You can summarize the story of Peter Van Buren’s We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People with his assessment of the scams Iraqis pulled off with reconstruction dollars: “It wasn’t so much we were conned, it was as if we demanded to be cheated and would not take no for an answer.” The book describes what he saw of the various reconstruction efforts in Iraq, particularly his experience serving on a State Department Provisional Reconstruction Team in 2009.

The repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was an all-out battle, at times tougher than combat. Military Veterans and Political Lobbyists, College Professors and Grassroots Organizers pushed the government in such a way that the issue could not be ignored, but that did not mean the coalition or the struggle was an easy one. We all learned many tough lessons about research, messaging, politics, and perseverance. The roller coaster of DADT repeal is brought to life from “the foxhole” perspective of Dr. Aaron Belkin of the Palm Center (formerly known as the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military) who has the deserved distinction and title: The Professor of The Movement.

Bill McKibben is one of the most effective and widely-respected writers on environmental issues today. Starting with The End of Nature in 1989, he’s written and published a long line of powerful works that make complex environmental issues accessible to a general audience.

How has American nation-building changed the world? What can we learn from this history? How has this history been used and misused by American policy makers? And what makes nation-building work – what has undermined it?

These are just a few of the questions that Jermi Suri asks and answers in Liberty’s Surest Guardian.

Much pundit ink has been spilled pondering why the OccupyWallStreet protest has grown so rapidly and resonated so widely. But the answer is really not difficult to apprehend. Our political system is fundamentally broken by corruption and oligarchical control. Many people know this. They have rationally concluded that voting fixes none of these systemic problems precisely because the problems are systemic. And going out into the street to protest and demand an end to this corruption is the only perceived means of redress.

Constitution Café is simply a space for ordinary citizens to engage in the extraordinary act of rewriting our Constitution. It’s a natural outgrowth of Phillips’ popular Socrates Café, a forum (or, rather, hundreds of forums, around the country) for ordinary folks to talk philosophy. But Constitution Café is more: Constitution Café is a call to arms, a real vehicle for real change in our constitutional system. Thus Phillips takes us on a journey around the country to meet with groups ranging from a sixth grade class to a Tea Party affiliate to engage with, discuss, and wrestle over the Constitution—and ultimately to change it for our times.

Lost Decades looks at why the explosion of debt happened through the traditional lens of supply-and-demand. It examines the motivations and situations of people on both side of this debt. Why did demand for debt increase in the United States? The first reason Chinn and Frieden identify is the huge deficits run during the George W. Bush years. These are the trillions spent on the Bush tax cuts, the expansion of Medicare part D and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that weren’t paid for.

Longtime journalist and award-winning author Joe McGinniss’ newest book, The Rogue, is the latest – but by no means last – book about Sarah Palin. Palin is not only the most famous Alaskan in history, she has uniquely combined political activity, celebrity, motherhood, grandmotherhood, a spousal relationship, borderline religious beliefs, professional victimhood, the American gossip universe, pop culture, legal obfuscation, new media and social networking. Increasingly known for being thin-skinned and somewhat lacking in spatial awareness, Palin, more than any American politician in a generation or so, almost begged McGinniss – or any investigative author – to move next door.

Progressives’ concerns about the climate crisis typically bring our gaze to the north – struggling polar bears and melting ice caps. But in Tropic of Chaos, Christian Parenti makes the case that we’re missing the real story to the south – where our addiction to dirty fuels is introducing a new level of disorder in places that are already struggling and unstable.

Progressives need a fundamentally new approach to politics. They have been losing not just because conservatives have so much more money and power, but also because they have accepted the conservatives’ framing of political debates. They have accepted a framing where conservatives want market outcomes whereas liberals want the government to intervene to bring about outcomes that they consider fair.