My Books
I am the author of three books.
The newest one is out June 2. It’s call The Jews and the Left and it’s the story of why American Jews became such staunch Democrats—and why the Left turned on the Jews.
It was not a foregone conclusion that the history of America and its Jews would lead to 100 years of voting for Democrats. America has always had a unique relationship with Jews. In 1790, President George Washington wrote a famous letter to what he called the “children of the stock of Abraham” of Newport, Rhode Island, promising that here, bigotry would be given no sanction, persecution no assistance. In the letter, he explained that Jews, as all other Americans, would be treated as equals.
It was a monumental moment in the history of the Jews. But even before that, from the minute the first Jews stepped foot on these shores, they knew that after millennia of persecution, they were finally home.
The Jews and the Left is a tale of love and betrayal that begins in 1654 and ends in the here and now, explaining one of the great mysteries of American political life. It’s a story for America’s 250th birthday, a recovery of our part in this great nation’s founding—and how and why that story has been hidden from view.
It’s available for purchase here:
I’ve also written a book called Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women about the struggle to achieve the American Dream for working class Americans. I wanted to know who is the American working class? And what do they think about their chances to secure the hallmarks of a middle-class life?
I visited states across the nation to speak with members of the American working-class fighting tooth and nail to survive. Americans of all races, political orientations, and occupations shared their stories with me—cleaning ladies, health care aides, cops, truck drivers, fast food workers, electricians, and more. In their own words, these working-class Americans explain the struggles and triumphs of their increasingly precarious lives—as well as what policies they think would improve them.
My first book is Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining America about how and why the media got so woke.
Long before “fake news” became the calling card of the Right, Americans had lost faith in their news media. But the majority of our mainstream news is no longer just liberal; it’s woke. Today’s newsrooms are propagating radical ideas that were fringe as recently as a decade ago, including “antiracism,” intersectionality, open borders, and critical race theory. How did this come to be?
It all has to do with who our news media is written by—and who it is written for. American journalism underwent a status revolution over the twentieth century—from a blue-collar trade to an elite profession. As a result, journalists shifted their focus away from the working class and toward the concerns of their affluent, highly educated peers. With the rise of the Internet and the implosion of local news, America’s elite news media became nationalized and its journalists affluent and ideological. And where once business concerns provided a countervailing force to push back against journalists’ worst tendencies, the pressures of the digital media landscape now align corporate incentives with newsroom crusades.
The truth is, the moral panic around race, encouraged by today’s elite newsrooms, does little more than consolidate the power of liberal elites and protect their economic interests. And in abandoning the working class by creating a culture war around identity, our national media is undermining American democracy. Bad News explains how this happened, why it happened, and the dangers posed by this development if it continues unchecked.