The book club: there have been lots of great progressive books in the last 15 years, so we asked lots of people we like to tell us--quickly!--their favorite one.(15 YEARS OF LIBERAL INTELLIGENCE)

TODD GITLIN

Professor of journalism and sociology, Columbia University

Narrowly squeaking in under the 15-year limit is Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics, by Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall (1991), which doesn't bring good news to liberals but is valuable for precisely that reason. Edsall has been reporting the nuts and guts of American politics for decades now, and there is no more reliable guide to the infrastructural facts. In the same blue-state vein: Lisa McGirr's Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right ...

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