The Art Of The Political Putdown

The Art of the Political Putdown is a book of over 300 witty verbal jabs and ripostes from politicians around the world, all of whom share a common sharp tongue. Liberal or conservative, humor can be a powerful weapon in any politician's arsenal, and political journalists Chris Lamb and Will Moredock have seen their fair share of quips, witty remarks, and sarcastic pleasantries. In mining the past few thousand years of political history, they've unearthed a treasure trove of humorous exchanges, from ancient Rome to modern day, to compile this collection of hilarious comebacks and putdowns.• Features 11 brief essays analyzing the use of humor and wit in various political contexts • Even-handed, intelligent, and lighthearted political humor that gives readers from the Left and the Right something to laugh about • Contains 20 political cartoon-style illustrations The Art of the Political Putdown is filled with famous and lesser-known politicians at their sassiest, along with short essays and illustrations. This is a comprehensive, nonpartisan collection of witticisms, scathing burns, and mic-drop-worthy insults throughout history. • A rare political humor book with something for everyone, and a welcome reminder that politics can also be a source of laughter • Perfect for politics and history buffs and for anyone who appreciates smart humor and top-notch wit • Great for those who loved Whose Boat Is This Boat?: Comments That Don't Help in the Aftermath of a Hurricane by the Staff of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents by Pete Souza, and The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill by James C. Humes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Audie Award Finalist An Amazon best business and leadership book of 2023 Win Every Argument shows how anyone can communicate with confidence, rise above the tit for tats on social media, and triumph in a successful and productive debate in the real world. MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan isn’t one to avoid arguments. He relishes them as the lifeblood of democracy and the only surefire way to establish the truth. Arguments help us solve problems, uncover new ideas we might not have considered, and nudge our disagreements toward mutual understanding. A good argument, made in good faith, has intrinsic value—and can also simply be fun. Arguments are everywhere—and especially given the fierce debates we’re all embroiled in today, everyone wants to win. In this riveting guide to the art of argument and rhetoric, Hasan shows you how. As a journalist, anchor, and interviewer who has clashed with politicians, generals, spy chiefs, and celebrities from across the world, Hasan reveals his tricks of the trade for the first time. Whether you are making a presentation at work or debating current political issues with a friend, Mehdi Hasan will teach you how to sharpen your speaking skills to make the winning case.

I never forget a face … but in your case I'll make an exception How many times have you found yourself struck dumb with anger, unable to think of the perfect repost only to come up with something wonderful later when your adversary has gone and any retort seems like sour grapes? The French call it ‘L’espirit de l’escalier’, meaning the moment at the bottom of the stairs when the rage-induced paralysis clears and suddenly you know exactly what you should have said, but alas, the right moment has passed. Avoid being caught out again with ‘The Art of the Put-Down’, a collection of the world’s best put downs from history’s greatest wits: including Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Oscar Wilde, Groucho Marx, Mae West and Dorothy Parker. They just don’t make insults like they used to, so plunder the past for great comebacks and watch your office nemesis wither with shame when you leave them lost for words.

Robert S. Strauss was for many decades the quintessential Democratic power broker. Born to a poor Jewish family in West Texas, he founded the law firm that became Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, and -- while forever changing the nature of the Washington law firm -- worked as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, special trade representative, ambassador to the Soviet Union and then Russia, and an advisor to presidents. As former first lady Barbara Bush wrote of Strauss in her memoir: "He is absolutely the most amazing politician. He is everybody's friend and, if he chooses, could sell you the paper off your own wall." But it isn't the positions Strauss held that make his story fascinating; it is what he represented about the culture of Washington in his day. He was a master of the art of knowing everyone who mattered and getting things done. Based on exclusive access to Strauss, The Whole Damn Deal brings to life a vanished epoch of working behind the scenes, political deal making, and successful bipartisanship in Washington.

The years before World War I were a time of social and political ferment in Europe, which profoundly affected the art world. A major center of this creative tumult was Paris, where many avant-garde artists sought to transform modern art through their engagement with radical politics. In this provocative study of art and anarchism in prewar France, Patricia Leighten argues that anarchist aesthetics and a related politics of form played crucial roles in the development of modern art, only to be suppressed by war fever and then forgotten. Leighten examines the circle of artists—Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, František Kupka, Maurice de Vlaminck, Kees Van Dongen, and others—for whom anarchist politics drove the idea of avant-garde art, exploring how their aesthetic choices negotiated the myriad artistic languages operating in the decade before World War I. Whether they worked on large-scale salon paintings, political cartoons, or avant-garde abstractions, these artists, she shows, were preoccupied with social criticism. Each sought an appropriate subject, medium, style, and audience based on different conceptions of how art influences society—and their choices constantly shifted as they responded to the dilemmas posed by contradictory anarchist ideas. According to anarchist theorists, art should expose the follies and iniquities of the present to the masses, but it should also be the untrammeled expression of the emancipated individual and open a path to a new social order. Revealing how these ideas generated some of modernism’s most telling contradictions among the prewar Parisian avant-garde, The Liberation of Painting restores revolutionary activism to the broader history of modern art.

Arts and Politics of the Situationist International contextualizes the SI within a comprehensive aesthetic and theoretical framework that integrates its concepts and practical activities with previous critical thinkers, political activists, artists, and poets. The SI belongs to a history of radical gestures and cultural practices concerned with re-imagining everyday life and overcoming alienation. This book regards the SI as a critical interdisciplinary endeavor in the history of consciousness, particularly as a moment in an ongoing western-European trajectory of aesthetic negation dating back to the early nineteenth century. The chapters search for origins of the SI in French Symbolist poetry, Dada and Surrealism, Hegelian-Marxism, and Lefebvrian social theory in an effort to provide a clearly-defined ‘something’ out of which the SI developed as an increasingly radical collective of artists, writers, and theorists.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist's "astonishing" and "enthralling" New York Times bestseller and Notable Book about how the Founders' belief in natural rights created a great American political tradition (Booklist) -- "easily one of the best books on American Conservatism ever written" (Jonah Goldberg). For more than four decades, George F. Will has attempted to discern the principles of the Western political tradition and apply them to America's civic life. Today, the stakes could hardly be higher. Vital questions about the nature of man, of rights, of equality, of majority rule are bubbling just beneath the surface of daily events in America. The Founders' vision, articulated first in the Declaration of Independence and carried out in the Constitution, gave the new republic a framework for government unique in world history. Their beliefs in natural rights, limited government, religious freedom, and in human virtue and dignity ushered in two centuries of American prosperity. Now, as Will shows, conservatism is under threat -- both from progressives and elements inside the Republican Party. America has become an administrative state, while destructive trends have overtaken family life and higher education. Semi-autonomous executive agencies wield essentially unaccountable power. Congress has failed in its duty to exercise its legislative powers. And the executive branch has slipped the Constitution's leash. In the intellectual battle between the vision of Founding Fathers like James Madison, who advanced the notion of natural rights that pre-exist government, and the progressivism advanced by Woodrow Wilson, the Founders have been losing. It's time to reverse America's political fortunes. Expansive, intellectually thrilling, and written with the erudite wit that has made Will beloved by millions of readers, The Conservative Sensibility is an extraordinary new book from one of America's most celebrated political writers.