To read about a presidential election is to parachute into a nation grappling with what it has become — and what it wants to be. This fall, as voters face a choice between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the stakes can feel almost unbearably consequential. But it may be comforting to know that we have been here before: the rivets of American society straining, the national conversation devolving into a shouting match.
In the days to come, I’m going to ever so gently suggest that you skip the social media doom-scrolling and cable news punditry. Instead, spend a few hours with one of the audiobooks below, which can help you make sense of our political tumult.
Why We’re Polarized
By Ezra Klein. Read by the author.
If you have time for only one book on this list, make it this one. Published several months before the 2020 presidential election, “Why We’re Polarized” avoids easy conclusions, looking for the deeper structural shifts that have made political consensus so difficult. Klein, now a New York Times Opinion columnist, argues that “diversity and democracy” have served as the Democrats’ “immune system,” whereas the Republican Party left itself defenseless against its most virulent elements. His narration strains for a conversational tone better suited to his podcast; that does little, however, to detract from the quality of thought.
What It Takes
By Richard Ben Cramer. Read by Keith Sellon-Wright.
It may take you until the 2028 presidential election to finish this nearly 55-hour behemoth, but don’t let its length deter you. Cramer set out to understand each of the six men running for president in 1988, and the result is a book (narrated expertly by Sellon-Wright) that is about politics in the way that “Moby-Dick” is about fishing. By the time Cramer’s subjects (including a youngish Joe Biden) actually become presidential candidates, you know them better than your own family — and aren’t the least bit sorry for it.
Unbought and Unbossed
By Shirley Chisholm. Read by Marcella Cox.
The first Black woman ever elected to Congress, Chisholm was a teacher when she started getting involved in Brooklyn’s bare-knuckled Democratic politics in the 1950s. As she made her way to Albany and then to Washington, she refused to make the kinds of concessions others expected of her. Her cleareyed memoir, narrated with less gravitas than I would have liked by Cox, explores both the highs and lows of her journey, such as the moment during her first House run when she learned she had a tumor that required surgery. “‘Look, Doc,’ I said, ‘I’ve had it for two years,’” she writes. “‘Can’t I carry it a little longer, until after November?’”
Election
By Tom Perrotta. Read by a full cast.
The year is 1992, and Tracy Flick is determined to win the race for student body president at Winwood High School in New Jersey. An expert at capturing the hypocrisies and disappointments of suburban life, Perrotta uses this scholastic drama to paint an acid-etched portrait of the politics of the Clinton era. Tracy’s teacher Mr. McAllister, one of several narrators, describes her as having “scratched and clawed her way to the top, lying and cheating when necessary.” Someone buy her a one-way train ticket to Washington.
Primary Colors
By Joe Klein. Read by Lloyd James.
This novel was published anonymously in 1996, though Klein, then a columnist for Newsweek, was eventually outed as the author. Klein fictionalizes the Clinton campaign so lightly that you will have little trouble decoding the characters, from the lecherous Southern governor to his coterie of cocky young aides; the writer is at his brutal best with Lucille Kauffman, a stand-in for the polarizing Hillary Clinton aide Susan Thomases. James is not entirely successful with the array of accents he is asked to perform — Arkansas, Louisiana, Brooklyn, Chicago — but the result is more amusing than distracting.
All the King’s Men
By Robert Penn Warren. Read by Michael Emerson.
Warren’s 1946 novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize, is rendered marvelously by Emerson, who grasps the mix of dread, cynicism, ambition and awe that animates the book’s protagonist, the political adviser Jack Burden. At the center of this brooding, enthralling novel is Willie Stark, modeled on Louisiana’s notorious governor-turned-senator Huey Long. Not an easy listen, but a necessary one.
Shattered
By Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes. Read by Kimberly Farr.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton seemed to be on a glide path to the White House. How could it possibly go wrong? That is the question the veteran political reporters Allen and Parnes set out to answer in this meticulous autopsy of a campaign gone disastrously astray. They describe Clinton’s team as “full of supplicating sycophants,” status-seekers so certain of victory that they missed all the warning signs. Farr’s straightforward narration lets this tragicomedy of errors do most of its own heavy lifting.
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72
By Hunter S. Thompson. Read by Scott Sowers.
Thompson shreds every convention of political journalism as he tries to recreate “a kind of high-speed cinematic reel-record” of the 1972 presidential campaign, in which Richard Nixon defeated George McGovern. The writer is journalist, activist and hedonist, often all in the span of one sentence. Sowers tries to match the manic quality of Thompson’s prose; I wish he’d been more restrained.
Reagan
By Max Boot. Read by Graham Winton.
A child of Soviet immigrants, Boot writes in his introduction of being mesmerized by Ronald Reagan during an appearance by the president in Los Angeles. A conservative who broke with the G.O.P. during the Trump presidency, Boot both appreciates Reagan and sees his faults, including all the ways the 40th president paved the way for the 45th (who is now vying to be the 47th). In doing so, he makes the case that MAGA’s political roots lie in a presidency that could not be more at stylistic odds with Trump’s. Winton has narrated nearly 200 books, including biographies of Warren Buffett and Jimmy Carter: You’re in expert hands here.
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