August. Any way you slice it, it's hot and hotter — even the name sounds oppressive. This month, beat the heat with true tales of corruption, hypocrisy, scandal, and white-on-white racism. A couple of these books and your reading will be as hot as sand on the barefoot walk back to the car. Check out the latest books on my radar:
The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals [1]
The New York Times featured The Dark Side on the cover of the Sunday Book Review [2] this week, calling it "brilliantly researched and deeply unsettling." Author Jane Mayer, New Yorker staff writer, examines how a cabal — lead by Cheney, not Bush — within the administration set out to restore the unprecedented power of the presidential office. Power which they believed had been unjustly eroded since Nixon left office.
The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality [3]
Is anti-Obama rhetoric more your thing? Obama Nation is a heavily footnoted, detailed argument against the senator's bid for presidency. Before you cozy up, let's meet the source. Media Matters notes its author, Jerome Corsi [4], is the coauthor of Unfit for Command — a scurrilous book that falsely attacked John Kerry's military service in 2004. What an odd genre to specialize in?
Wait there's more! I promised white-on-white racism and true-life sexy times! To see them, .
Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions [5]
More than 50 percent of you told Buzz [6] you wouldn't read a blog-based book, but I'm just here to tell you that you can. The blog that spurred anger and spawned copykatz [7] but mostly made us laugh is now bound and glued. Buy it because if there's one thing white people don't like, it's the unread [8].
You Don't Know Me: A Citizen's Guide to Republican Family Values [9]
It may be bathroom reading [10], but it exposes the hypocrisy of more than 100 Republican officials, officeholders, and lovers of bible quotes. You Don't Know Me not only dishes out more dirty facts about well-known sex scandals, but it also uncovers a myriad of conservative wantonness that, until now, has gone unchecked. Check out an excerpt on Radar [11].