The list below provides some recommended reading about issues of politics, policy, security, culture and society. As you'll see, these are not uniformly center-left in viewpoint; each hopefully presents compelling arguments, data, or history that all of us need to take into account.

• U.S. Politics and Public Policy
• The Economy and Markets
• Community, Culture and Social Change
• National Identity, Race and Multiculturalism
• George W. Bush
• General American History
• World History and Politics
• Miscellaneous Favorites

• Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe by Graham Allison
• Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution by Justice Stephen Breyer
• The Next Deal:  The Future of Public Life in the Information Age by Andrei Cherny
• Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror by Richard Clarke
• Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War by Francis Fitzgerald
• The World Turned Right Side Up: A History of the Conservative Ascendancy in America by Godfrey Hodgson
• The Emerging Democratic Majority by John Judis and Ruy Texeira
• The Paradox of American Democracy:  Elites, Special Interests and the Betrayal of the Public Trust by John Judis
• The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century by Paul Krugman
• The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution by Michael Lind
• The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics by Michael Lind
• How to Hack a Party Line:  The Democrats and Silicon Valley by Sarah Miles
• The Two Percent Solution: Fixing America's Problems in Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love by Matthew Miller
• The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney
• MoveOn's 50 Ways to Love Your Country from MoveOn.org
• Miles to Go: A Personal History of Social Policy by Daniel Patrick Moynihan
• Secrecy: The American Experience by Daniel Patrick Moynihan
• The Party of the People: A History of the Democrats by Jules Witcover

• Critical Condition : How Health Care in America Became Big Business--and Bad Medicine by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele
• The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida
• Everything for Sale by Robert Kuttner
• The Future of Success: Working and Living in the New Economy by Robert B. Reich
• The End of Oil by Paul Roberts
• Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz
• When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor by William Julius Wilson

• Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert Putnam
• The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism, Where All of Life Is a Paid-For Experience by Jeremy Rifkin
• Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy by Michael J. Sandel
• Diminished Democracy by Theda Skocpol

• The Remedy: Class, Race and Affirmative Action by Richard Kahlenberg
• Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America by John McWhorter
• The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
• America in Black and White:  One Nation, Indivisible by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom

• Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth by Joe Conason
• Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken
• Bushwacked: Life in George W. Bush's America by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose
• Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush by Molly Ivins

• The Promise of American Life by Herbert Croly
• Democracy in America by Alexis de Toqueville
• The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, Clinton Rossiter (Editor), Charles R. Kesler (Introduction)
• The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand
• The Cycles of American History by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
• Robert Kennedy and His Times by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
• A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
• Lincoln's Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural by Ronald C. White Jr.
• Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America by Garry Wills

• The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama
• The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel Huntington
• Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776 by Walter McDougall
• The Paradox of American Power:  Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone by Joseph Nye
• Rogue Nation by Clyde Prestowitz
• The United States Of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy by T.R. Reid

• There He Goes Again: Ronald Reagan's Reign of Error by Mark Green, Gail McColl Jarrett
• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
• A Theory of Justice by John Rawls
• The New Republic Reader: Eighty Years of Opinion and Debate edited by Dorothy Wickenden
• Non-Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright