Holidays Are Always A Good Time To Curl Up With A Good Book-- Here Are Some Suggestions From Some Members Of Congress

I hope you get a chance to visit the DWT book store and music shop from time to time. In it you'll find the books we've been reading and enjoying enough to recommend, from Idiot America, Bloggers On The Bus, Blinded By The Right and Dateline Havana to Family of Secrets, The Progressive Revolution and Nixonland. These are books you see Ken and I referring to and quoting from over and over again. Fortunately, not everyone reads the same books. If that were the case the blog would be Up With Tyranny and we'd be supporting mindless political zombies like Mitt Romney, Virginia Foxx and Michele Bachmann.

As a special holiday treat I want to share some favorite books that some of our favorite members of Congress told us they've found inspiring over the years. Many people are eager to know what makes Alan Grayson (D-FL) tick so they can encourage other Democratic office holders to eat, listen to or read whatever makes him the way he is. Long ago we bonded on our mutual admiration for Joni Mitchell and both of us are big fans of Ladies of the Canyon, "not only," writes Alan, for 'The Circle Game,' or 'Big Yellow Taxi,' or 'For Free,' but also, of course, for 'Woodstock,' which contains a beautiful line that I think about all the time: 'Life is for learning.'"

When it comes to books, he brought up one I hadn't read, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?by Philip K. Dick. Alan is inspired by what he calls "Dick's exploration of what separates human beings from 'replicants' (i.e., human-like robots). His answer: empathy. I think that President Obama came to the same conclusion in his first Supreme Court nomination." Not a word about Paul Broun (R-GA).

Congressman Joe Sestak (D-PA) is running for the Senate seat currently occupied by Republican crossover artist Arlen Spectre. I've known Joe for almost five years and he's a thoughtful, scholarly man (as well as a fighter and, until recently, a career Naval officer), who spoke about his fascination with The Ambition and the Power: The Fall of Jim Wright

The book is very revealing of a turning point in the environment in Washington. Having talked with Members of Congress who were in office during Wright's tenure as Speaker of the House, they confirm that the efforts to take Wright down were the beginning of a severely strained relationship between the two major parties. Since that time, we have really had a "Speaker of the Caucus" instead of a Speaker of the House who can bring Democrats and Republicans together.

I think that the constant partisan bickering is one of the reasons so many Americans have lost faith in their government and that needs to change. We need to be able to have a candid discussion and hear every side of an issue, but at the end of the day know that it is about what is right for this nation, not for a political party.

Another member of Congress who people seek out when they're looking for wisdom and serious mental acuity is Jerrold Nadler, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. Just this month he co-sponsored a bill, The Effective Death Penalty Appeals Act (which will help prevent the execution of possibly innocent people where there is new evidence of lack of guilt). I mention the bill because it's related to a book he treasures, one he told us is "one of the seminal books of my life:" Not Guilty. He read it as a teenager in the 1960's and now it's something still informing his life as a constitutional scholar. "The book," he explained, "was begun by Judge Jerome Frank and finished posthumously by his daughter, Barbara, and published in 1957. Not Guilty examined over 20 individual case studies, going back to the 1930s and ‘40s, in which people served more than 15 years in prison before they were definitively proven innocent.

“The book asks the question:  Why does this happen?  In some of these cases, there were clear mistakes.  For example, in at least one case, the police beat a confession out of a wrongly accused person. And, in many of the cases, people supposedly did everything right but, because of their resemblance to someone who committed a crime, they were identified by eyewitnesses.

"Not Guilty taught me that there is no perfection in justice, and that I had a moral responsibility to oppose capital punishment.”

Raise your hand if you think House Judiciary Committee members Lamar Smith (R-TX), Dan Lungren (R-CA), Steve King (R-IA), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Trent Franks (R-AZ) or Louie Gohmert (R-TX) has read this book-- or would?

The congressman consistently identified by House staffers as the most intelligent member of Congress is Barney Frank. I wasn't surprised when he came up with several books, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.: The Political Biography of an American Dilemmaby Charles Hamilton and Taylor Branch's 3 stupendous books about America in the time of Martin Luther King, Jr: Parting the Waters : America in the King Years 1954-63, At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68, and Pillar of Fire : America in the King Years 1963-65. Barney:

"Adam Clayton Powell was the third African American member of Congress, but the first to insist on being treated fairly. For me, the book was a model about how to be an openly gay man while serving in Congress.

"Unlike simplistic images of King, Branch's books present him as both a moral leader and a brilliant political strategist. King was passionate about the ideals in which he believed and was also able to operate in the real world in order to achieve them."

Sounds familiar! Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) sends us down an entirely different trail with Three Cups of Teaby Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. I imagine the book has helped provide a context for the senator to evaluate the plethora of information she's getting on a daily basis about Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is what she wrote us about why the book is meaningful to her:

Three Cups of Tea is the inspiring true story of Greg Mortenson who, after failing to climb to the summit of K2, found himself rejuvenated by the generosity of the villagers of a small and very poor Pakistani town. They took him in and fed him and in return Greg decided then and there that he would come back to build a school for the children of the village. That was 1993. Since then, Greg founded the Central Asia Institute and has built 55 schools in poor villages in the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan. This area is prime recruiting territory for both al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and Mortenson's schools are offering both boys and girls the sort of education that serves as an antidote to the intolerance and extremism that is taught in the madrassas. Three Cups of Tea eloquently demonstrates the difference one person can make in so many people's lives-- and the world-- by simply seeing a need and caring enough to act on it. That, for me, is precisely what public service is all about.

I suspect it isn't something that would interest Rudi Giuliani... not even a little.

Oregon's freshman senator, Jeff Merkley usually strikes people who meet him as a blue color kind of everyman. Don't judge the cover of that "book" in a way that leads you to believe he doesn't read any. Jeff is widely read and immediately brought up an American classic that has helped him understand and cope with the tough times of the working families who sent him to Washington. "A book," he told us last week, "that I found really meaningful was The Grapes of Wrath . Reading the stories and learning the challenges of the families in the book reminded me of my family history.  They also moved from the mid-west to the west searching for work and an escape from poverty during the Great Depression.”  

Another freshman Democrat with a deep and wide passion for reading books is Colorado's Jared Polis. We're both big R.E.M. fans and he told me his iPod is filled with songs by Peter, Paul and Mary, John Denver and They Might Be Giants. His favorite book, is one I'm proud to say that I read in Spanish, Don Quijote by Miguel Cervantes. "It's a wonderful novel of idealism," enthused Jared, "with a theme of exploring what defines reality." Fellow freshman, Jim Himes (D-CT) brought up a book he says has been very meaningful to him, a book I hadn't heard of before: Their Eyes Were Watching God. "Zora Neal Hurston wrote the book and it means a lot to me because of its recognition of the divine spark in all of us."

Feel like reading? I have 4 autographed copies of Jeffrey Feldman's book, Framing The Debate and I'm going to send it to the first four people who donate at least $25 to any of our candidates who voted against the supplemental war budget to fund escalating the war in Afghanistan. If you want to donate and don't want the book, just add one cent to your contribution and I won't send it.