Believer: My Forty Years in Politics by David Axelrod
As a journalist, Axelrod learned how to write for a mass audience, so he tells stories well from Obama's campaigns and from the first couple of years at the White House…what emerges is important: a portrait of political campaigning that is more like what we hope than what we fear, that rises above the machinations and muck…David Axelrod has written a highly readable, uplifting account of the candidate he loves—and, reassuringly, has shown politics can still be a calling, not a business.
God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican by Gerald Posner
A dogged reporter exhaustively pursues the nefarious enrichment of the Vatican, from the Borgias to Pope Francis. … Laundering Nazi booty extracted from the Jews, protecting Nazi criminals as they found refuge across the globe, providing hush money for egregious cases of pedophiliac priests—these are just some of the tentacles of Vatican bankrolling since World War II. … Posner tracks the formation of the Institute per le Opere di Religione (the Vatican bank) in 1942 through its troubled survival into the present era, as it has battled accusations of mob ties, "gay lobby" scandals, WikiLeaks disclosures, lawsuits by victims of sex abuse and the insistence by the European Union on more transparency in the bank's dealings. ... Posner bases his massive research on extensive interviews and documents found in the archives of governments and private companies across the world (the author was barred from the Vatican's own Secret Archives). A meticulous work that cracks wide open the Vatican's legendary, enabling secrecy.
It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War by Lynsey Addario
The opening scene of Lynsey Addario's memoir sucker punches you like a cold hard fist. She illuminates the daily frustrations of working within the confines of what the host culture expects from a member of her sex and her constant fight for respect from her male journalist peers and American soldiers. Always she leads with her chin, whether she's on the ground in hostile territory or discussing politics.
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