Books

For two years of the Bush era beginning with Hurricane Katrina, the Star Tribune published a weekly comic strip on its opinion page that was unlike anything else in American newspapers, sending up current events in a serial format with heaping doses of dark humor and giddy gore. “Banana Republic” dispensed satire so bruising and brutal it made you want to die of shame — but also so funny and true it gave you reason to live. Now cartoonist Kirk Anderson’s new book compiles every episode of “Banana Republic,” letting readers re-live tortuous times and die of embarassment all over again.

Media coverage of Sarah Palin during the run-up to her debate with Democratic counterpart Joe Biden has focused increasingly on her apparent ignorance in matters of policy and public affairs, and understandably so. But it’s an open question whether all the things Sarah Palin doesn’t know are really more disturbing than the things Palin believes she does know as a function of her religious faith.

Here’s a guide.

Burials done the usual way in the United States pose a threat to the natural environment, asserts Mark Harris, a former environmental columnist for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate and author of the recent book, “Grave Matters.” Embalmed bodies leak formaldehyde into the earth, while cremated dental fillings send mercury into the air. In this [...]

Dave Dempsey is the communications director of Conservation Minnesota, a leading advocate for the protection of the Great Lakes and author of several books. His latest work, “Great Lakes For Sale: From Whitecaps to Bottlecaps” published by University of Michigan Press, focuses on the export and diversion of water from within the Great Lakes basin.
Dempsey [...]

As an Asian American, Irwin Tang has been on the receiving end of the epithet “gook.” It’s often hurled, he tells The UpTake’s Chuck Olsen, when someone means him harm. But what if it comes out of the mouth of a presidential candidate — like Sen. John McCain?
“I hate the gooks,” McCain said in 2000. [...]

Jeff Sharlet’s The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power may be the best book anyone has written about the politics of the Christian right. Certainly it’s the most surprising, and therein lies a catch: The Family is not about the “Christian right” we know, the popular fundamentalist evangelicalism of TV preachers [...]

In his 2007 book “Framing the Debate,” author and blogger Jeffrey Feldman analyzed historic presidential speeches and found ways for today’s progressive activists to use the principles behind those speeches for modern advantage.
Feldman is back just a year later with his next offering: “Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy,” [...]

If you look only to John McCain’s record, it seems ironic that one of the great stumbling blocks in his campaign has been the opposition of prominent conservatives. Cliff Schecter says it’s not a matter of issues: “He hasn’t broken with [conservatives] any more than a whole host of people on the right who they [...]

In his sixth book, “Dry Spring: The Coming Water Crisis of North America,” journalist and author Chris Wood weaves together the stories of people affected by droughts, floods, rising sea-levels and changing weather patterns from across the continent to argue that climate change, rapid development and overuse are threatening the future of our water supply.
He [...]

An NPR segment yesterday about rising concerns over “stagflation” in the nation’s economy reminded me of a book I read last summer called The Coming Economic Collapse, by investor and peak-oil-proponent Stephen Leeb. I checked it out at the library again so I could share.