100 and 101 People

So its been a while since I last posted, and I've been doing my fair share of research for the blog. I'm suspecting 3 posts will come fairly soon and firstly I want to recommend these books:

100 People who are Screwing Up America by Bernard Goldberg
101 People who are Really Screwing America by Jack Huberman

Honestly, they don't get very heavy into current election issues (a few of the issues are touched, but its not the intent of either book), but they are a great sort of cliff notes to many many issues and who the players are in them.

The perspective of the books are as follows: Bernard Goldberg, who is a conservative Emmy award winning journalist with CBS News and his book greatly reflects this. Jack Huberman is much less known, but is far more liberal than Goldberg is conservative. He is also the author of the bestselling Bush-Haters Handbook. That should be pretty descriptive of his perspective on this subject.

Benefits from reading these books: How often does one get the opportunity to read two books on the EXACT same subject but also have polar opposite view points. I'd imagine conservatives would be much more insulted by 101 people than liberals would be of 100 people. For example two very surprising entries in 101 people are (#77) God and (#57) The Average American. I consider myself a moderate liberal but I was taken back by the entry on God. It was an interesting viewpoint but as I was able to bring myself to remain open on #57, #77 was a bit more difficult. I'm not one who's afraid to be offended (see Goldberg's 7th entry sequentially ), so these entries weren't enough to deter me from pushing on though the book. One criticism I did have on Goldberg's book is largely a contrast to Huberman's book in that I thought Goldberg actually had some very weak entries. The most notable was his entry on this old co-worker Bill Moyers. He basically gave him an entry as an example of a flip flopper but not in terms of an issue, but in terms of ALL the issues. Sure as a serious journalist politics has some extra value in how you influence America, but I had to question, "Is he really Screwing Up America because of this?" After reading 201+ entries of this subject I think I've found some people who should beat him out on the list.