15 books on the list
Sort by
Latest Recommendations First
Layout
The United States Constitution's provisions for selecting, replacing, and punishing presidents contain serious weaknesses that could lead to constitutional controversies. In this compelling and fascinating book, Brian Kalt envisions six such controversies, such as the criminal prosecution of a sitting president, a two-term president's attempt to st...
Asha Rangappa
May 13, 2021‘INDIA IS AN IMPROBABLE NATION.’ Under Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party, India has undergone the most total transformation since 1991. The ‘invisible threads’ Nehru said held together an improbable union divided by language, religion and ethnicity have snapped under the burden of Modi’s Hindu-supremacist rule.In this blistering critique...
Asha Rangappa
Apr 16, 2021A bank of clouds was assembling on the not-so-distant horizon, but journalist-mountaineer Jon Krakauer, standing on the summit of Mt. Everest, saw nothing that "suggested that a murderous storm was bearing down." He was wrong. The storm, which claimed five lives and left countless more--including Krakauer's--in guilt-ridden disarray, would also pro...
This revelatory and dramatic history of disinformation traces the rise of secret organized deception operations from the interwar period to contemporary internet troll farms We live in the age of disinformation--of organized deception. Spy agencies pour vast resources into hacking, leaking, and forging data, often with the goal of weakening the ver...
Asha Rangappa
Feb 16, 2021Also recommended by
John SipherOnce we bowled in leagues, usually after work--but no longer. This seemingly small phenomenon symbolizes a significant social change that Robert Putnam has identified in this brilliant volume, which The Economist hailed as "a prodigious achievement."Drawing on vast new data that reveal Americans' changing behavior, Putnam shows how we have become i...
Asha Rangappa
Feb 04, 2021The Upswing
How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again
An eminent political scientist’s brilliant analysis of economic, social, and political trends over the past century demonstrating how we have gone from an individualistic “I” society to a more communitarian “We” society and then back again—and how we can learn from that experience to turn the corner towards a stronger, more unified nation, from the...
Asha Rangappa
Feb 04, 2021Ours is the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who evade accountability while robbing their people of resources and corroding or destroying democracy. Their mutual-admiration club also draws on models from the past. Vladimir Putin rehabilitates Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin, Donald Trump praises Libyan despot Muammar G...
Asha Rangappa
Jan 09, 2021Also recommended by
Jason Stanley"The first book to put the story of Russian interference into a broader context. . . Extraordinary and gripping. . . With the pacing of a thriller and the insight of a superb work of history. . . this book is nothing less than essential reading.--Tim Naftali, The New York Times Book Review The definitive history of the covert struggle between Russi...
Asha Rangappa
Aug 14, 2020Also recommended by
Anthony ScaramucciThe Republican Party appears to be divided between a tax-cutting old guard and a white-nationalist vanguard?and with Donald Trump’s ascendance, the upstarts seem to be winning. Yet how are we to explain that, under Trump, the plutocrats have gotten almost everything they want, including a huge tax cut for corporations and the wealthy, regulation-ki...
Asha Rangappa
Jul 26, 2020From Tim Weiner, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, an urgent and gripping account of the 75-year battle between the US and Russia that led to the election and impeachment of an American president. With vivid storytelling and riveting insider accounts, Weiner traces the roots of political warfare – the conflict America and Ru...
Too Much and Never Enough
How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man
In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald’s only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world’s health, economic security, and social fabri...
Asha Rangappa
Jul 14, 2020Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz
Locust by Jeffrey A. Lockwood
The Language of Emotions by Karla McLaren
The Dance of Anger by Harriet Lerner