"We are pleased to launch our new Metacritic Books section with a database of approximately 150 books drawn from the second half of 2004. To start, we plan on adding to our database by, on average, about one new book a day, and if all goes well, we'll pick up the pace a bit next year."
Using Metacritic's advanced book search tool, a search for books in the genres Current Events & Politics and Social Sciences, that have Metascore greater than 80 returned the following five results.
Nightingails by Gillian Gill (2004)
An Unfinished Season by Ward Just (2004)
Vermeer In Bosnia by Lawrence Weschler (2004)
Arc Of Justice by Kevin Boyle (2004)
Perilous Times by Geoffrey R. Stone (2004)
"Campaigns & Elections is the monthly magazine covering the business and trends of politics." The Books section provides numerous reviews of political books by staff members and others.
Ron's Picks are book reviews by Ron Faucheux, the "contributor-at-large of Campaigns & Elections magazine, an author, lawyer, former elected official, campaign consultant, university teacher and government affairs expert." The following are his "picks" from January to August, 2005.
Rocky Fernandez is Political Director of the California Young Democrats. He's also President of the Castro Valley Democratic Club, serves as a member of the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee, and works in political consulting.
Rocky's top five political book recommendations at the time of this review were:
Hardball by Chris Matthews
A Rage For Justice by John Jacobs
Against All Enemies by Richard Clarke
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised by Joe Trippi
Professor Wellstone Goes To Washington by Dennis McGrath and Dane Smith
The University of Wisconsin's Undergraduate Research Guide: Book Reviews lists sources of book reviews in the category Law and Politics. The list consists of names and descriptions of electronic databases and how to use each to access book reviews. The names and descriptions are included below.
Also see the Overview and General Interest Book Review Sources in the guide.
Academic Search: This library database indexes approximately 3,100 popular magazines and academic journals and provides the full-text articles from approximately 1,000 journals. Basic instructions for Academic Search
Ethnic Newswatch: A full-text collection of more than 200 newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press.
GenderWatch: A women's and gender issues database with full-text coverage of most journals.
Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe: Contains the full-text articles from U.S. and international newspapers (including the New York Times, June 1980 - to date), as well as some news and business magazines and trade journals. The truncation symbol is an exclamation point (!).
ProQuest Newspapers: Indexes articles from 41 national and Wisconsin newspapers; includes full text for most. The truncation symbol is a question mark (?).
ProQuest Research Library: Indexes over 2,000 general-interest and academic journals. Nearly 1,000 periodicals are full-text. Dates vary, but many full-text journals go back to 1988.
The University of Wisconsin's Undergraduate Research Guide: Book Reviews lists sources of book reviews in the category Databases—Social Science and Education. The list consists of names and descriptions of electronic databases and how to use each to access book reviews. The names and descriptions are included below.
Also see the Overview and General Interest Book Review Sources in the guide.
Academic Search: This library database indexes approximately 3,100 popular magazines and academic journals and provides the full-text articles from approximately 1,000 journals.
Education Full Text: Indexes more than 400 scholarly and trade periodicals and selected monographs in education, educational psychology, college life, teacher education and evaluation.
ERIC: ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) contains citations and abstracts of the international journal and report literature in education and related fields. Subjects include all aspects of education, including child development, classroom techniques, computer education, counseling and testing, administration, higher education, and library science.
Ethnic Newswatch: A full-text collection of more than 200 newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press.
GenderWatch: A women's and gender issues database with full-text coverage of most journals.
Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe: Contains the full-text articles from U.S. and international newspapers (including the New York Times, June 1980 - to date), as well as some news and business magazines and trade journals. The truncation symbol is an exclamation point (!).
ProQuest Research Library: Indexes over 2,000 general-interest and academic journals. Nearly 1,000 periodicals are full-text. Dates vary, but many full-text journals go back to 1988.
PsycINFO: Indexes 1,300 scholarly journals along with books and book chapters in psychology, educational psychology, and behavioral sciences.
Social Sciences Full Text: Indexes more than 415 scholarly journals in economics, politics, public administration, public health, sociology, criminology, environmental and urban studies, psychology and anthropology.
The following are links to the websites of American publishers of politically oriented books.
Using software that he developed and sells, Valdis Krebs created "network maps," which shows that people tend to buy political books from one of two distinct book groups. Titles of the books are arranged with those having a less divisive readership appearing toward the center.
This page contains the late-April 2004 network map based on the top 100 political books on Amazon.com. It also includes links to previous maps, and links to related articles.
A Chicago Tribune article on the 50 Best Magazines includes the following seven, which cover politically related topics. The article doesn't mention whether they're numbered in order with the best of the best on top, but it appears that way from the text next to the titles.
| 3. | The Economist |
| 6. | The New Yorker |
| 13. | Reason |
| 17. | The Atlantic (formerly The Atlantic Monthly) |
| 18. | National Review |
| 39. | National Journal |
| 46. | Legal Affairs |
The News & Politics section of world-newspapers.com contains dozens of links to websites of the magazines listed.
The about page says "All listed sites are in English and provide free online content. Though I am trying to be objective, description and selection of sites are based only on my personal opinion."
According to Technorati—the self proclaimed authority on what's going on in the world of weblogs, "A weblog, or blog, is a personal journal on the web...Some blogs are highly influential and have enormous readership while others are primarily intended for a close circle of family and friends."
Blogs often contain links to and quotes from articles of interest to the blogger (usually there's just one blogger), sometimes with very little else. The original content in blogs is usually the opinion of the blogger. Entries are dated, usually with more than one entry per page, with the most recent entry on top. The public is often able to post public comments on individual blog entries without registering, though an email address is usually requested.
There are numerous categorized directories of blogs, including Blogwise, but due to the large number, particularly of political blogs, there needs to be an easier way to find quality blogs than looking through a list of thousands, even if they're in order of most-recently-updated. Best-of lists tend to be too short and susceptible to voting fraud. I've often found the quality of blogs on winners lists to be lower than that of other popular blogs.
Technorati's Popular Blogs list was barely helpful. It lists blogs according to the number of links to each one, from other blogs. There are no subject categories, but at least the list doesn't depend on bloggers submitting their blogs or being voted on by who knows who.
Within the top 20 blogs on Technorati's popular blogs list, I found one political oriented blog—Talking Points Memo—good enough to list below. I already knew about it from a 2001 New York Times article, but I might not have included it if I didn't see it on a recent most-popular list. Other blogs mentioned below were found through various methods.
Kausfiles
This "mostly political weblog" is written by Mickey Kaus, who "has written about public policy for Newsweek and several other publications, including the New Republic and the Washington Monthly, where he remains a contributing editor." Comments on entries are posted on the Discuss page rather than under the relevant blog entries. Kausfiles is published in Slate Magazine—a liberal online magazine of news, politics, and culture.
Talking Points Memo
Readers can't post comments to this blog, written by Joshua Micah Marshall. Joshua holds a doctorate in American history from Brown University. He "is a Contributing Writer for the Washington Monthly and a columnist for The Hill. His articles on politics, culture and foreign affairs have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers such as The American Prospect, The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe, The Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Post, The New York Times, Salon and Slate. He has appeared on CNN, CNBC, C-SPAN, FOX and MSNBC and is a frequent guest on radio stations across the country."
WatchBlog
This blog of "political news, opinion & commentary" is "a multiple-editor weblog broken up into three major political affiliations, each with its own blog: the Democrats, the Republicans and the Third Party..." A large number of editors who write for other blogs contribute to WatchBlog. The Democrats category contains many more posts than the other two. There are even more posts in Third Party than in Republicans.
POGO
"Founded in 1981, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is an independent nonprofit which investigates and exposes corruption in order to achieve a more accountable federal government....POGO is an investigative organization with an expertise for working with sources inside the government and whistleblowers to document evidence of corruption, waste, fraud, or abuse."
The following are some of the best politically oriented blogs that have Creative Commons licenses that allow you to make commercial use of the work. The exact terms of the licenses may vary. Click the Creative Commons link on the homepage of these blogs for details.
The Human Race and Other Sports
Written by Christopher R. Brauchli, this blog is syndicated by PoliSource (see homepage or the archive) and as a newspaper column by Knight Ridder newswire. "Christopher R. Brauchli is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Colorado School of Law where he served on the Board of Editors of the Rocky Mountain Law Review. Chris served as President of the Boulder Bar Association in 1974-1975 and the Colorado Bar Association in 1989-1990. He is a fellow in the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, the American Bar Foundation, the Colorado Bar Foundation and the Boulder Bar Foundation of which he was the founder and first president. He was the founder and first President of the Colorado Bar Association's Lend-a-Lawyer, Inc., a program designed to provide legal services to the less fortunate members of society through out the State of Colorado."
Tax & Business Law Commentary
The author, Stuart Levine, received a Juris Doctor Degree at the University of Baltimore School of Law. His blog "offers commentary on a wide variety of current court decisions and administrative rulings." His business and tax practice deals with planning issues involving all types of state and federal taxes, and he's represented clients in business disputes. He's chaired the committee that drafted the Maryland Limited Liability Company Act and has written and lectured on limited liability companies.
The Acorn
This blog, by Nitin Pai, is well written and in surprisingly fluent English considering he's a non-American in a technology related industry. Nitin says "My opinions are on the economic right (free markets, free trade); on social issues I'm liberal. My posts are written from an Indian perspective." In his blog he supports a more aggressive approach to dealing with Maoist insurgents than India, preferring to "nip the threat in the bud" than to have a ceasefire and talks with Nepal's opposition politicians. His blog entries are divided into the categories Aside, Economy, Foreign Affairs, Public Policy, and Security.
Listed below are e-book publishers and retailers who've contributed to Open eBook Forum's 3rd quarter 2004 survey of top selling e-books and offer a significant number of politically related e-books to consumers through the internet. The complete list of contributing publishers and retailers is available in this press release.
eBooks.com
(Categories on left side of homepage.)
Business & Economics Current Events Law Political Science Social Science
eReader.com
(Categories are here.)
Current Events & Politics History Law
Franklin Electronic Publishers
(Categories in sitemap)
Current Events History Law
Mobipocket
(Categories here.)
Agriculture & Geography Current Events Economics History Law Political Humor Politics Society Sociology
Numilog (Categories on left side of homepage.)
Current Events & Essays Economics History Law Social Sciences—General Sociology
SafariX Textbooks Online (From Pearson Education. Categories on left side of homepage.)
Economics Geography History Law Political Science Sociology
Powell's (Categories on left side of Adobe, Microsoft, and Palm reader pages.)
Law: A M P Military: A M P Politics: A M P Sociology: A M P U.S. History: A M P World History: A M P
RAND Corporation (Categories here.)
Mostly public policy material in many categories. See this page for more information.
Contentlink (Random House e-books. Categories here.)
Current Affairs History
Seattle Book Company (Categories on left side of homepage.)
History Law Politics
Simon & Schuster (Categories here.)
Business & Economics History Law Political Science Social Science
Time Warner Bookmark
Time Warner refers e-book shoppers to the links here, including eBookLocator.
