Corey Booker, a Democratic U.S. senator from New Jersey and likely 2028 presidential candidate,

has written a book about taking moral stands. Last year, Booker delivered the longest floor speech

in the history of the United States Senate. It was 25 hours and five minutes. The record for

longest individual speech in Senate history was previously held by South Carolina Senator

Strom Thurmond, who spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes to oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Booker aimed to break this record, only this time it was to protest what he called the grave and urgent threats from the Trump administration.

Booker's speech was not actually a filibuster, since it

wasn't intended to block any particular piece of legislation. It was just an extremely long

use of Senate time. Now, Booker expands on this speech in his new book stand, which is already a New York Times bestseller.

In it, he does admit that his 25-hour stand did not technically accomplish anything beyond

attracting a great deal of attention, but the book adapts some of the themes of the speech

into a manifesto for courageous activism.

Now, Booker is somewhat unapologetic in adopting a stance of mockish moralism,

and one can see reading the book why at Oxford he earned the nickname Mahatma Booker,

thanks to his habit of quoting Mohandas Gandhi,

and what his peers describe as his over-the-top earnest optimism.

He writes in the book,

I can already hear someone objecting,

Dear God, Booker, our country is in crisis,

and you want to talk about virtue? Yes, virtue is not a luxury

or an end in itself. Virtue, the disciplined practice of our highest ideals is the strategy

through which we as a nation survive and prevail.

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