The Best American Political Writing 2002 - Softcover

9781560254102: The Best American Political Writing 2002

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1560254106 ISBN 13: 9781560254102

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 2002

Our appetite for incisive and articulate reporting and analysis has been sharpened and made more urgent by recent events. And columnists and reporters have, as a group, responded by writing at a higher level. Indeed, this may be something of a golden age of political commentary. This highly readable, entertaining compendium collects the best political writing from the past year, from insightful analyses of the national and local political scene to sharply drawn profiles of some of the nation's most colorful political figures-covering the major topics of the year, including the contentious presidential election and its controversial resolution in the Supreme Court decision, Bush v. Gore, the ineradicable tragedy of September 11, and America's prosecution of seemingly limitless war. Composed primarily of short articles, longer pieces of particular merit, and excerpts from notable books, The Best American Political Writing 2002 covers all points on the political spectrum, gathering from the op-ed pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and other leading national newspapers; commentary from periodicals like The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, The Weekly Standard, and Foreign Affairs; publications of think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution; Web-based magazines like Salon.com; and significant speeches including George W. Bush's address to Congress in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks. Selections come from the country's finest political writers, including Margaret Carlson, Thomas Friedman, Meg Greenfield, Seymour Hersh, Hendrik Hertzberg, Molly Ivins, Paul Krugman, Anthony Lewis, Marjorie Williams, and many others. Together, their voices are a distillation of our national conversation.

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About the Author:

Royce Flippin is the series editor for The Best American Political Writing . A former senior editor at American Health magazine , he has written for many periodicals, including the New York Times , Men's Journal , Self , and Parents magazine .

From Publishers Weekly:

For this first in a projected annual series, the events of 2001 generated far more drama and political debate than usual, broadly reflected in this collection. The most interesting pieces are those that, when read together, create a point-counterpoint effect. For example, liberal lawyer Vincent Bugliosi vigorously attacks the five-justice Supreme Court decision in the Florida vote-count case because, among other things, the Court failed to articulate a credible constitutional basis for its decision. In contrast, Charles Krauthammer, the conservative Washington Post columnist, sees the Supreme Court's role as fundamentally political and finds nothing objectionable in the decision. Yet the section on the election overall feels surprisingly dated. Flippin (editor of Shackleton's Forgotten Men) does for the most part offer pieces that are still timely, such as an excerpt from Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich's bestselling book on her attempt to live on a minimum-wage salary. The retrospective gives readers a chance to do some score keeping: Seymour Hersh, writing about pre-September 11 intelligence failures, quotes several people who predict the as-yet-unrealized ouster of CIA head George Tenet, while Bill Keller writes on Colin Powell's growing influence in the Bush administration-influence not much in evidence today. Flippin has chosen wisely and benefited from an expansive definition of political writing. Heavyweight thinkers Arthur Miller, Henry Kissinger and Jeane Kirkpatrick are featured along with media stars such as Jeff Greenfield, Molly Ivins and Paul Krugman. The pieces also come from a wide range of books and magazines, including the New Yorker, the New York Times and the Atlantic, but also less mainstream sources such as Salon.com, the Nation and Foreign Affairs.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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