The world Eric Lotke has created in 2044 is a progressive's nightmare. Almost every exasperating trend we see today has been extrapolated to its logical extreme: Mindless fear of terrorism is used to manipulate the populace. Giant conglomerates control the economy, the news media, the government, and even the cops. Small businesses and entrepreneurs are ruthlessly crushed by cutthroat pricing, lawsuits, and police brutality. There are no unions in sight, and employees have no rights or recourse. The class divide has grown and calcified, with the poor living in near-shantytown squalor while the rich live in lavish mini-skyscrapers and never interact with commoners.

Eighteen years ago, I had the whole God thing figured out. Drugs were involved. I didn’t just meet God on my trip. I became God, Creator of Everything. It was fun for a while, and then it wasn’t, it was a bummer. I thought, what happens if I--not I, John Horgan, but I, God—die? I’ll take the whole cosmos with me! Holy shit!

Doesn't it seem like only yesterday that, to many Americans, what Pakistan meant was the smiling proprietors of businesses in our cities and larger towns? "Those Pakistanis," we'd think, "they assimilate so nicely." And who can forget the man who effectively served as the face of Pakistan? The late Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan reigned over world music in the nineties. After 9/11, though, when we learned that its intelligence agencies sponsored the Taliban, which had hosted al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan became a nation non gratis to many Americans. Nor was Pakistan the first country that American Nicholas Schmidle thought of reporting from when he sought to kick off his journalism career.

The three-part subtitle of Crazy for God sums things up well: "How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped to Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of it Back." There's lots to explore in our chat with the author, Frank Schaeffer.

Steven Miles is a prominent bioethicist and a trenchant voice and prominent leader in the fight to expose the complicity of medical professionals in the post-9/11 torture program initiated by the Bush administration. Dr. Miles is the author of Oath Betrayed: America's Torture Doctors. He is Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School, and also on the Board of the Center for Victims of Torture in Minneapolis. Oath Betrayed reveals how "medical professionals cooperated with all phases of coercive interrogation in Iraq, at Guantánamo, and in Afghanistan."

Columbine is the most important and impactful reading of this massacre that I have read to date. Written by Dave Cullen, it provides the reader with an opportunity to attempt to get inside the minds of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Additionally, we get a profile of teenage killers that goes to the heart of psychopathology. We learn of their interactions with one another, their peers, their teachers, and their parents. There were many themes and emerging themes that stood out for me. I think of Mr. D (Frank De Angelis) and how there are many dedicated and compassionate teachers like him, and how they really care about the overall well-being of their students. Even in the midst of chaos, this is comfort in faith. Therefore, the chapters ‘Rush to Closure’, ‘Gifted Boy’, ‘Hour of Need’, had me asking the question, Do We ever Forgive, or can we?

In Bailout Nation, econoblogger and analyst Barry Ritholz asks how exactly America turned into a country where those who don't manage risk properly are bailed out from the consequences of their own decisions and stupidity. Clocking in at 300 pages, the answer isn't short, but Ritholz's combination of wit and clarity makes the book an enjoyable read. I've read a number of books on the crisis, and this one is the clearest and easiest to understand, yet it remains accurate. Ritholz keeps it simple, but he doesn't oversimplify. I've been following this crisis for, well, long before it existed, at least as far back as 2002. I'd say I know a fair bit about it, but Bailout Nation had a number of insights and many facts I wasn't aware of.

One of the hardest things to understand about our politics is that there's always two struggles going on, and they don't match up neatly. There's the grand and permanent struggle between parties and ideologies, between left and right, Democrat and Republican; and underneath, around, and in between the pixels of that more visible conflict is another: the struggle between insiders and outsiders.

Senator Dorgan addresses the most severe crises America needs to confront, going far beyond the specific problem he tackled in Take This Job and Ship It. Each chapter discusses a specific set of related problems and suggests specific steps to respond to the problems. There is no universal theme to the book, but there is a consistent approach and tone. The author is a prominent Democrat that is critical of the Bush administration and Congress when Republicans dominated it. The tone of his criticism of Republicans is moderate. The book is not a partisan screed. Indeed, he strongly criticizes the leaders of the Clinton administration’s Treasury department. (Those leaders continue to dominate economic policy under the Obama administration.) His critiques combine populist roots and academic training and an accommodation of his state’s (North Dakota) interests (coal).

Charles Pierce explains in hilarious detail how America's cranks launched the war on expertise.