vries (Narrator)

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The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left

The explosive new book from Dinesh D'Souza, author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Hillary's America, America, and Obama's AmericaWhat is "the big lie" of the Democratic Party? That conservatives-and President Donald Trump in particular-are fascists. Nazis, even. In a typical comment, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow says the Trump era is reminiscent of "what it was like when Hitler first became chancellor."But in fact, this audacious lie is a complete inversion of the truth. Yes, there is a fascist threat in America-but that threat is from the Left and the Democratic Party. The Democratic Left has an ideology virtually identical with fascism and routinely borrows tactics of intimidation and political terror from the Nazi Brownshirts.To cover up their insidious fascist agenda, Democrats loudly accuse President Trump and other Republicans of being Nazis-an obvious lie, considering the GOP has been fighting the Democrats over slavery, genocide, racism, and fascism from the beginning.Now, finally, Dinesh D'Souza explodes the Left's big lie. He expertly exonerates President Trump and his supporters, then uncovers the Democratic Left's long, cozy relationship with Nazism: how the racist and genocidal acts of early Democrats inspired Adolf Hitler's campaign of death; how fascist philosophers influenced the great twentieth-century lions of the American Left; and how today's anti-free speech, anti-capitalist, anti-religious liberty, pro-violence Democratic Party is a frightening simulacrum of the Nazi Party. Hitler coined the term "the big lie" to describe a lie that "the great masses of the people" will fall for precisely because of how bold and monstrous the lie is. In The Big Lie, D'Souza shows that the Democratic Left's orchestrated campaign to paint President Trump and conservatives as Nazis to cover up its own fascism is, in fact, the biggest lie of all.

Dinesh D'Souza, Dinesh D’souza (Author), David Cochran Heath (Narrator)

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Fake Science: Exposing the Left's Skewed Statistics, Fuzzy Facts, and Dodgy Data

If you listen to any political argument, you're eventually bound to hear something like: , The science is settled on this., Or: , Just look at the statistics!, Or: , There have been studies that say..., You'd think we were living in the golden age of science and reason. But the truth is far more sinister, says Austin Ruse. We're actually living in the age of the low information voter, easily mislead by all-too-convincing false statistics and studies. In Fact-Shaming, Ruse debunks so-called , facts, used to advance political causes one after the other, revealing how poorly they stand up to actual science.

Austin Ruse (Author), Mike Chamberlain (Narrator)

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Drone Warrior: An Elite Soldier's Inside Account of the Hunt for America's Most Dangerous Enemies

A former Delta Force black ops member takes us inside America’s covert drone war in this headline-making, never-before-told account for fans of Zero Dark Thirty and Lone Survivor, told by a Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal writer and filled with eye-opening and sure to be controversial details. For nearly a decade Brett Velicovich was at the center of America’s new warfare: using unmanned aerial vehicles—drones—to take down the world’s deadliest terrorists across the globe. One of an elite handful in the entire military with the authority to select targets and issue death orders, he worked in concert with the full human and technological network of American intelligence—assets, analysts, spies, informants—and the military’s elite operatives, to stalk, capture, and eliminate high value targets in al-Qaeda and ISIS. In this remarkable book, co-written with journalist Christopher S. Stewart, Velicovich offers unprecedented perspective on the remarkably complex nature of drone operations and the rigorous and wrenching decisions behind them. In intimate gripping detail, he shares insider, action-packed stories of the most coordinated, advanced, and secret missions that neutralized terrorists, preserved the lives of US and international warriors across the globe, and saved countless innocents in the hottest conflict zones today. Drone Warrior also chronicles the US military’s evolution in the past decade and the technology driving it. Velicovich considers the future it foretells, and speaks candidly on the physical and psychological toll it exacts, including the impact on his own life. He reminds us that while these machines can kill, they can also be used productively to improve and preserve life, including protecting endangered species, work he is engaged in today. Joining warfare classics such as American Sniper, Lone Survivor, and No Easy Day, Drone Warrior is the definitive account of our nation’s capacity and capability for war in the modern age.

Brett Velicovich, Christopher S. Stewart (Author), Brett Velicovich, Roger Wayne (Narrator)

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Black Detroit: A People's History of Self-Determination

The author of Baldwin’s Harlem looks at the evolving culture, politics, economics, and spiritual life of Detroit—a blend of memoir, love letter, history, and clear-eyed reportage that explores the city’s past, present, and future and its significance to the African American legacy and the nation’s fabric. Herb Boyd moved to Detroit in 1943, as race riots were engulfing the city. Though he did not grasp their full significance at the time, this critical moment would be one of many he witnessed that would mold his political activism and exposed a city restless for change. In Black Detroit, he reflects on his life and this landmark place, in search of understand why Detroit is a special place for black people. Boyd reveals how Black Detroiters were prominent in the city’s historic, groundbreaking union movement and—when given an opportunity—were among the tireless workers who made the automobile industry the center of American industry. Well paying jobs on assembly lines allowed working class Black Detroiters to ascend to the middle class and achieve financial stability, an accomplishment not often attainable in other industries. Boyd makes clear that while many of these middle-class jobs have disappeared, decimating the population and hitting blacks hardest, Detroit survives thanks to the emergence of companies such as Shinola—which represent the strength of the Motor City and and its continued importance to the country. He also brings into focus the major figures who have defined and shaped Detroit, including William Lambert, the great abolitionist, Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown, Coleman Young, the city’s first black mayor, diva songstress Aretha Franklin, Malcolm X, and Ralphe Bunche, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. With a stunning eye for detail and passion for Detroit, Boyd celebrates the music, manufacturing, politics, and culture that make it an American original.

Herb Boyd (Author), James Shippy (Narrator)

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Over Here: The First World War and American Society

The Great War of 1914-1918 confronted the United States with one of the most wrenching crises in the nation's history. It also left a residue of disruption and disillusion that spawned an even more ruinous conflict scarcely a generation later. Over Here is the single most comprehensive discussion of the impact of World War I on American society. This twenty-fifth anniversary edition includes a new afterword from Pulitzer Prize-winning author David M. Kennedy, that explains his reasons for writing the original edition as well as his opinions on the legacy of Wilsonian idealism, most recently reflected in President George W. Bush's national security strategy. More than a chronicle of the war years, Over Here uses the record of America's experience in the Great War as a prism through which to view early twentieth-century American society. The ways in which America mobilized for the war, chose to fight it, and then went about the business of enshrining it in memory all indicate important aspects of enduring American character. An American history classic, Over Here reflects on a society's struggle with the pains of war, and offers trenchant insights into the birth of modern America.

David M. Kennedy (Author), Mike Chamberlain (Narrator)

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