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The Book Case

Carlos Lozada Makes the Case for Political Memoirs

The Book Case

ABC News

Fiction, Arts, Books, Society & Culture

4.1766 Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We try not to do books about politics — political discourse in this country is, currently, divisive in the extreme. However, Carlos Lozada, in his new book, The Washington Book: How to Read Politics and Politicians, gives us a survey of Washington literature that will surprise, delight and inform you. From Tocqueville to Trump, from The Muller Report to DeSantis’ plea for the presidency, Carlos has read it all, and written about almost everything he has read. This book is a compendium of his best columns about books…why does Carlos think presidents insist on writing their own biographies? Why is George H.W. Bush one of the only presidents without a presidential autobiography? Tune in and find out. Books mentioned in this week's episode: The Washington Book: How to Read Politics and Politicians by Carlos Lozada What We Were Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era by Carlos Lozada Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant by Ulysses S. Grant An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood by Jimmy Carter Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush by Jon Meacham Heartburn by Nora Ephron Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:23.6

Adobe Express, the quick and easy create anything app.

0:27.6

Hello, book casers, what do you be in your living room, your bedroom, your dining room, your den?

0:41.1

We welcome you to another edition of The Bookcase with Kate and Charlie.

0:46.1

I'm the Charlie part.

0:47.2

I'm the Kate part, and that's the best part about a bookcase podcast,

0:50.6

is you can have a bookcase literally any room in your house.

0:55.6

You just got to carry us with you.

0:56.4

Isn't that nice?

0:59.3

Basement, garage in the kitchen.

1:05.6

Lanai, Portico. I mean, you know, we can come up with this many, you know, I don't know how many more we got.

1:13.2

We have a book for you today that I think you will find interesting. We have avoided politics in this podcast for obvious reasons. But this is Carlos Lossada, who is a writer for the New York Times, who's written

1:18.3

at something called The Washington Book, How to Read Politics and Politicians. He reads all these

1:25.8

books. He reads the tell-alls. He reads the campaign biographies. He reads the memoirs of former presidents. He reads it all. And he doesn't like the phrase necessarily. But one of the things is he reads these things so you don't have to. He disdains these books, but he finds them valuable in some ways.

1:46.5

I loved this book. It's in some ways,

1:52.8

it's a survey of political writing from Tocqueville to Trump and everything in between, you know, and he also reads all the Senate Commission reports and the intelligence reports that come out

1:58.8

after the commission hearings of the whatever. He reads it all.

2:02.5

I think this gives him a unique perspective, not just into Washington and politics and history,

...

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