Happy New Year and happy reading

The holidays are not only a time to enjoy family, friends and food, but it is also a time to catch up on making some headway through my pile of books. Over the last two weeks I have had the pleasure of reading a few very interesting books. Here is a short review of two of these books

One of my favourite "genres" of books are on politics. I read a couple of books on the 2008 US presidential election. The first is an insiders view of the Obama campaign. Written by David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, "The Audacity to Win" is an interesting book that recounts how a relatively unknown first-term US Senator won the presidency. In the primary campaign against what was thought was an unstoppable Hillary Clinton, the Obama team developed a strategy that focused on enlarging the democratic tent. This meant mobilizing non-traditional voters to become involved in the electoral process. In the Iowa caucuses, this meant mobilizing young people and because of the rules allowing for open voting, mobilizing independents and republicans to vote in the caucus. Utilizing a combination of new media (internet tools) and extensive person to person campaigning, the Obama campaign was able to dramatically increase the turnout at the Iowa caucuses and win a decisive victory there. They took this same strategy of focusing on mobilizing new and non-traditional voters to the other caucuses and primaries to win the nomination against the Clinton machine. During the campaign against John McCain, the Obama campaign developed a strategy that expanded the standard number of states that they contested. The book is insightful as it provides an insiders view of the campaign. It is quite entertaining, thought there is a bit of repetition in the book. Overall it is a very exciting and informative book about the US campaign.

The second book I read was also about the 2008 US Presidential election by Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson, entitled "The Battle for America 2008". This book provides a behind the scenes look at the Obama, Clinton and McCain campaigns throughout the primaries and the election. It is a good complement to the Plouffe book as it provides a broader context about what was happening in the other campaigns. They cover the interesting strategy followed by the Obama campaign, including when their supporters were pushing them to alter their strategy when things were not going well. Also interesting is the description and rationale of the selection of Palin as the Republican VP candidate. I would highly recommend this book as well to those of you who are interested in politics.