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Insightful books on politics, written by politicians
That is another question I was asked yesterday, here are a few nominations:
2. James Madison and John Adams, for the latter Discourses on Davila.
3. Some of Richard Nixon, scattered.
4. Ulysses S. Grant.
5. Tocqueville, J.S. Mill and some other political writers were also politicians of a sort but I am not counting them as I do not view their contributions as stemming so directly from their political experience. Along these lines, you could try John Kenneth Galbraith's book about being ambassador to India.
6. Winston Churchill is a beautiful writer and important historian but I am not sure how insightful he is about politics.
7. Denis Healey, Time of My Life.
8. I've yet to read the new book by Zhao Ziyang.
9. Willy Brandt, My Life in Politics.
My knowledge is weak in this area (here is a list of Canadian political autobiographies and I know not a single one) and Google is surprisingly unhelpful; what else am I missing? And why are there not more? Are politicians so drunk with self-deception that they cannot write insightful books?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 24, 2009 at 11:20 AM in Books, Political Science | Permalink
Comments
/Are politicians so drunk with self-deception that they cannot write insightful books?/
Why should we be so hard on politicians? I think it would be just as hard to find a good list of books on economic methodology written by economists.
Posted by: philosophking at Jun 24, 2009 11:26:16 AM
I'd recommend The Singapore Story, by Lee Kwan Yew (http://www.amazon.com/Singapore-Story-Memoirs-Lee-Kuan/dp/0130208035/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245857153&sr=8-2). Insightful and pragmatic, and more realistic than most politicians on issues of race and class and the way they can be used by rabble-rousers (in this case Chinese Communists and Malay supremacists).
Posted by: PeterW at Jun 24, 2009 11:27:50 AM
Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, though that is a collection of transcribed speeches rather than a "written" book. But it reads like a very insightful collection of essays about machine politics. Are you counting books written by authors before they became politicians, like Vaclav Havel?
Posted by: David Smith at Jun 24, 2009 11:39:14 AM
Some politicians' diaries are useful, too -- like Crossman's.
Posted by: jim at Jun 24, 2009 11:43:45 AM
Ben Franklin? Marcus Aurelius? War Diaries of Harold Macmillan?
Posted by: Jonathan Falk at Jun 24, 2009 12:01:44 PM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Clark_Diaries
Posted by: dearieme at Jun 24, 2009 12:06:05 PM
Vaclav Havel, Jan Maseryk...
Posted by: Scott at Jun 24, 2009 12:09:54 PM
S. I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action.
Hans Eicholz introduced me to this book during a long discussion about public choice theory. It has taught me a lot about symbolism in politics. A quick favorite passage:
"Perhaps some of us would like to escape the complexity of human life for the relative simplicity of such lives as dogs and cats lead. But the symbolic process, which makes possible the absurdities of human conduct, also makes possible language and therefore all the human achievements dependent upon language. The fact that more things can go wrong with motorcars than with wheelbarrows is no reason for going back to wheelbarrows. Similarly, the fact that the symbolic process makes complicated follies possible is no reason to return to a cat-and-dog existence. To understand the symbolic process is to be able to use it to advantage; not to understand it is to remain forever its victim." (5/e p.16)
Here is Hayakawa's biographical sketch: http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=H000384
Posted by: Ed Lopez at Jun 24, 2009 12:11:02 PM
I like The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
Posted by: thehova at Jun 24, 2009 12:18:27 PM
yeah, the meditations isn't really about politics.
But I think you could include Machiavelli.
Posted by: thehova at Jun 24, 2009 12:20:22 PM
The writings of Amos Sawyer are pretty amazing.
Posted by: Shane at Jun 24, 2009 12:20:41 PM
"What Is Was" by Bill Clinton would be a good one.
Posted by: Andrew at Jun 24, 2009 12:41:11 PM
I highly recomend the books written by brazillian former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Cardoso is one of the key brazillian sociologists and was president of Brazil for two terms (1994-1998 and 1999-2002), during the countrie's great modernization. Very deep, knowledgeble and insightfull:
- The Accidental President of Brazil: A Memoir
http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-President-Brazil-Memoir/dp/158648429X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245861888&sr=8-1
- A Arte Da Politica (The Arts of Politics)
http://www.livrariacultura.com.br/scripts/cultura/resenha/resenha.asp?nitem=1337512&sid=2017145111624496604154946&k5=34C3E8BE&uid=
Although similar, the two books are different (not traslations), with the one in portuguese being more deep.
Posted by: Pigou at Jun 24, 2009 12:53:33 PM
Charles deGaulle, Churchill on Marlborough is fantastic, The Federalist surely counts, Thucydides, Cicero of course, Lenin was certainly "insightful", Hoover is underrated for obvious reasons, and in the modern era Moynihan leads the pack.
Posted by: Chris at Jun 24, 2009 12:58:57 PM
Edmund Burke.
Posted by: Kevin Donoghue at Jun 24, 2009 1:42:45 PM
On the Canadian list, "Mike: The Memoirs of the Rt. Hon. Lester B. Pearson" is good reading if you wish to read about development and foreign aid in the aftermath of World War II. Otherwise, on the same list, stay far away from Mitchell Sharp's autobiography, who writes about how his beloved economics have been "defaced" by the use of mathematics since he graduated from college. This is the same man who was minister of finance under Trudeau in the 1970s.
Perhaps not a politician per se, but my favorite is George Stephanopoulos' "All Too Human" about his time in the Clinton White House.
Posted by: Jevons at Jun 24, 2009 1:43:58 PM
i'd recommend Gerald Ford's "A Time it Heal"
Posted by: jerry at Jun 24, 2009 1:59:03 PM
"The Life of George Washington" by John Marshall. Liberty Fund has Marshall's own abridgment of the five volume biography.
Posted by: TS Barnes at Jun 24, 2009 2:06:45 PM
Um ... CICERO?!
Posted by: Selfreferencing at Jun 24, 2009 2:29:46 PM
Isabelle Allende is terrific!
Posted by: farmer at Jun 24, 2009 2:38:38 PM
Henry Kissinger, On Diplomacy and Xenophon come to mind--there are a lot more, though.
Posted by: Aurelia Masterson at Jun 24, 2009 2:55:35 PM
Surely one should consider Samuel Pepys' Diary, no?
Posted by: The Epicurean Dealmaker at Jun 24, 2009 3:37:13 PM
"6. Winston Churchill is a beautiful writer and important historian but I am not sure how insightful he is about politics."
He was insightful enough to be elected to the House of Commons in his twenties and have an enormous career in politics, constantly bouncing back.
Posted by: David Sucher at Jun 24, 2009 3:52:57 PM
"6. Winston Churchill is a beautiful writer and important historian but I am not sure how insightful he is about politics."
He was insightful enough to be elected to the House of Commons in his twenties and have an enormous career in politics, constantly bouncing back.
Posted by: David Sucher at Jun 24, 2009 3:53:13 PM
I'm not sure how insightful Raymond Chafin is, but "Just Good Politics: The Life of an Appalachian Boss" provides quite a bit of insight on amazingly corrupt small town politicians and how they can interact with and affect larger political concerns.
Posted by: Zach B at Jun 24, 2009 4:09:04 PM
