Hail to the Chief Giveaway

Happy President’s Day!  I am lucky enough to be off for the day.  If you’re not (or even if you are), here’s a giveaway of three books from HarperCollins to bring a little presidential perspective. Contest rules and information are at the end of the post.  I hope you find these books as interesting as I do:

War and Decision:

Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism by Douglas J. Feith

From HarperCollins: In War and Decision, former Pentagon policy chief Douglas J. Feith puts readers in the room with President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and others as they considered how to prevent another 9/11. Drawing on thousands of previously undisclosed written sources, Feith offers the first inside view of these events as they unfolded. Through vivid narrative, frank analysis, and elegant writing, his account forever changes our understanding of this challenging era.

Feith’s account is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of the Iraq war or how the United States got organized to combat Islamist terrorism.  It is also indispensible for anyone interested in the way our government makes decisions.  It brilliantly analyzes the way grand strategy was created, debated and implemented.  It reveals how interagency policy is made – and candidly explains the flaws as well as the strengths of the Bush administration’s work.  It explores the lolng-standing tensions between the State and Defense Departments and the challenges of civil-military relations in wartime.

War and Decision upends the conventional wisdom about the origins of the Iraq war, the pre-war intelligence and postwar planning.  It brilliantly examines the workings of the U.S. government, but it is a lively narrative.  It will be used for decades by historians, but it will surely also be used in the coming days by the policy makers in the Obama administration.

God in the White House:

How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush by Randall Balmer

From HarperCollins: How did we go from John F. Kennedy declaring that religion should play no role in the elections to Bush saying, “I believe that God wants me to be president”?

Historian Randall Balmer takes us on a tour of presidential religiosity in the last half of the twentieth century—from Kennedy’s 1960 speech that proposed an almost absolute wall between American political and religious life to the soft religiosity of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society; from Richard Nixon’s manipulation of religion to fit his own needs to Gerald Ford’s quiet stoicism; from Jimmy Carter’s introduction of evangelicalism into the mainstream to Ronald Reagan’s co-option of the same group; from Bill Clinton’s covert way of turning religion into a non-issue to George W. Bush’s overt Christian messages, Balmer reveals the role religion has played in the personal and political lives of these American presidents.

Americans were once content to disregard religion as a criterion for voting, as in most of the modern presidential elections before Jimmy Carter.But today’s voters have come to expect candidates to fully disclose their religious views and to deeply illustrate their personal relationship to the Almighty. God in the White House explores the paradox of Americans’ expectation that presidents should simultaneously trumpet their religious views and relationship to God while supporting the separation of church and state. Balmer tells the story of the politicization of religion in the last half of the twentieth century, as well as the “religionization” of our politics. He reflects on the implications of this shift, which have reverberated in both our religious and political worlds, and offers a new lens through which to see not only these extraordinary individuals, but also our current political situation.

In Defense of Our America:

The Fight for Civil Liberties  in the Age of Terror by Anthony D. Romero

From HarperCollins: Executive Director of the ACLU Anthony D. Romero and award-winning journalist Dina Temple-Raston present stories of real Americans at the front lines of the fight for civil liberties at a time when our most basic rights are being challenged. From the story of “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh to the battle against the National Security Agency’s warrantless spying program, and from a movement in Pennsylvania to force religion into the public school science curriculum to the case of Matthew Limon, a gay teenager sentenced to seventeen years in prison for having consensual oral sex with another teenage boy in Kansas, In Defense of Our America offers readers an eye-opening look at the dangerous erosion of rights in the post-9/11 age of terror and chronicles the courageous ongoing struggle of ordinary Americans to preserve our hard-won constitutional freedoms.

How Do I Enter This Contest?

1) Leave a comment indicating the book you would like to win.  There will be a different winner for each book.  Leave two or three comments if you want a chance more than one of the books.  Make sure to provide a valid email when you leave your comment(s) so I know how to contact you.

2) Twitter or mention this contest in a post for another chance (one tweet or post will add a chance for each book you request – no need to do that more than once).

3) I will use the List Randomizer to draw the winner for each book on Monday, February 23.

GOOD LUCK!!!!