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Top Reads For News Junkies: ‘House Of Bush, House Of Saud’

Top Reads For News Junkies: ‘House Of Bush, House Of Saud’

It has been over a decade since Craig Unger published House of Bush, House of Saud: The Hidden Relationship Between the World’s Two Most Powerful Dynasties, a sobering investigation into the entwined histories and interests of the Bush family and the royal family of Saudi Arabia. The ramifications of this union have shaped the course of the region’s history and the global balance of power. With the recent death of King Abdullah, America’s knotty alliance with the Kingdom enters a new chapter, and Unger’s book remains as relevant as ever.

You can purchase the book here.

Top Reads For News Junkies: ‘At Canaan’s Edge’

Top Reads For News Junkies: ‘At Canaan’s Edge’

The phenomenal critical success of the film Selma — the first big-screen treatment of Martin Luther King, Jr. — has been cooled somewhat by a debate ignited over whether or not the film diminishes Lyndon B. Johnson’s ardor for and involvement in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Those events are covered in At Canaan’s Edge: America In The King Years, 1965-68, the third book in Taylor Branch’s trilogy of histories covering the civil rights movement (after Parting the Waters andPillars of Fire). Great history and great historical fiction are not the same, and it would be naive to judge them on the same merits. Branch’s books belong to the former, and we hope they can be consumed and enjoyed alongside the latter.

You can purchase the book here.

Top Reads For News Junkies: ‘Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights’

Top Reads For News Junkies: ‘Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights’

42 years ago this week, the United States Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in the case of Roe v. Wade, establishing the legal right to abortion — a right that opponents have been dismantling ever since with the passage of state laws that impose senseless regulations and requirements. Katha Pollitt’s Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights is a lucid history of the struggle for access to legal abortion and a cogent argument that abortion is not merely a right, but a “positive social good” that is tied to our most fundamental freedoms.

You can purchase the book here.