A plague on all our houses

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Walter R. Borneman

In Polk, Walter R. Borneman gives us the first complete and authoritative biography of a president often overshadowed in image but seldom outdone in accomplishment. James K. Polk occupied the White House for only four years, from 1845 to 1849, but he plotted and attained a formidable agenda: He fought for and won tariff reductions, reestablished an independent Treasury, and, most notably, brought Texas into the Union, bluffed Great Britain out of the lion's share of Oregon, and wrested California and much of the Southwest from Mexico. On reflection, these successes seem even more impressive, given the contentious political environment of the time.In this unprecedented, long-overdue warts-and-all look at Polk's life and career, we have a portrait of an expansionist president and decisive statesman who redefined the country he led, and we are reminded anew of the true meaning of presidential accomplishment and resolve.From the Trade Paperback edition.

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Michael Parenti

Political essays and poems. In Young People Are Different, he writes: "Hostage in their homes, / kept alive by the telephone / fully animated only when taking flight / in rough formation. / They rebel / so better to submit / to their totalitarian peerage."

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Lou Cannon

Spring 1992, and the City of Angels was suddenly a modern hell. During five terrifying days, as the world watched in horror, the deadliest urban rioting of the twentieth century laid waste to South Central Los Angeles. But there's a hidden story behind the riots. Lou Cannon, who covered Los Angeles for The Washington Post before, during, and after the violence, has exhaustively interviewed the survivors and learned the definitive story of just what happened and why. Official Negligence takes us behind the scenes at City Hall and at police headquarters, inside jury rooms, onto the front lines of the violence in the streets, and into the hearts and minds of unknown heroes and tells, for the first time, a riveting tale of multiple injustices, mismanagements, and misjudgments. Official Negligence illuminates all the characters and events surrounding what went wrong in Los Angeles. In so doing, it lays bare the ethnic, racial, and economic fault lines that divide American society at the approach of the millennium.

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Clarence Y.H. Lo

Tax reformers, take note. Clarence Lo's investigation of California's Proposition 13 and other tax reduction bills is both a tribute and a warning to people who get "mad as hell" and try to do something about being pushed around by government. Homeowners in California, faced with impossible property tax bills in the 1970s, got mad and pushed back, starting an avalanche that swept tax limitation measures into state after state. What we learn is that, although the property tax was slashed, two-thirds of the benefits went to business owners rather than homeowners. How did a crusade launched by homeowning consumers seeking tax relief end up as a pro-business, supply-side political program? To trace the transformation, Lo uses the firsthand recollections of 120 activists in the movement, going back to the 1950s. He shows how their protests were ignored, until a suburban alliance of upper-middle-class property owners and business owners took charge. It was the program of that latter group, not the plight of the moderate-income homeowner, which inspired tax revolts across the nation and shaped the economic policies of the Reagan administration.