What America is reading these days
The redoubtable Billmon points our attention to Amazon’s non-fiction bestseller list, where we discover that those Americans who can read are sucking up left-wing titles.
Representing the left in the top 25, we have (titles I own in bold):
- #1: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken
- #2: Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth by Joe Conason
- #4: Thieves in High Places: They’ve Stolen Our Country--And Its Time to Take It Back by Jim Hightower
- #7: Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush’s America by Molly Ivins, et al
- #8: Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude by Robert Baer
- #9: Stupid White Men ...and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation! by Michael Moore
- #10: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
- #12: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Truth About Corporate Cons, Globalization and High-Finance Fraudsters by Greg Palast
- #18: Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq by Sheldon Rampton, John C. Stauber
- #20: The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things by Barry Glassner
- #22: What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News by Eric Alterman
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On the other hand, the right is represented by (still in the same top 25 list):
- #6: Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism by Ann Coulter
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Al Franken’s position in the Number One spot is, of course, a gift from Fox News, for which I’m sure Franken will be forever grateful. The rest of the titles, I assume, made it into the bestseller list on their own merits. I’m not sure why Ann Coulter’s screed sells as well as it does, but I have to concede that some hardcore wingnuts probably read, at least a little.
Another book that I’m looking forward to is one that did not make the bestseller list, but I expect that it will be worthwhile nonetheless: The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century by Paul Krugman.
Given these sales figures, we have to assume that Americans are reading all these liberal ideas. How can we get Americans to vote like they read?
