The most recommended books on the Republican Party (United States)

A major factor in our extreme polarization is the distorted, overly pessimistic views people on both sides can have of their fellow citizens.

As Stone points out, we can dislike the people on the "other side" much more than we should, even based on our own standards for disliking people. If you're looking for an in-depth, academic examination of our "undue hate," this is the book to read. 

Our distorted perceptions are very important because the animosity and disrespect and insults we aim at the "other side" helps create their animosity, which in turn gives more power to highly polarized and polarizing leaders, and other influencers.

I was on somewhat of a “history of the IRA” kick this year (that’s the Irish Republican Army, not the Inflation Reduction Act!). I read a review of There Will Be Fire (ominously titled Killing Thatcher in the UK) in The New Yorker and picked up a copy.

The book is history that reads like a novel. It traces the story of IRA operatives who, in 1984, planted a massive bomb at a UK beach resort that just barely missed killing the UK Prime Minister (and her husband) while killing or injuring many others and destroying most of the historic building.

I had never even heard of this incident—and indeed, that’s part of Carroll’s tale, that much of it has been lost to history.

The book works on many levels: as political history, as a detective story, as an examination of the evolution of the IRA and its tactics, as… show more.

A timely and well-researched look at the right’s successful, decades-long strategy of capturing state legislatures, this book sounds the alarm—and points to a crucial path forward. I love that Winter succeeds where many academic authors have failed: she has written a book that’s both deeply informative and fun to read. I especially appreciate her concrete and practical approach to moving the United States in a more progressive direction; anyone can point out that the right is, by many measures, winning, but it takes real talent to show us what we can do about it.

I recall reading it in my late teens, less as the classic it was on the barbarous Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, and more as a personal discovery by Orwell of how his democratic socialist instincts were sharpened and shaped by the buffeting swirl of ideological clashes and bitter sectarian struggles within the inspirational resistance to Franco’s fascism in Spain. As he witnessed the heroism and the horror, the passion and sometimes the ulterior purposes of these competing groups, Homage to Catalonia for me was a gripping narrative, climaxing in the internecine firefight in Barcelona where the left helped defeat itself, and thereby opened the door to Franco’s murderous victory and equally murderous rule. 

Like Orwell’s, the socialism that I had come to believe in during the first ten years of my life in Britain was instinctively ‘libertarian’ rather than ‘statist’, favouring democracy and liberty rather than central control… show more.

Hacker and Pierson argue that “plutocratic populism,” their term for what currently ails the United States and other democracies, is the latest solution to a structural dilemma in modern democracy.

Conservatives are regularly determined to protect wealth and privilege but need to win over voters who typically lack wealth and privilege to elect them. That means a continual effort to craft appeals that, in effect, disguise their aims.

The recent turn to populism means relying on non-economic issues – race, nativism, and various culture war issues concerning sex and gender most potently – to attract voters to support parties whose first allegiance is to the economic interests of elites.

This strategy can also lead, at times, to attacks on democracy and voting as well. 

This searing memoir by a former commandant of the IRA not only gives an inside look at the Irish War for Independence, but does so with literary panache.

And the tale of O’Malley transformation from medical student to rebel leader seems to have inspired not one but two movies – Shake Hands With the Devil, a Cagney flick in which Don Murray goes from medical student to IRA man, and The Wind That Shakes the Barley, in which Cillian Murphy follows the same arc.

The interviews O’Malley collected with IRA veterans later in life proved invaluable for my book. And I count his son as a friend.

If there’s a common trait of Republican and Democratic politicians, it’s that George Washington is always fair game to hijack. We’re told that Washington was devoutly religious or that he was a deist; that he was a true democrat or a slave-holding aristocrat; that he single-handedly smote the British; that he believed in states’ rights or supported a strong federal government. Washington is anything you want him to be. Lengel, who helped edit the Washington papers, begs to differ. His short book tackles many of the Washington myths with an easy writing style for general readers and endnotes for those who want to double-check his debunking.

I read this book in college, and it helped define my political beliefs.

Although Goldwater refers to himself as a Conservative, the ideas expressed in this book would be considered Libertarian by today's standards. This book defines the basic principles of limited government and what a government should and should not provide to its constituents. 

You may have seen There Will Be Blood, which won Daniel Day Lewis an Academy Award.

Sinclair’s novel (which inspired the film) satirizes the petroleum-fueled tycoons and preachers of Southern California a century ago. For an extra treat, follow this novel with Darren Dochuk’s Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America, which weaves together the stories of American oil, American religion, and the great schism within today’s Republican Party.

The subtitle of this rollicking yarn tells you all you need to know: “An Incredible True Story of IRA Pirates.”

In March 1922, a daring crew of Cork rebels took to the high seas and hijacked a Royal Navy ship packed with 120 tons of guns and ammo. This bloodless act of piracy caused an uproar in London and Dublin, and altered the course of the Irish Civil War. The book is extensively researched, and Mahon knows whereof he speaks – his grandfather was the head of the Cork IRA.

I loved this one because it is set in the same locale and era where part of my book is set, and it features some of the same characters.