| Election 2008: A Voter's Guide (A New Republic Book) | 
 enlarge | List Price: $12.00 (€9.48)
Buy New: $1.97 (€1.56)
You Save: $10.03 (€7.92) (84%)
Buy New/Used from $0.15 (€0.12)
Avg. Customer Rating:   (based on 5 reviews)
Sales Rank: 606802
Category: Book
Publisher: Yale University Press
Studio: Yale University Press
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
Label: Yale University Press
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 4.8 x 0.9
ISBN: 0300126522
Dewey Decimal Number: 324.9730931
EAN: 9780300126525
ASIN: 0300126522
Publication Date: January 2, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Featuring the writers and editors of THE NEW REPUBLIC, this handbook for the 2008 presidential election contains information every citizen needs as we head into the primaries.THE NEW REPUBLIC'SElection 2008: A Voter?s Guide includes deeply reported, psychologically rich profiles of candidates and a compendium of facts and figures about the hopefuls. Marked throughout by the irreverent wit, style, and intelligence of THE NEW REPUBLIC, this will be the indispensable guide to the 2008 election season. Election 2008: A Voter?s Guide features: Ryan Lizza on Barack Obama?s real guru
Michael Crowley on Hillary Clinton?s views of war and peace
Jonathan Cohn on Mitt Romney?s uncomfortable relationship with his father
Thomas B. Edsall on Rudy Giuliani?s unlikely appeal
Jason Zengerle on John Edwards?s populist reinvention
Michelle Cottle on the masculine charms of Fred Thompson
Noam Scheiber on the many conversions of Sam Brownback
John B. Judis on the electoral trends that will determine the next president
|
| Customer Reviews:
This Book vs `The Undecided Voter's Guide.' Both excellent. January 11, 2008
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
I am reviewing those two books together because they cover the same topic. And, I find a review comparing them more relevant and timely than reviewing them on a stand alone basis. I read them simultaneously on the coverage of the same candidates to observe if I would get different information. I actually got very similar info as I could not detect any political bias. But, the way these books impart the information is different. Thus, there is no difference in substance but there is a huge difference in style.
Within `A Voter's guide,' the coverage of each candidate is written by a different writer. After a short curriculum on the candidate, these writers write out a long narrative essay that could qualify as an article in the New Yorker. Those essays also come across as a book summary on the candidates. For a checklist of the candidate's specific position you have to refer to the Appendix.
The Undecided Voter's Guide to the Next President: Who the Candidates Are, Where They Come from, and How You Can Choose is structurally very different. The entire book is written by a single author. The coverage of each candidate is thoroughly structured as a user friendly manual or almost a college (Presidential) application package. It starts as the Voter's Guide with a curriculum on the candidate. Next, it moves on to a very detailed description of the candidate's position on all major issues. Then it goes on to a narrative section that is less sophisticated than the one in `A Voter's Guide.' Then it systematically covers the following headings: a) Areas of Potential Controversy; b) Why this specific candidate can win the General Election; c) Why this specific candidate can't win the General Election; d) The best case for candidate X presidency; e) The worst case for candidate X presidency; f) What to expect if candidate X is President; g) What supporters say; h) What detractors say; i) Facts and stories; j) Quirks, habits, and hobbies; k) The Undecided Voter's Guide Questionnaire.
Another area where the books differ is on setting up the political context. `A Voter's Guide' has an excellent historical analysis of the evolutionary changes within the parties and how they shaped Presidential elections since the late 1800s. This is one of the last chapters in the book, and I recommend you read it first. `The Undecided Voter's Guide' has no counterpart to this thorough historical analysis. Instead, it briefly touches on similar themes within the introduction. But, the latter is not even as thorough as A Voter's Guide's own short introduction.
These two books cater to different audiences. `The Undecided Voter's Guide' is excellent to extract a maximum amount of information really quickly. It is an excellent tool for the political novice. `A Voter's Guide,' although better written, does not deliver the information quite so readily and is catered to the more sophisticated reader. I am not talking about intelligence here; I am talking about political engagement. An MIT engineer who is fairly apolitical in between elections will prefer `The Undecided Voter's Guide' to acquire efficiently the knowledge he needs to vote. A lawyer who follows politics closely would probably prefer `A Voter's Guide.'
In the end, I think both books are excellent. Within both, the profiles of the candidates are very interesting and informative. If you read at least one of the two, you are bound to be a more informed voter than otherwise. But, you don't need to read both as their coverage overlaps. And, they both cover the topic objectively.
Deep, insightful, and brilliant December 1, 2007
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
The sections on Giuliani, Thompson and Romney are sure to generate the most press, but the genuinely interesting material is on the second tier candidates. For example, I didn't know that McCain's "Straight Talk Express" bus has small silhouettes below the driver's window, keeping tally of the conservatives he's thrown under the wheels. Or that Mike Huckabee once killed 930 people by baptizing them in poisoned grape Kool Aid. Or that Ron Paul was a German concentration camp guard in WW2.
This amazing, deeply researched book will tell you everything you need to know about voting in the 2008 Presidential election - but really, all you have to do is read the title of the chapter on Our Next President -
"We Love Hillary Clinton."
THE ARMY DIDN'T WIN, EITHER! December 1, 2007
0 out of 11 found this review helpful
What a country! Only once in our history, did one president, (the 2nd one), decide to co-opt the US Constitution; and forcing the Sedition Act, down journalists' throats. Thank goodness John Adams didn't get a second term; and his "act" vanished in 1801. Thomas Jefferson then entered the White House.
And, pretty much the RULE that journalists can investigate things on their own; they don't have to swallow PR at all; shows ya that Franklin Foer kept fighting for this principle, above others. Sure, the army tried to get Foer to "surrender" ... the building? In New York City! That's what our army does these days?
Pretty much explains the silence; where the army can't get anything happening in Iraq covered. Or else, you'd know for sure that Maliki hates Bush's guts. And, "diplomatically speaking" all we have for our trillions; and years of toil, is a re-emergence of Putin.
Reagan's victory against the soviets didn't last long. The Bush's went ahead, promising the moon to the Saud's. Which is a whole other story.
If we're lucky? Someday, it will get told. (But not from PR machinery!)
This is a hot one. December 1, 2007
10 out of 15 found this review helpful
The outstanding journalistic integrity of Mr. Foer and TNR will make this book a hot commodity. I can't wait to not get it.
I expect that at least a couple dozen will fly off the shelves just in time for Christmas.
I smell Pulitzer! Oh wait, that's something else................
Foer Follies December 1, 2007
13 out of 20 found this review helpful
In this revealing, behind the scenes look at the 2008 presidential campaign, the peerless journalists of TNR uncover - via unsubstantiated, anonymous sources of course - Republican presidential candidates committing multiple atrocities and war crimes while in the field. In Iowa, Fred Thomson and his good ol' boy colleagues mock disfigured WAC WWII vetrans while visiting a VA hospital; Rudolph Giuliani - with the aid of 9/11 rescue workers - excavates a cemetery of undocumented alien victims of the Minutemen and cavorts through New Hampshire will wearing a skull fragment over his bald spot. Finally, Mitt Romney in his fervent search for the golden plates, careens through South Carolina in a Bradley fighting vehicle clad only in his sacred underwear, recklessly luring Log Cabin Republicans within range of the Brad's tracks, and with a deftness not to be found in tracked fighting vehicles, severs them in half and leaves their writhing parts twitching in the waist-deep sewage.
|
|
|
