Progressive Book Club

For years, conservative authors shot to the top of best-seller lists by taking losses on their books, having publishers buy thousands and pulp them, or selling them at extreme discounts through conservative book clubs. The gambit was to get on best-seller lists, not only to entice more people to buy the book, but to give the ideas and the authors a patina of seriousness, to get them booked on talk shows and such. I'm pleased to see that progressives are building a book club of their own.

Starting on Monday, the new Progressive Book Club is inviting readers to join and buy three books at $1 apiece in exchange for the obligation to buy four books over the next two years.

The brainchild of Elizabeth Wagley, a former fund-raiser and communications adviser for nonprofit groups including Doctors of the World, the Progressive Book Club is trying to update the paradigm of such familiar institutions as the Book-of-the-Month Club, as well as the 44-year-old Conservative Book Club.

Ms. Wagley said that she believed the new book club would fill a void for progressively minded readers. “The right has always understood the power of ideas, the power of books as legitimizers of ideas,” she said. “I see the opportunity with the book-club structure to create a powerful tool to showcase the ideas of the left.”

There are some excellent books on the reading list over at the Progressive Book Club, including Rick Perlstein's Nixonland, Jim Webb's A Time To Fight, Matthew Yglesias' Heads In The Sand, and Cliff Schechter's The Real McCain. This is an excellent project. There have always been plenty of progressive books and progressive authors out there, but this will get the books in more hands, and hopefully get the authors in more prominent positions in the national debate.