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RingsidePolitics
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The Political Bookstore
Political Fiction
Click on the book cover for reviews, pricing, and to order!
| Jack Burden is the former newspaperman
who learns from Gov. Willie Stark the extent to which flowers grow in manure and that good
in man's fallen state must come from evil. Based on the life of Huey Long, Stark is one of
the greatest of American literary creations. The book won a Pulitzer Prize in 1947. List Price: $14.00 |
All the King's |
Animal Farm |
A farm is taken over by its mistreated
animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of
progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric
fables ever penned -- a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution
from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible. List Price: $18.00 |
| First published in 1979, A Bend in the River is a
profound and richly observed novel of the politics and society of postcolonial Africa.
Salim, a young Indian man, moves to a town on a bend in the river of a recently
independent nation. As Salim strives to establish his business, he comes to be closely involved with the fluid and dangerous politics of the newly created state, the remnants of the old regime clashing inevitably with the new. List Price: $16.50 |
A Bend in the |
Me by Jimmy (Big Boy) Valente, Governor of Minnesota |
You don't need to know squat about wrestler - turned -
governor Jesse (The Body) Ventura to read Keillor's book about Gov. Jimmy (Big Boy)
Valente--he'll have you doubled up gasping for air, whether you like it or not. Writing in
wrestle-speak unleashes Keillor's more rampageous comic impulses. He writes like Joe Bob
Briggs, Ethan Coen, Hunter Thompson, and the young tall-tale-teller Mark Twain (whose
characters the Duke and the Dauphin he steals). List
Price: $15.95 |
| Is it real, or is it politics. Maybe it's a little of both. Written by a member of the 1992 Clinton campaign team, the president was reported to be none too happy with this interesting piece of fiction. There is no word on how the First Lady reacted. Yet Primary Colors, whether based on Bill Clinton & friends or not, paints a convincing portriat of the characters, complete with idealism and flaws, heroism and cowardice, that populate the "behind - the - scenes" political world. It is truly the kind of story that you couldn't believe if it were true. | Primary Colors: |
A Clockwork Orange |
After the success of 'A Clockwork Orange', Burgess lamented the fact that it was the most popular novel he ever wrote. His inability to understand its success may be one of the things that makes it great. Set in the distant future, it is the first-person account of a fifteen-year-old street thug who undergoes state - sponsored brain washing for his criminal behavior. For years, this version was not available in the U.S., the American publisher preferring to leave out the last chapter which shows the now mature 19-year-old reconsidering his ways of the past. . |
| Newspeak, doublethink, thoughtcrime--in 1984, George Orwell created a whole vocabulary of words concerning totalitarian control that have since passed into our common vocabulary. More importantly, he has portrayed a chillingly credible dystopia. In our deeply anxious world, the seeds of unthinking conformity are everywhere in evidence; and Big Brother is always looking for his chance. | 1984 |
The People's Choice |
When conservative President-elect MacArthur Foyle dies in a freak accident four days after the election, it seems as if the next leader of the United States will be his running mate, Ted Block, whose frequent verbal mishaps are no doubt intended to remind readers of some vice - presidential figure or other (wink, wink). But one electoral representative sets off a wild chain of events when she innocently asks about some procedural rules.... |
| Darkness At Noon stands as an unequaled fictional portrayal of the nightmare politics of our time. Its hero is an aging revolutionary, imprisoned and psychologically tortured by the Party to which he has dedicated his life. As the pressure to confess preposterous crimes increases, he re-lives a career that embodies the terrible ironies and human betrayals of a totalitarian movement masking itself as an instrument of deliverance. See our complete review at RightMagazine. |  Darkness at Noon |
Little Green Men |
The reluctant hero of this hilarious novel is John Oliver Banion, a stuffy Washington talk-show host, whose privileged life is thrown into upheaval when aliens abduct him from his exclusive country - club golf course. But were his gray-skinned captors aliens . . . or something far more sinister? Banion believes he has been chosen by the extra- terrestrials to champion the most important cause of the millennium, and he embarks on a crusade, appearing before a convention of UFO believers and demanding that Congress and the White House seriously investigate UFOs. |
| Considered an idiot because of his physical infirmities, Claudius survived the intrigues and poisonings of the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, and the Mad Caligula to become emperor in 41 A.D. A masterpiece. | I, Claudius |
Balance of Power : A Novel |
The Washington Post Book World, Patrick Anderson
Huston ... handles both battle scenes and courtroom confrontations with skill. The pace is
fast and the suspense is gripping as his story careens toward a guns-blazing,
here-come-the-Marines climax. If you like Tom Clancy, you'll love Balance of Power. |
| Bedtime stories will never again be the same- at least not after reading James Finn Garner, who, in surprisingly true Fairy Godmother fashion, waved his authorial wand and revised a large collection of fairy tales and holiday lore in Politically Correct: The Ultimate Storybook. This volume compiles his Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, Once Upon a More Enlightened Time, and Politically Correct Holiday Stories, examining the many "isms," whether glaringly obvious or more subtle, inherent in traditional favorites. | Politically Correct, the Ultimate Storybook |
Brave New World |
"Community, Identity, Stability" is the motto of Aldous Huxley's utopian World State. Here everyone consumes daily grams of soma, to fight depression, babies are born in laboratories, and the most popular form of entertainment is a "Feelie," a movie that stimulates the senses of sight, hearing, and touch. Though there is no violence and everyone is provided for, Bernard Marx feels something is missing and senses his relationship with a young women has the potential to be much more than the confines of their existence allow. |