By Steve Rhodes
“BELIEVER: My Forty Years in Politics, by David Axelrod, will be published on February 10,” Playbook reports.
Ugh.
From the release:
“Whether as a child hearing John F. Kennedy stump in New York or as a strategist guiding the first African-American to the White House, Axelrod shows in Believer how his own life stands at the center of the tumultuous American century.”
So it’s all about him!
“Believer begins in the inimitable world of 1960s New York, but rapidly moves west.
“As a young newspaperman in the Chicago of the 1970s and 1980s, Axelrod reported on the dissolution of the last of the big city political machines, along with the emergence of a black, independent movement that made Obama’s ascent possible. Seeing the golden age of Chicago journalism collapse, Axelrod switched careers to become a political strategist, working for path-breakers like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and morally-conflicted characters like John Edwards. For better and worse, Axelrod helped to redefine the techniques by which modern political campaigns are run.”
Umm, okay.
“The heart of Believer is devoted to Axelrod’s twenty-year friendship with Obama.”
Of course it is.
“Axelrod offers a deeper and richer profile of this extraordinary figure – who in just six years vaulted from the Illinois State Senate to the Oval Office.”
And we all see now what a terrible idea that was.
“In . . . sharing his life and work over the decades, Axelrod ultimately traces the continuing evolution of the Democratic Party and the country.”
Into cynical Wall Street patrons.
*
This is still the best thing ever written about David Axelrod.
Ex-Pat’s PENmanship
“Ian Stansel, who moved to Cincinnati in 2012, is a finalist for the PEN American Center’s top literary awards, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, for his short-story collection, Everybody’s Irish. The award is $25,000 to the author of a debut work of fiction,” the Cincinnati Enquirer reports.
“His book is nine short stories, eight set in Illinois (he’s originally from the Chicago area).”
My Chicago Apartment
“My Apartment in Chicago, written by Chicago resident and teacher Jack Murphy is a fresh, innovative and eclectic self-published chapbook that stretches the limits of even the ‘hybrid-genre,'” Jaclyn Bauer writes for Chicagoist.
“With his raw tone, colloquial verbiage and proclivity for provoking thought, Murphy encapsulates avant-garde literature in all of its aspects.”
Spider-Man’s Local Lawyer
“Lawyers for both sides in a case under consideration by the United States Supreme Court have cited a book by a professor at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago,” a press release says.
“Professor Daryl Lim’s book, Patent Misuse and Antitrust: Empirical, Doctrinal and Policy Perspectives, has been used in briefs about a dispute over royalties from a superhero toy.”
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Comments welcome.
Posted on June 24, 2014