Author: Mitt Romney

St. Martins Press, 2010

Filed under: Nonfiction, Memoirs

[Reviewer's note: As with my previous review of a political book, I want to be honest. I am not blind to the fact that my opinions of this book are skewed by my political beliefs.]

I wanted to like this book.

No Apology is Mitt Romney’s attempt to express who he is politically, and he makes that intention clear in the second paragraph of his introduction. Of his three political campaigns he writes:

each time, when the campaign was over, I felt that I hadn’t done an adequate job communicating all that I had intended to say…. This book gives me a chance to say more than I did during my campaign.

And the truth is, I believe him. It’s impossible to deny this guy’s qualifications. In 1994, he came points away from stealing a MA Senate seat from Ted Kennedy. As the CEO for the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, he inherited a financially and politically disastrous situation and turned it into a success. And he more or less did the same as Governor of Massachusetts, turning Jane Swift’s mess into a successful, one-term tenure. Had he not decided to forgo a second term in order to make a serious run at the ’08 presidency, he’d probably still be governor. Politically, he had something special. He was Scott Brown back when Scott Brown was just some dude in the state chambers who once dangled balls for a Cosmo spread.

But that Mitt Romney isn’t the one who showed up to the ’08 primary. Instead, he came across as stiff GOP avatar who couldn’t distinguish himself from a pack of surefire also rans.

So I was rooting for No Apology, rooting for the likable and charismatic Mitt to resurrect himself. Instead, I got the ’08 stiff. …
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Author: Sarah Palin

HarperCollins, 2009

Filed Under: Nonfiction, Memoirs

This book was very tough to review. I have to be honest, I’ve started this review several times, and each time—after indulging fitful rants and political diatribes—I’ve had to delete the incoherent blather from my computer’s memory. It’s embarrassing, really, some of the emotions this book has elicited from me. I used to think I stood closer to the center of the political spectrum than to either of its poles. I used to badmouth elitists, and I used to believe that all of their derisive commoner-hating was just a mirror image of the populist movement that made Going Rogue possible. Yes, I used to believe that liberal elitists were just as bad for our collective progress as, say, the Tea Partiers. Then I saw some of the things I wrote, some of the hateful, bilious criticism of both Sarah Palin and her followers, and I realized that I sound like (gasp) an elitist asshole.

Has there ever been a more polarizing political figure than Sarah Palin? Not only do we all have an opinion of her, we all have a very strong opinion. She’s either the best thing to happen to this country, or the worst. So how, then, does one go about reviewing her book—a book that will only further calcify one’s strong opinion of its author?

Going Rogue is shit. It sucks. It is both literarily and politically a steaming pile of moose excrement. …
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Author: Daniel Pinchbeck

Tarcher, 2007

Best ebook deal: eBooks.com

The title of Pinchbeck’s 2012 is an archeological artifact written literally in stone by the Mayans about a thousand years ago. In 2012—specifically, on December 21—the rising sun will mark the end of the 5125-year Mayan Long Count Calendar by achieving conjunction with the center of the axis of the Milky Way galaxy.

The Mayan prophecy on the completion of the Long Count is the return of the Mesoamerican deity Quetzalcoatal, translated as “Sovereign Plumed Serpent.” Quetzalcoatal is a supreme deity responsible for civilization and time itself. The Mayans believed that the end of the Long Count will mark the end of our present world civilization, when Quetzalcoatal will intervene to hand down another.

2012 is the high-energy, complex, fascinating tale of Pinchbeck’s personal pursuit of this prophecy. It’s a fun read, simultaneously a global treasure hunt, a mystical inner quest, and a personal redemption following the death of his father. It also has the ambition and scale of mythological revelation. …
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