Synopses & Reviews
Imagine if the Rolling Stones were just now releasing its first greatest hits album, and you'll have some idea of how long overdue, and highly anticipated,
Politics is. Here are Hendrik Hertzberg's most significant and hilarious and devastating and infuriating dispatches from the American scene a scene he has chronicled for four decades with an uncanny blend of moral seriousness, high spirits, and perfect rhetorical pitch.
Politics is at once the story of American life from LBJ to GWB and a testament to the power of the written word in the right hands. In those hands, everything seems like politics, and politics has never seemed more interesting. Hertzberg breaks down American politics into component parts campaigns, debates, rhetoric, the media, wars (cultural, countercultural, and real), high crimes and misdemeanors, the right, and more and draws the choicest, most telling pieces from his body of work to illuminate each, beginning each section with a new piece of writing framing the subject at hand.
Politics 101 from the master, Politics is also an immensely rich and entertaining mosaic of American life from the mid-1960s to the mid-2000s a ride through recent American history with one of the most insightful and engaging guides imaginable.
Review
"One of American journalism's brightest intellectual lights shines forth in a fine and long overdue selection from four decades of work....Superb writing, subtle thinking. Just the thing for politics junkies and journalism buffs." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
In his most hilarious, devastating and infuriating dispatches from the American scene over four decades, Hertzberg deconstructs politics into components campaigns, debates, rhetoric, the media, wars, high crimes and misdemeanors, the right, and more.
About the Author
Hendrik Hertzberg has been a staff writer and editor at The New Yorker since 1992; he was a staff writer there in the early 1970s as well. He has also been a naval officer, a Newsweek reporter, President Jimmy Carter's chief speechwriter, and (twice) editor of The New Republic, where he (twice) won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence. He is a 1965 graduate of Harvard.