In 2016 and 2020, the runner-up for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders, was not a Democrat. In 2024, despite the president’s weakness in the polls, no viable Democratic alternative emerged. In 2016, the Republican Party nominated a man who had flitted between party registrations, flirted with running on a Reform Party ticket, and […]
Books
Book reviews and essays from the Washington Monthly on the new books shaping debates over politics, policy, history, and American democracy.
Posted inBooks
How the Vietnam War Came Between Two Friends and Diplomats
Charles Trueheart’s account of his father’s battles with a once-close fellow Foreign Service officer in Saigon illuminates the American tragedy in Southeast Asia—and should be considered one of the finest accounts of the war.
Posted inMagazine
Poverty, Inc.
Government’s decades-old experiment in letting corporations deliver social services has been a disaster—for taxpayers and the poor.
Posted inMagazine
The Tastemaker
The literary editor Judith Jones made the celebration of food part of America’s multicultural identity. A new biography restores her place in publishing history.
Posted inMagazine
A War Correspondent’s Inner Struggle
For decades, Rod Nordland covered conflicts from Somalia to Iraq. Only in fighting cancer did he find peace.
Posted inMagazine
How the Right’s Illiberal Past Became Present
A spate of new books reexamines the conservative movement’s history of worshipping authoritarians.
Posted inBooks
The 2024 Kukula Award Winners
The Washington Monthly’s annual award celebrates the best in nonfiction book reviewing and honors the memory of Kukula Kapoor Glastris, the magazine’s beloved books editor.
Posted inBooks
“It’s Time for a Resurrection, Not an Insurrection”
William J. Barber II, the pastor and activist behind “Moral Mondays,” is helping to lead a reinvigorated Poor People’s Campaign. In his new book, he explains why poverty is worse and more widespread than you think and all races need to unite to fight for the nation’s poor.
Posted inProtecting the Vote
The Court v. The Voters
Joshua Douglas’s sterling new book examines the most important Supreme Court cases on voting rights in the last 50 years and suggests ways we can correct this “hard turn toward anti-democracy.”
Posted inBooks
Fareed Zakaria and Our Tumultuous World
The ubiquitous columnist and television broadcaster’s new book on revolution through the ages may be familiar, but it’s still spot on.
