Bartels, Larry M., Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (Princeton & Oxford: Sage Russell Foundation/Princeton U. Press, 2008) (“Observers of contemporary American politics may be unsurprised to hear that elected official attached more weight to the preferences of affluent and middle-class constituents than of low-income constituents. However, only the most cynical critic of American democracy could be unsurprised to learn that low-income constituents seem to have been entirely ignored in the policy-making process.” Id. at 285-286. “What do these finding suggests about the state of American democracy? Political leaders appear to be responding significantly to the policy preferences of millions of middle- and upper-income citizens….” “These disparities in representation are especially troubling because they suggest the potential for a debilitating feedback cycle linking the economic and political realms: increasing economic inequality may produce increasing inequality in political responsiveness, which in turn produces public policies that are increasingly detrimental to the interest of poor citizens, which in turn produces even greater economic inequality, and so on. If that is the case, shifts in the income distribution triggered by technological change, demographic shifts, or global economic development may in time become augmented, entrenched, and immutable.” Id. at 286.).
Blackmon, Douglas A., Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (New York: Doubleday, 2008) ("'You have violated not only the laws of your country but that great law of honor and justice, which bids the powerful and strong not to oppress the down-trodden.'" Id. at 224.).
Ellickson, Robert C., The Household: Informal Order Around the Hearth (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2003) (“My aim in this volume is to help bare the organization of home life…. Most of the rules that govern the hearth, I argue in this volume, are not derived from law but rather are household-specific norms that evolve from the repeated interactions of household participants. In this book , I address the factors that influence how individuals select their co-participants in home life (that is, how household are constituted) and how these clusters of individuals choose to govern themselves. Id. at xi.).
Filkins, Dexter, The Forever War (New York: Knopf, 2008).
Noonan, Peggy, Patriotic Grace: What It Is and Why We Need It Now (New York: Collins, 2008) ("Our elites, our educated and successful professionals, are the ones who are supposed to dig us out and lead us. I refer specifically to the elites of journalism and politics, the elites of the Hill and Foggy Bottom and the agencies, the elites of our state capitals, the accomplished and successful of Washington and elsewhere. I have a nagging sense, and I think I have accurately observed, that after 9/11, after its high feelings and fumbles, many of these people have made a separate peace. That they're living their lives and taking their pleasures and pursuing their agendas; that they're going forward each day with the knowledge, which they hold more securely and with greater reason than non-elites, that the wheels are off the trolley and the trolley's off the tracks, and with a conviction, a certainty, that there is nothing they can do about it.... So they've turned inward. They build new pools and plan exotic vacations. But have you seen their mansions in McLean? They're like little fortresses... I suspect that history, including great historical novelists of the future, will look back and see that many of our elites simply decided to enjoy their lives while they waited for the next chapter of trouble. And that they consciously, or unconsciously, took grim comfort in this thought: I got mine... Which is what the separate peace comes down to: 'I got mine, you get yours.'" Id. at 125-126.).
Scanlon, T.M., Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame (Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England: Belknap/Harvard U. Press, 2008).
Taylor, Nick, American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the nation to Work (New York: Bantam Books, 2008).
Vowell, Sarah. The Wordy Shipmates (New York: Riverhead Books, 2008).
Woodward, Bob, The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008).
