American Politics Audiobooks | Politics

The Text of the United States Constitution

The United States Constitution established both a strong central power and protected states’ rights. But to say that something is of two parts is not to say that the parts are equal. Advocates of state sovereignty believed the Constitution created an executive power that was so strong it might as well have been a monarchy, while advocates of national government felt that a strong executive was essential to steer America through crisis. Between these two positions, the living body of the Constitution was sculpted. Over and over, the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention clashed and compromised. Slavery, a bill of rights, legislative representation—all the battles over these issues are enshrined in the language of the Constitution. To fully appreciate the Constitution, it is necessary to understand the questions it sought to resolve.

George H. Smith (Author), A Full Cast, Walter Cronkite (Narrator)

Audiobook

Our Country

In this rare, sweeping history, Michael Barone draws from deep within the political and social record of modern America to tell the story of how the country of our parents and of our grandparents became the prosperous and powerful nation we know today. Barone points out that the single most significant issue to dominate American politics in this century is that of who really is an American. Gone are the vaunted battles over the distribution of wealth and income. In their place are the powerfully rooted political battles fought between America's cultural poles: its racial and ethnic groups, its urban liberals and small town conservatives, its state's rightists and centrists, and ultimately also between advocates of culturally diverse lifestyles. Barone's extensive knowledge of the historical record and his portrayal of well-known individual participants add color and dimension to this narrative. "Our Country is the best political book of 1990 and probably of the 1990s. Why wait to award these prizes? The author is Michael Barone. Enough said. He has produced a dazzling x-ray of modern American history. He argues--no, he demonstrates--that cultural rather than economic factors usually shape our politics."--George F. Will

Michael Barone (Author), William Lavelle (Narrator)

Audiobook

Unlimited Access

As one of two FBI agents posted at the White House to perform background checks on appointees, FBI Special Agent Gary Aldrich intended to close his eventful career in peace and dignity. But what he witnessed during the Clinton administration left him deeply troubled-then alarmed-and finally, so outraged that he felt compelled to leave. Unlimited Access is Aldrich's electrifying expose of a presidential administration with a great deal to hide-and willing to put America at risk to keep it hidden. Aldrich describes how a comprehensive security system that had been perfected through six presidencies was systematically dismantled by the Clintons so they could bring friends into the White House who otherwise would have been barred by legal problems, some prosecutable. A #1 New York Times bestseller.

Gary Aldrich (Author), Jeff Riggenbach (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town

When Ron Williamson signed with the Oakland A's in 1971, he said goodbye to his hometown of Ada and left to pursue his dreams of big-league glory. Six years later he was back, his dreams broken by a bad arm and bad habits. He moved in with his mother and slept twenty hours a day on her sofa. In 1982, a twenty-one-year-old cocktail waitress in Ada named Debra Sue Carter was raped and murdered, and for reasons that were never clear, they suspected Ron Williamson and his friend Dennis Fritz. The two were arrested and charged with capital murder. The prosecution's case was built on junk science and the testimony of jailhouse snitches and convicts. Dennis Fritz was found guilty and given a life sentence. Ron Williamson was sent to death row. If you believe that in America you are innocent until proven guilty, this audiobook will shock you. If you believe in the death penalty, this book will disturb you. If you believe the criminal justice system is fair, this book will infuriate you.

John Grisham (Author), Craig Wasson, Dennis Boutsikaris (Narrator)

Audiobook

State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III

Bob Woodward examines how the Bush administration avoided telling the truth about Iraq to the public, to the Congress, and often to themselves in State of Denial. Woodward's third book on President Bush is a sweeping narrative from the first days George W. Bush thought seriously about running for president, through the recruitment of his national security team, the war in Afghanistan, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the struggle for political survival in the second term. State of Denial answers the core questions: What happened after the invasion of Iraq? Why? How does Bush make decisions and manage the war that he chose to define his presidency? And, is there an achievable plan for victory? After more than three decades of reporting on national security decision making, including his two #1 national best sellers on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush at War and Plan of Attack, Woodward provides the fullest account, and explanation, of the road Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and the White House staff have walked.

Bob Woodward (Author), Boyd Gaines (Narrator)

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The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina

New York Times correspondent Frank Rich examines the trail of fictions manufactured by the Bush administration from 9/11 to Hurricane Katrina, exposing the most brilliant spin campaign ever waged. When America was attacked on 9/11, its citizens almost unanimously rallied behind its new, untested president as he went to war. What they didn't know at the time was that the Bush administration's highest priority was not to vanquish Al Qaeda, but to consolidate its own power at any cost. It was a mission that could be accomplished only by a propaganda presidency in which reality was steadily replaced by a scenario of the White House's own invention; and such was that scenario's devious brilliance that it fashioned a second war against an enemy that did not attack America on 9/11, intimidated the Democrats into incoherence and impotence, and turned a presidential election into an irrelevant referendum on macho imagery and same-sex marriage. As only he can, acclaimed New York Times columnist Frank Rich delivers a step-by-step chronicle of how skillfully the White House built its house of cards and how the institutions that should have exposed these fictions, the mainstream news media, were too often left powerless by the administration's relentless attack machine, their own post-9/11 timidity, and an unending parade of self-inflicted scandals (typified by those at The New York Times). Demonstrating the candor and conviction that have made him one of our most trusted and incisive public voices, Rich brilliantly and meticulously illuminates the White House's disturbing love affair with "truthiness", and the ways in which a bungled war, a seemingly obscure Washington leak, and a devastating hurricane at long last revealed the man-behind-the-curtain and the story that had so effectively been sold to the nation, as god-given patriotic fact.

Frank Kelly Rich, Frank Rich (Author), Grover Gardner (Narrator)

Audiobook

Conservatives Without Conscience

John Dean's last New York Times best seller, Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush, offered the former White House insider's unique and telling perspective on George W. Bush's presidency. Once again, Dean employs his distinctive knowledge and understanding of Washington politics and process to examine the conservative movement's current inner circle of radical Republican leaders, from Capitol Hill to Pennsylvania Avenue to K Street and beyond. In Conservatives Without Conscience, Dean not only highlights specific right-wing-driven GOP policies but also probes the conservative mind-set, identifying recurring qualities such as the unbridled viciousness toward those daring to disagree with them, as well as the big business favoritism that costs taxpayers billions. Dean identifies specific examples of how court packing is seeking to form a judiciary that is activist by its very nature, how religious piety is producing politics run amok, and how concealed indifference to the founding principles of liberty and equality is pushing America further and further from its constitutional foundations. By the end, Dean paints a vivid picture of what's happening at the top levels of the Republican Party, a noble political party corrupted by its current leaders who cloak their actions in moral superiority while packaging their programs as blatant propaganda. Dean, certainly no alarmist, finds disturbing signs that current right-wing authoritarian thinking, when conflated with the dominating personalities of the conservative leadership could take the United States toward its own version of fascism.

John W. Dean (Author), Robertson Dean (Narrator)

Audiobook

Bush at War: Inside the Bush White House

With his unmatched investigative skill, Bob Woodward tells the behind-the-scenes story of how President George W. Bush and his top national security advisers, after the initial shock of the September 11 attacks, led the nation to war. Extensive quotations from the secret deliberations of the National Security Council - -- and firsthand revelations of the private thoughts, concerns and fears of the president and his war cabinet - -- make Bush at War an unprecedented chronicle of a modern presidency in time of grave crisis. Based on interviews with more than a hundred sources and four hours of exclusive interviews with the president, Bush at War reveals Bush's sweeping, almost grandiose, vision for remaking the world. "I'm not a textbook player, I'm a gut player," the president said. Woodward's virtual wiretap into the White House Situation Room reveals a stunning group portrait of an untested president and his advisers, three of whom might themselves have made it to the presidency. In Bush at War, Bob Woodward once again delivers a reporting tour de force.

Bob Woodward (Author), James Naughton (Narrator)

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Armed Madhouse

The bestselling author of "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" offers his most provocative and funniest book yet! Greg Palast has spent the last thirty years getting the goods on corporate con men and political hucksters. Now he and his special guests cut through the TV news babytalk in "Armed Madhouse." Armed with more than fifty classified documents and confidential memos, Palast brings you the stories not allowed in "The New York Times," including: Before invading, George Bush didn't have a secret plan to seize Iraq's oil -- he had two. Palast shows you both. In "Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?," Palast reveals the horror and humor of the War on Terror. In "The Network," Palast gives you the skinny on the new global order -- and pushes Thomas Friedman over the edge of his Flat World. It was Palast, for BBC TV, who first uncovered how Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris stole Election 2000. Now he tells you that Kerry won in 2004 -- and that 2008 is already fixed. Who drowned New Orleans? Palast names names -- and adds some suggestions for fighting the new Class War. Greg Palast speaks truth to power the only way you can -- by letting the facts speak for themselves. Get the straight story on what today's self-appointed Masters of the Universe have in store for you.

Greg Palast (Author), Various Artists, Various Artists (Narrator)

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F.U.B.A.R.: America's Right-Wing Nightmare

The United States has survived clueless presidential administrations before. But no matter how enormous the crisis -- the Great Depression, Vietnam, Watergate, Monica Lewinsky's thong -- America's always come out looking like, well, America. This time, however, something's different. Things aren't just screwed up; they're f&#!d up beyond all recognition. Welcome to F.U.B.A.R., a hilariously scathing satirical rundown of the Radical Right's takeover of America, by the creators of Air America's Majority Report. If you're a liberal who's somehow not panicked over the state of our union, or if you're a Republican who's just having voter's remorse, or if you think what's happening to the country is just politics as usual, F.U.B.A.R. will open your eyes to our current national nightmare. With completely unfair and unbalanced analysis, authors Sam Seder and Stephen Sherrill take readers on a whirlwind tour of what's left of the United States, exposing the truth about the Right's blueprint for total domination -- over your money, your mind, your sex life, and even your place in the afterlife (yes, they have a plan for that, too). Finally, Seder and Sherrill offer a helpful and hopeful vision for a future that remarkably doesn't look like a cross between the Matrix and Mayberry. F.U.B.A.R. is the wake-up call America has been waiting to receive -- and it will probably be wiretapped.

Sam Seder, Stephen Sherrill (Author), Sam Seder (Narrator)

Audiobook

31 Days: Gerald Ford, the Nixon Pardon and A Government in Crisis

In 31 Days, Barry Werth takes readers inside the White House during the tumultuous days following Nixon's resignation and the swearing-in of America's "accidental president," Gerald Ford. The congressional hearings, Nixon's increasing paranoia, and, finally, the devastating revelations of the White House tapes had torn the country apart. Within the White House and the Republican Party, Nixon's resignation produced new fissures and battle lines-and new opportunities for political advancement. Ford had to reassure the nation and the world that he would attend to the pressing issues of the day, from resolving the legal questions surrounding Nixon's role in Watergate, to dealing with the wind down of the Vietnam War, the precarious state of détente with the Soviet Union, and the ongoing attempts to stabilize the Middle East. Within hours of Nixon's departure from Washington, Ford began the all-important task of forming an inner circle of trusted advisers. In richly detailed scenes, Werth describes the often vicious sparring among two mutually distrustful staffs-Nixon's and Ford's vice presidential holdovers-and a transition team that included Donald Rumsfeld (then Nixon's ambassador to NATO) and Rumsfeld's former deputy, the thirty-three-year-old coolly efficient Richard Cheney. The first detailed account of the ruthless maneuvering and day-to-day politicking behind everything from the pardon of Nixon to why George H. W. Bush was passed over for the vice presidency, to the rise of a new cadre of Republican movers and shakers, 31 Days offers a compelling perspective on a fascinating but relatively unexamined period in American history and its impact on the present.

Barry Werth (Author), Robertson Dean (Narrator)

Audiobook

State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration

State of War is an explosive book, filled with revelations, about the secret scandals of the Bush administration and a national-security bureaucracy run amok. With relentless media coverage, breathtaking events, and extraordinary congressional and independent investigations, it is hard to believe that we might not know some of the most significant facts about the presidency of George W. Bush. Yet beneath the surface events of the Bush presidency lies a secret history, a series of hidden events that makes a mockery of many of the stories on the surface.

James Risen (Author), Boyd Gaines (Narrator)

Audiobook

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