Do you need more evidence of how polarized the country is? I have just read that political works currently hold the top spots on the New York Times best-seller list of hardcover nonfiction books.
At the very top is American Marxism by the Fox News host Mark Levin. According to the description on Amazon.com, “In American Marxism, Levin explains how the core elements of Marxist ideology are now pervasive in American society and culture—from our schools, the press, and corporations, to Hollywood, the Democratic Party, and the Biden presidency—and how it is often cloaked in deceptive labels like “progressivism,” “democratic socialism,” “social activism,” and more…. As Levin writes: “The counter-revolution to the American Revolution is in full force. And it can no longer be dismissed or ignored for it is devouring our society and culture, swirling around our everyday lives, and ubiquitous in our politics, schools, media, and entertainment.” “
Next, from the opposite side of the aisle is Here, Right Matters: An American Story, the memoir of retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who played such an important role in Trump’s first impeachment. Again, from Amazon.com: “0900, Thursday, July 25, 2019: President Trump called Ukraine’s President Zelensky, supposedly to congratulate him on his recent victory. In the months that followed, the American public would only learn what happened on that call because Alexander Vindman felt duty-bound to report it up the chain of command: that the President of the United States had extorted a foreign ally to damage a political challenger at home.”
Then there is I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year, by the Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker. This description is from the Penguin Random House website: “The true story of what took place in Donald Trump’s White House during a disastrous 2020 has never before been told in full…. This is a story of a nation sabotaged—economically, medically, and politically—by its own leader, culminating with a groundbreaking, minute-by-minute account of exactly what went on in the Capitol building on January 6, as Trump’s supporters so easily breached the most sacred halls of American democracy, and how the president reacted.”
All are at the top of the best-seller list. All have a rating of 4.7 stars or higher on Amazon.com. The conclusion? “The same kind of polarization that we’re seeing in the mainstream culture is happening in the book market,” says Kristen McLean, an analyst at the market-research company NPD BookScan. “The appetite is there on both sides of the political divide.” The prediction? Book publishing, and sales, will provide no relief from polarizing cultural and social issues.
And the beat goes on.