A primer of the liberal view in politics in America, Eric Alterman does a fairly decent job of providing a nice summary of liberal ideals. Before I get into a discussion of the books content, an idiosyncratic point about the cover …

I hate it! I realize that Alterman probably had nothing to do with it’s design, but it is a clutter of cartoonish images of “liberals.” Although I am certain that these individuals are liberals in the truest sense of the word, the hodge-podge smattering of barely recognizable figures saps the intellectual vigor that this book could possess. It is clear the work is directed toward the choir, and the subtitle “A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America” only reinforces this impression.

As the core of thesis seems to be the notion that America is actually a liberal nation, rather than a conservative one … I would have called the book “We’re All Liberals” and had an image of a blue-colored American map.

Regardless, Alterman does a fantastic job of describing liberalism in the text and clearly argues for the merits of the liberal approach to politics as not only more effective than conservativism, but also as the very nature of the American way of life.

The first part of the book answers the question “What is this thing called Liberal?” in four chapters. The second part, the meat of the book, discusses the maligning of the Liberal viewpoint by conservatives. Although a great series of chapters that respond point-for-point to the charges leveled against liberals by the right, at times the book falls into the trap of simply repeating the oft-heard complaints against the Bush white house and the neo-conservatives. In other words, at times Alterman offers very little aside from the notion that Liberals are simply “not conservatives.”

And, as most political pundits, he offers no real solutions to the issues. Given that the subtitle suggests the books is some sort of handbook, it completely lacks any actual advice.

This is a book, as usual, that preaches to the choir. It is unfortunate that the vast majority of people who actually need to read this book, those being consistently duped by the right wing media, are unlikely to ever pick it up. ( )

superficial election year book -- makes comments on conservative's comments but doesn't spend enough time developing his own arguments -- good columnist -- this can be skipped