Welcome to a special Election Day episode of Book Bites from the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange! We love voting, and support everyone’s right to go vote for the candidates of your choice. And we encourage you to remind your candidates and elected officials how valuable libraries are to your community! All candidates and elected officials should be library supporters; we are an amazing investment for our communities. They just need to know what we need.

This election season has been hard on everyone, and we are all tired of hearing the negativity. It’s so unnecessary, and we are very suspicious of political candidates who try to win by encouraging us to turn on each other. Their personal short-term gains are detrimental to us all. So today we are going to share a few books on elections and voting – not covering the entire world of elections, which would be impossible in less than five minutes – but to get you started on your own reading and your own thinking. You don’t have to read these books, but we encourage you to read some good books. We are an information literacy profession, and always encourage you to not blindly accept information but to dig in and think through ideas with good resources.

We have a link to a timeline of other voting rights, and different rules set up to allow or to prevent people from voting. It’s pretty shocking to remember that women in the United States have not even been allowed to vote for 100 years yet. The 19th amendment granted women the right to vote, and was ratified on August 18, 1920.  And you only have to glance casually at the news to see that the right to vote – a right that should be extended as widely as absolutely possible, abridged only in the most extreme circumstances – is being denied to people even today. It’s a national embarrassment, and we suggest you do some reading to better understand this.

Never take for granted that you have this precious right and responsibility. If you have not yet voted today, please do so! In Minnesota you can register at the polls on Election Day, and your voice matters. If you are listening after Election Day, no worries the next one is a short two years away. You have plenty of time to get registered, talk to candidates, and make smart, reasoned decisions for yourself.

Go Vote!

Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government by P.J. O’Rourke

Parliament is a scathing critique of the American system of governance from a conservative perspective. P. J. O’Rourke’s savagely funny and national best-seller Parliament of Whores has become a classic in understanding the workings of the American political system. Originally written at the end of the Reagan era, this new edition includes an extensive foreword by the renowned political writer Andrew Ferguson — showing us that although the names and the players have changed, the game is still the same. Parliament of Whores is an exuberant, broken-field run through the ethical foibles, pork-barrel flimflam, and bureaucratic bologna inside the Beltway that leaves no sacred cow unskewered and no politically correct sensitivities unscorched. 

It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

It Can’t Happen Here is an alarming, eerily timeless work. The Chicago Tribune described the book as “written at a white heat,” for Lewis was outraged as he created it, tormented by Hitler’s aggression, the murderous events in Franco’s Spain, and nationalism rising in America. This book remains a warning about the fragility of democracy, juxtaposing hilarious satires with a blow-by-blow description of a president saving the country from welfare cheaters, sex, crime, and a liberal press by becoming a dictator. Military spokesman General Edgeways and Republican Party activist Mrs. Adelaide Tarr Gimmiitch sound as fresh as a CNN broadcast, and the events – from Supreme Court nominations to blasts at the media – appear totally contemporary. A man ahead of his time, Sinclair Lewis profoundly understood the American character and ripped away smug platitudes to give readers truth. In 1935, the Springfield Republican called It Can’t Happen Here “a message to thinking Americans.” Thinking Americans still need to hear it.

Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America by Ari Berman

In this groundbreaking narrative history, Ari Berman charts both the transformation of American democracy under the Voting Rights Act and the counterrevolution that has sought to limit voting rights, from 1965 to the present day. The act enfranchised millions of Americans and is widely regarded as the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. And yet, fifty years later, we are still fighting heated battles over race, representation, and political power, with lawmakers devising new strategies to keep minorities out of the voting booth and with the Supreme Court declaring a key part of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional.

Berman brings the struggle over voting rights to life through meticulous archival research, in-depth interviews with major figures in the debate, and incisive on-the-ground reporting. In vivid prose, he takes the reader from the demonstrations of the civil rights era to the halls of Congress to the chambers of the Supreme Court. At this important moment in history, Give Us the Ballot provides new insight into one of the most vital political and civil rights issues of our time.

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer

Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers?

The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against “big government” led to the ascendancy of a broad-based conservative movement. But as Jane Mayer shows in this powerful, meticulously reported history, a network of exceedingly wealthy people with extreme libertarian views bankrolled a systematic, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system.

The network has brought together some of the richest people on the planet. Their core beliefs—that taxes are a form of tyranny; that government oversight of business is an assault on freedom—are sincerely held. But these beliefs also advance their personal and corporate interests: Many of their companies have run afoul of federal pollution, worker safety, securities, and tax laws.

The political operatives the network employs are disciplined, smart, and at times ruthless. Mayer documents instances in which people affiliated with these groups hired private detectives to impugn whistle-blowers, journalists, and even government investigators. And their efforts have been remarkably successful. Libertarian views on taxes and regulation, once far outside the mainstream and still rejected by most Americans, are ascendant in the majority of state governments, the Supreme Court, and Congress. Meaningful environmental, labor, finance, and tax reforms have been stymied.

Kids also care about voting, and of course they – as we all do – live with the consequences of every election as we continue to build on the successes and failures of the past. There are a lot of books out there for kids of all ages, and we encourage you to read with your kids!

Lillian’s Right to Vote: A Celebration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by Jonah Winter

An elderly African American woman, en route to vote, remembers her family’s tumultuous voting history in this picture book publishing in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

As Lillian, a one-hundred-year-old African American woman, makes a “long haul up a steep hill” to her polling place, she sees more than trees and sky—she sees her family’s history. She sees the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment and her great-grandfather voting for the first time. She sees her parents trying to register to vote. And she sees herself marching in a protest from Selma to Montgomery. Veteran bestselling picture-book author Jonah Winter and Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award winner Shane W. Evans vividly recall America’s battle for civil rights in this lyrical, poignant account of one woman’s fierce determination to make it up the hill and make her voice heard.

Elizabeth Leads the Way: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Right to Vote by Tanya Lee Stone

Elizabeth Cady Stanton stood up and fought for what she believed in. From an early age, she knew that women were not given rights equal to men. But rather than accept her lesser status, Elizabeth went to college and later gathered other like-minded women to challenge the right to vote. Here is the inspiring story of an extraordinary woman who changed America forever because she wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.

Monster Needs Your Vote by Paul Czajak

Election season is here and Monster is ready to vote! But why cast your ballot when you can run for president instead? With speeches, debates, and a soapbox or two, Monster’s newest tale is a campaign encouraging kids to take a stand and fight for what they believe in.

Around America to Win the Vote: Two Suffragists, a Kitten, and 10,000 Miles by Mara Rockliff

In April 1916, Nell Richardson and Alice Burke set out from New York City in a little yellow car, embarking on a bumpy, muddy, unmapped journey ten thousand miles long. They took with them a teeny typewriter, a tiny sewing machine, a wee black kitten, and a message for Americans all across the country: Votes for Women! The women’s suffrage movement was in full swing, and Nell and Alice would not let anything keep them from spreading the word about equal voting rights for women. Braving blizzards, deserts, and naysayers—not to mention a whole lot of tires stuck in the mud—the two courageous friends made their way through the cities and towns of America to further their cause. One hundred years after Nell and Alice set off on their trip, Mara Rockliff revives their spirit in a lively and whimsical picture book, with exuberant illustrations by Hadley Hooper bringing their inspiring historical trek to life.

Thanks for listening with us today! Official Office Dog Lady Grey is here with us, and she joins us in encouraging you to go vote!