Books

Part of addressing different challenges includes making a pragmatic shift, says Reihan Salam, 28, who is part of the GOP's younger generation and co-author of "Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream." 

He contends family values should include kitchen-table economics. Acknowledging global warming isn't an embrace of liberalism, he says, but the first step in discovering solutions. Instead of lambasting entitlement programs or just denying that a problem exists, he adds, Republicans should… more

One of the most talked-about books of the genre is “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream.” The authors, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, young editors at Atlantic Monthly, assert that while the GOP has learned to speak to the cultural concerns of working-class whites, it has failed to address their economic unease. They propose a mix of wage subsidies for the working poor, a bigger child tax credit, and steps toward a universal healthcare system rooted in the… more

T.A. Frank discusses media bias and coverage of the controversial book, Obama Nation. LINK to video

Even some Republicans have started to wonder whether the Reagan strategy on taxes has run its course. Earlier this year, two young conservative writers, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, came out with a book called “Grand New Party.” Their basic thesis is that the Republican Party, for all its successes over the past generation, has failed to cement its majority because of economics. If the party’s agenda continues to revolve around tax cuts that mostly benefit the well off, the… more

In “The Wrecking Crew,” the liberal journalist Thomas Frank tells the story of free-market ideologues who came to Washington to start a revolution and built a lucrative lobbying empire instead. Now a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Frank established his reputation as the editor of The Baffler and then as the author of the best-selling What’s the Matter With Kansas? (2004) by combining two things absent from most liberal commentary: muckraking reporting and satiric wit.

Frank’s gifts as a social observer are on display in his… more

On August 14, the New America Foundation hosted Pat Choate, Director of the Manufacturing Policy Project, to discuss his new book, Dangerous Business: The Risks of Globalization for America, a tell-all look at the dangers that unfettered globalization poses to America’s security and the American middle class. Choate began by detailing a few of the threats the United States faces from unfettered international trade. He stated that we continue to import defective and often dangerous consumer goods from… more

Sometime in the next four years, the health care delivery system in the United States is going to change. That's a given because the current patchwork--costly and unreliable private health insurance, overcrowded and underfunded hospital emergency rooms, technophilic and procedure-incentivized physicians--is coming apart at the seams. Whatever solution the 44th president and the 111th Congress enact may or may not prove adequate. But rest assured they'll change something.

What that means for you, reader, is you need to set aside a little time between now and Nov. 4… more

On August 13, Ted Widmer, director of Brown University’s John Carter Brown Library and former speechwriter for Bill Clinton, discussed his new book, Ark of the Liberties: America and the World, and entertained questions from an audience at the New America Foundation. After a brief introduction by Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program, Dr. Widmer laid out a narrative on the way America’s unique founding circumstances shaped out national outlook and actions for the past two… more

Ross Douthat, Senior Editor at the Atlantic and Reihan Salam, Associate Editor at the Atlantic and a Fellow at the New America Foundation, discuss their widely acclaimed book Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream with David Inge. LINK to audio

One of the big issues, if not the biggest issue, in this year’s presidential campaign is described in “The Great Risk Shift,” a book by Yale political science professor Jacob S. Hacker.

Hacker’s theme can be summarized in a single sentence: “Over the last generation … we have witnessed a massive transfer of economic risk from broad structures of insurance, including those sponsored by the corporate sector as well as by government, onto the fragile balance sheets of American families.”

As evidence, Hacker cites with clear opprobrium the… more