The Political Books We’re Reading This Fall
From Touchstone.The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason
In the lead-up to the 2016 election, the hosts of Chapo Trap House did something unusual for a political-comedy podcast that mocked the increasing insanity of the right: they began to turn on the toothless orthodoxies of the Obama-era Democrat Party. Their first book, The Chapo Guide to Revolution (Touchstone), is a sacrilegious, hilariously crass, disturbingly illustrated manifesto of the dirtbag left’s worldview, perfect for anyone feeling abandoned by the incestuous remnants of power in the media-political complex elite, and potentially helpful for Democrats trying to understand why voters aren’t really embracing their #resistance branding. (Amazon)
—Tina Nguyen, Staff Reporter, the Hive
From Simon & Schuster.Fear: Trump in the White House
It’s the fastest-selling book since Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman. It has the highest first-week book sales in publisher Simon & Schuster’s 94-year history. It has elicited ire from the president and, apparently, anti-Semitism from his son. I am talking, of course, about Fear, by Bob Woodward. The Trump-takedown has emerged as a sui generis literary genre ever since Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury topped the Amazon charts, but this most recent investigation of the White House and its attendant wonkiness brings a gravitas and somber reliability that has become Woodward’s calling card ever since he and Carl Bernstein toppled the Nixon administration 40-odd years ago. Caveat lector: the aptly named Fear is not a romp so much as a slow-motion horror flick that pummels you with detail after jaw-dropping detail, such as the opening anecdote of a memo on the brink of signature into law swiped from the Resolute Desk at the last minute. The book, much like the administration it examines, is a struggle to get through, but is perhaps our democratic duty to endure. (Amazon)
—H.W. Vail, Communications Manager and Contributing Writer, VF.com
From Verso.Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China
Leta Hong Fincher’s Betraying Big Brother (Verso) opens as Chinese state security agents arrest feminist activist Wei Tingting, confiscating her glasses and essentially rendering her blind. As Fincher’s narrative unfolds, we learn that the arrest of Wei, one of China’s Feminist Five, represents not the beginning of China’s feminist uprising, but rather its crescendo. In clear, concise chapters, Fincher, whose previous books include Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China, lays out the origins of the movement and its exponential growth, as well as the Chinese government’s violent attempts to extinguish it. The U.S. president may be walloping China via trade war, but Leta Hong Fincher argues that the most existential threat to Xi Jinping’s regime comes from within. (Amazon)
—Claire Landsbaum, Associate Editor, the Hive
From St. Martin’s Press.For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics
While much of this year has felt like an unfortunate backslide, one silver lining has been the emergence of important narratives that have previously gone untold—For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics (St. Martin’s Press) is one such story. Or rather, four, since the book serves as a collective history of longtime friends, colleagues, and collaborators Donna Brazile, Yolanda Caraway, Leah Daughtry, and Minyon Moore, who have variously served as grassroots organizers, assistant to the president, and in high-up positions at the D.N.C. The book unpacks the women’s varied career trajectories; describes influential relationships with figures like Coretta Scott King, Maya Angelou, and Cicely Tyson; and offers a transparent view into the role their close (and currently turbulent) 30-year friendship has played in their ascent. “Each of us is old enough to remember when black folks couldn’t vote or live where they wanted; to remember the assassinations of our heroes and the images of ordinary black people being beaten in the streets,” the book reads. “[I]f you look at us and think for a second we have forgotten where we came from or who nurtured us, you are more than mistaken. You’re dead wrong.” (Amazon)
—Keziah Weir, Associate Editor, Vanity Fair
From Gallery.Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House
By now, all the gruesome details from the former Apprentice star’s memoir have exploded throughout the media—the Trump campaign knew about the “n-word” tapes! The Trump family tried to buy her silence! She snuck recording devices into the Situation Room! And yes, the book never reaches the level of jaw-dropping revelations of Fire and Fury, nor is it particularly well-written. But for a look into the thought process of a Trump ally, Unhinged (Gallery) can’t be beat–especially since it comes from Omarosa Manigault Newman, a woman who consciously molded herself in Trump’s image, and took him on using Trump’s own game. (Amazon)
—Tina Nguyen, Staff Reporter, the Hive
From Sentinel.Contempt: A Memoir of the Clinton Years
No one knows exactly why Ken Starr, the prosecutor who led an investigation of alleged abuses made by the Clinton White House, decided to break his silence now, with a book titled Contempt (Sentinel). It probably has something to do with the fact that it’s been 20 years since he released his infamous Starr Report. But it also has eerie parallels with the current presidential investigation, led by special counsel Robert Mueller. The particulars differ, but the déjà vu is strong—especially following the recent news that Michael Cohen (who Trump tasked with paying off Stormy Daniels before the election) has become the latest former Trump ally to cooperate with Mueller. In Contempt, Starr takes readers back to when his own investigation similarly came to encompass our V.F. contributor Monica Lewinsky. Come for the Trump parallels, don’t stay for Starr’s self-defense—read Lewinsky’s piece on her long-delayed first face-to-face meeting with Starr instead. (And look out for Stormy Daniels’s tell-all, Full Disclosure, out next month from St. Martin’s Press.) (Amazon)
—Julia Vitale, Assistant Editor, Vanity Fair
From OR Books.Grabbing Pussy
In Grabbing Pussy (OR Books), performance artist and professor Karen Finley achieves the unthinkable: out of America’s unstoppable news cycle and its disturbing undercurrents of psychosexually charged politics, she forges poetry with a punk sensibility (plus, a dash of unfiltered raunchiness, in keeping with the times), skewering Donald Trump, the Clintons, Harvey Weinstein, and Anthony Weiner in the process. Playing with the semantics of sound bites that have surely lodged themselves in the deepest layers of our collective subconscious, Finley offers her tongue-in-cheek musings on such choice moments as Trump’s paranoid insistence of his, er, hand size, the infamous Access Hollywood tape, and the never-ending obsession with Hillary’s missing e-mails. In lines like “Deletion gone commando / Castration complex obsession / 55,000 pages of e-mails / the size of it!” and “My orange salmon face puffed with afterglow,” Finley’s dark comedy homes in on the national nightmare we can’t seem to wake from. Reading the collection—especially aloud—in one sitting is akin to diving headfirst into a freezing body of water; one emerges refreshed, invigorated, and slightly shaken: brace yourself. (Amazon)
—Olivia Aylmer, Contributing Writer, VF.com
From Simon & Schuster.Every Day Is Extra
Despite The Wall Street Journal having proclaimed John Kerry’s self-serious memoir to be “[not] so much a memoir as a full autobiography,” we’re including it here because Every Day Is Extra (Simon & Schuster) is entertaining. In the sweeping (nearly 600-page, but with photo inserts!) account of his life so far, Kerry walks readers through his upbringing, his Naval service during the Vietnam War, his infamous presidential run against George W. Bush in 2004, and his experiences as the U.S. senator of Massachusetts—a post he held for a whopping 28 years, from 1985 until 2013, when he left to serve as the 68th U.S. secretary of state. And this is where the (arguably cheesy) title comes in—the man hasn’t stopped. In a note at the start of his book, Kerry explains that the title means “knowing there are worse things than losing an argument or even an election—the worst thing of all would be to waste the gift of an extra day by sitting on the sidelines indifferent to a problem.” (Amazon)
—Julia Vitale, Assistant Editor, Vanity Fair
