Contents: Introduction; The Wealthy Profit at the Expense of the Poor and the Middle Classes (James Lardner); The Wealthy Create Opportunities and Jobs for All Americans (Donald Ruskin); Wall Street Financiers Manipulate the Stock Market to Benefit Themselves (Ian Williams); Wall Street Financiers Help Millions of Investors Profit (Karl Zinsmeister); The American Tax System Gives the Wealthy Too Much Power (Mark Zepezauer); The American Tax System Punishes the Wealthy (Bill Sizemore); Rich Celebrities Have Too Much Political Influence (Darrell M. West); Celebrities Have Little Influence on Voters (Kevin Baron); Corporations Use Their Power to Benefit the Rich (Multinational Monitor); Corporations Use Their Power to Benefit All Sectors of Society (Radley Balko); Well-Funded Environmental Groups Abuse Their Power (John Perazzo); The Greedy Practices of Corporations Are Destroying the Environment (Michael Parenti); Wealthy Corporations Unfairly Influence News Coverage (Peter Hart and Julie Hollar); America's Wealthiest Citizens Give Away Billions to Improve Education (Richard Lee Colvin); Most Rich Americans Have Worked Hard to Obtain Their Wealth (B.Z. Khasru); Bibliography; Index.

Barack Obama discusses the importance of empathy in politics, his hopes for a different America with different policies, and how the ideals of its democracy can be renewed.With intimacy and self-deprecating humour, Obama writes about his experiences as a politician and balancing his family life and his public vocation. His search for consensus and his respect for the democratic process inform every sentence. A politician and a lawyer, a professor and a father, a Christian and a sceptic, Barack Obama has written a book that has already inspired people the world over. At the heart of The Audacity of Hope is his vision of how his country can move beyond its divisions to tackle concrete problems. He examines the growing economic insecurity of American families and the racial and religious tensions within the body politic, and considers the nature of threats from outside America's borders. By returning to the principles that gave birth to the US Constitution, he says, Americans have a chance to repair a political process that is broken, and restore to working order a government that has fallen dangerously out of touch with millions of ordinary Americans. Obama's politics are rooted in the faith, inclusiveness, and nobility of spirit at the heart of “our improbable experiment in democracy.” (448 pages)
Level: Library/Depot/Interdisciplinary projects/SRP

In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir (written even before Barack Obama had won his seat in the Senate), the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. The story begins in New York, where Obama receives a phone call from Nairobi: his father — a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man — has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey for Obama, determined to learn the truth of his father's life and his divided inheritance — first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother's family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father's life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance. Written at the age of thirty-three, Dreams from My Father is an unforgettable read which illuminates not only Obama's own journey, but also our universal desire to understand our history and what makes us the people we are. (442 pages)
Level: Library/Depot/Interdisciplinary projects/SRP

Disc 1 – The Early Years: 1950's
A retrospective on the early years of televised campaigns and debates, as presidential politics emerged into the living rooms of America for the first time ever.
Eisenhower v Stevenson (twice).

Disc 2 – Change Begins: 1960s and 70s
The influence of television grows — politicians and their advisors hone their TV media skills, reaching out to voters during the tumultuous decades of the 60s and 70s.
Kennedy v Nixon; Johnson v Goldwater; Nixon v Humphrey; Nixon v McGovern; Carter v Ford.

Disc 3 – Refining the Process: 1980s to Today
The new world of presidential campaigns, in which writers, camera men, stylists, marketing experts and others play an integral role in selling the president on TV.
Carter v Reagan; Reagan v Mondale; G.H.W.Bush v Dukakis; Clinton v G.H.W.Bush; Clinton v Dole; Bush v Gore; Kerry v Bush; 2008 primary commercials: Obama/Clinton/McCain.