The first book-length critical assessment of Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, Thanks But No Thanks: The Voter’s Guide to Sarah Palin by Sue Katz, is now the #1 bestseller in the Amazon Kindle store, just days after its launch.

Signed copies of the paperback edition of Thanks But No Thanks: The Voter’s Guide to Sarah Palin are being offered at a 20% discount on Amazon, and the book is also available in other electronic reading formats including the iPhone and the Blackberry through Mobipocket. Just days after its launch the new Palin book is one of the topselling current affairs titles at Amazon, and will be available in better bookstores nationally next week.

Already emerging as one of the important political books of the general election season, Sue Katz’ book has received praise from several distinguished authors, including bestsellers Harriet Lerner and Susie Bright:

‘Sue Katz’s meticulously researched book cuts through the media fog and political doublespeak, bringing the facts about Sarah Palin into sharp resolve.’ –Harriet Lerner, author of The Dance of Anger

‘Sue Katz is just the she-bear to wrestle Sarah Palin’s image back down to earth. Forget the myth about the GOP’s latest superstar–Katz will show the real motivations behind Palin and where she comes from.’ –Susie Bright

Who is Sarah Palin and what does she believe in? People around the country — and indeed the world — had more questions than answers when John McCain announced her selection as his running mate on August 29, 2008. Has any national political candidate ever emerged on the American political scene with less scrutiny than Alaska Governor Sarah Palin received prior to her selection?

Whether you believe Palin was nominated because of years of hard work in Alaska, as a result of a reckless decision by her “maverick” running mate, or because of the influence of the religious right, you probably want to know more about this remarkable political phenom.

Hours after John McCain shocked the nation by selecting Palin as his surprise Republican running mate, journalists, activists, and ordinary concerned citizens began to research and write about Palin’s biography, public statements, and political background. The flood of information and commentary has been torrential.

For those who would like some help sorting through all the hype about Sarah Palin, Sue Katz’s Thanks But No Thanks: The Voter’s Guide to Sarah Palin is the perfect solution. Katz distills the overwhelming glut of information about Palin into a highly readable and fast-paced voter’s guide about the woman who may be elected vice-president in 2008 and who could well serve as president one day. From Palin’s days in Wasilla to her leap into Republican super-stardom, Katz helps you to better understand this intriguing candidate.

While remaining true to her own strong point of view, Sue Katz looks beyond the lipstick and the sound bites. Thanks But No Thanks synthesizes information and commentary from a wide range of sources so that readers of any political persuasion will find help in educating themselves about just who Sarah Palin is and what her election might mean for the country and the world.

This book is for voters who want to go beyond the usual campaign “puff piece” biographies and learn about Palin’s known views on everything from community organizers to women’s issues to the relationship of faith and politics. Thanks But No Thanks provides the reader with access to interesting voices from around America and the world, and they all have something insightful to say about Sarah Palin.

In addition, the publisher has included several valuable appendices that will serve as handy references for voters and debate-watchers: a year-by-year chronology of key events in Palin’s life, a detailed history of Palin’s performance in past elections, and the full text of her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.

About the Author

Author and teacher Sue Katz has published journalism and political commentary for many years and is the creator of the popular blog, Sue Katz: Consenting Adult. Her passport shows more wear than Palin’s–she has lived and worked on three continents, teaching martial arts in her institutes in Israel, promoting global volunteerism while living in Europe, and writing, editing and teaching (from salsa to senior fitness) in the United States. A rebel with a newfound interest in electoral politics, Sue continues her lifelong commitment to social justice activism from her home outside Boston. She attended Boston University as an undergraduate and earned her master’s degree from Tel Aviv University. Her second book, an edgy and unabashed look at the private behavior of boomers, is due in 2009.

About the Cover

The unique collage portrait of Sarah Palin was created expressly for the Thanks But No Thanks cover by artist Sandy Oppenheimer. Her well-deserved international reputation reflects this distinctive style, and her creations are as affordable as they are exceptional. Contact Sandy at sandyoppenheimer@hotmail.com or view her work at http://sandyoppenheimerportraits.blogspot.com.

One measure of the usefulness of any book lies in its power to provoke a reader to mindfulness of alarming conditions in one’s community, one’s universe, or one’s own spirit. As I read and pondered Stephen Mansfield’s The Faith of Barack Obama, I became increasingly mindful of certain alarming paradoxes in American political life in 2008:

* How bizarre it is that personal character is usually kept off the table in political discourse while a candidate’s religion is now considered fair game. When a scandal occurs, as it so often does nowadays with Democrats, Republicans, and preachers, it is always a scandal of character, not of one’s stated religion.

* The central organizing principle that underlies the uses of religion and spirituality in American political life is bold hypocrisy and outright deceit. This has been true for decades, or perhaps as long as religion has been so used, but it seems especially clear today.

* Despite abundant evidence – not least in Obama’s presence itself – that we live in a post-homogeneous America, our politics are relentlessly constrained by homogenizing talking heads who are always willing to stoop low to achieve the populist posture of a “gotcha” moment in which they use association or innuendo to say, of Obama or anyone else, “See, he’s not like us!”

The aforementioned condition of rampant hypocrisy is not limited to one political party or one religious denomination. It is widespread. It is not my intention to cast stones here, but simply to state what should be obvious.

Religious self-presentation has become a routine element of political campaigns, often with no more rigor than might be involved in a candidate’s assertion, for instance, that she had “always been a Yankees fan.” No wonder, then, how often such calculations backfire with the drawing back of the curtains and the attendant protestations that we should “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

I recall a long period in my own adult life when I might have argued that Stephen Mansfield’s inquiry into the spiritual journey of Barack Obama, however elegant in its composition and thorough in its supporting research, was insignificant almost by definition. Like millions of others who were inspired by John F. Kennedy’s public persona, I grew up believing that religion should have no role in politics. Even if America’s mid-century notions of pluralism and tolerance operated within the boundaries of a seemingly homogeneous culture, they appealed both to our basic sense of decency and to our fuzzy notions of a living constitution that worked.

Those notions have come under relentless attack for decades, so that we are less likely to recoil reflexively from the very idea of a book such as Mansfield’s, as I and many others once did at titles such as Senator Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative or William F. Buckley’s God and Man at Yale.

I wonder if Mansfield’s book would have the same bookshelf appeal that it has today if it had been published under the title The Character of Barack Obama. That seems a bland alternative. But when I finished reading Mansfield’s book and put it down, what impressed me most was that I felt that I had just read a book of considerable rigor and thoughtfulness about Obama’s character and its origins, rather than anything so specific as a book about his religious faith.

I cannot fault Obama for fronting his “faith” as he has done, or Mansfield for writing about it. Without falling into a potentially dull recitation of second-hand news, Mansfield’s narrative manages to do justice to the extremely damaging – and, of course, deceitful — smear campaigns of guilt-by-innuendo and guilt-by-association that have tarred Obama as a Muslim extremist and, by selective use of the quotations of former Pastor Jeremiah Wright, as a bitter and unpatriotic black man. Under such stress, I don’t know if there is any other way for Obama to fight back, and I appreciate Mansfield’s chronicle.

But I admit that I will be somewhat more interested, if Obama is elected (as I hope that he will be), in an updated chronicle of the testing of his faith during his tenure as president. Whatever the ability of any campaigner to dance righteously across the religious dance floor of contemporary presidential politics, it is when a candidate becomes president that he (or, in the event of two very plausible circumstances, she) embarks upon a season of relentless preaching from America’s most powerful pulpit.

Should such a book become appropriate, I hope that Stephen Mansfield will write it.

Couple of cool Kindle-related web events to share with visitors to my web pages and my AmazonConnect blog.

First, Len Edgerly is breaking some new ground in information and entertainment for current and future Kindlers with a terrific weekly podcast called The Kindle Chronicles. I was honored to be Len’s guest on a recent podcast, and I recommend the “program” as a regular weekly diversion. Check it out — you can even listen to it on your Kindle!

Second….

One of my favorite Kindle bloggers and a very thoughtful publishing industry expert on all things Kindle, Joe Wikert, will be conducting a free one-hour Webinar (no glossary here, just put on your thinking cap and sound it out, or type it into your Kindle for a Wikipedia search) called “Leveraging the Kindle — How to maximize the Kindle’s benefits to your readers and your business” at 2 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, August 21. If you have any doubt about what Joe brings to the table, just check out the widget-links to two of his blogs on A Kindle Home Page and I am sure you will agree he is one of the more intelligent, articulate, and knowledgeable people covering this terrain of new technologies in reading and publishing. See you at the Webinar!

There are 2 things — where’s the more? It’s coming, but I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself. So please check back here Monday for some new content about the coming alliance between the Amazon Kindle Store and Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch!

Update: it’s Monday morning…..

The Coming Kindle-iPod-iPhone Alliance, or Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

After a decade of interesting but ultimately failed efforts by various electronics manufacturers to hit the sweet spot of potential for an electronic book reader, Amazon launched the Kindle reader in November 2007. Although the Kindle quickly attracted critics and naysayers who predicted failure for the device, they failed to understand either Amazon’s passionate commitment to the Kindle concept or how well the company is positioned to achieve dazzling success. Amazon’s relationships with readers, early adopters, authors, and publishers provide the company with tremendous advantages over any competitor that might consider bringing an e-book reader to market, and Amazon has not squandered its opportunity. The device sold out about five hours after launch, sold over 200,000 units in its first six months (based on figures released by its Taiwan-based display-screen manufacturer), and is unlikely to look back after it reaches the one-million mark in Kindle units in circulation sometime early in 2009.

With everyone who can pedal a bicycle or afford a half-gallon of gas taking off for somewhere, I thought it might be a good time for a post highlighting some of the travel tips contained in my e-book How to Use the Amazon Kindle for Email & Over 100 Pages of Other Cool Tips (The Complete User’s Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle):

Using the Kindle to Translate Foreign or Technical Words and Phrases

Much has been made of the fact that the Kindle, as of this writing, is not yet available outside the United States, and that some of its appealing features – all of those that depend on a wireless connection – are useless when a Kindle owner lives or is traveling outside the United States or, for that matter, in a Sprint wireless dead zone. However, there are a surprising number of ways in which a Kindle can come in handy when you are on the road, and here is another. This one is helpful if you are traveling in a land where you do not speak the native language.

Before your trip to France, for instance, buy a Kindle edition of a good French-English/English-French dictionary and, of course, download it to your Kindle. Then, all you have to do is click on the “SEARCH” key on the bottom row of your Kindle keyboard, type any word or phrase into the input field, and use the scroll-wheel to select “Go.” Presto, your Kindle will search its onboard content for the word or phrase. By selecting and clicking on an iteration of the word or phrase from your bilingual dictionary, you should be looking at the translation that you need in a few seconds. It won’t be lightning fast, but it should be serviceable.

By using the same principle and the appropriate reference material, of course, the Kindle can also be used to render professional and technical language and terms. As with any search function, your ability to make effective use of the Kindle’s translation powers is bound to improve with use and familiarity.

Using the Kindle as a Travel Guide

Whether you are exploring the wonders of your own city or state or traveling around the world, the Kindle can help you get more out of a travel guide than you ever thought possible. The first step, of course, is to purchase and download the travel guides and reference materials that you want for your trip before you leave.

Once this content is “on board” your Kindle, you can search and retrieve material from it, without any wireless or other connection, simply by using the Kindle’s powerful local search feature. Technology writer and blogger Mike Elgan wrote recently of using Kindle search to learn everything he needed to know in order to maximize his appreciation and understanding of ancient Greek ruins such as the Temple of Poseidon while en route to the sites.

Once you’ve got good reference material on your Kindle, all you have to do is click on the “SEARCH” key on the bottom row of your Kindle keyboard, type any word or phrase into the input field, and use the scroll-wheel to select “Go.” Presto, your Kindle will search its onboard content for the word or phrase. By selecting and clicking on a reference from your travel material, you can be reading up on any topic within in a moment or two.

Making the Most of Your Kindle Connections Overseas or in a Sprint Dead Zone

There are myriad reasons why you’ll want to take your Kindle on your next trip to a foreign land. Before you go, you’ll be able to download many of the books that you might otherwise have to lug with you. And while it is true that you probably won’t be able to do any more direct wireless downloading during your trip, that need not keep you from making other extensive uses of your Kindle.

To make the most of your Kindle overseas, bring your Kindle’s USB cable, your laptop, and – if you have one – a Blackberry or other smartphone. In each place where you hang your hat, you will want to find the best internet connection available – for these purposes, “best” means fast, accessible, and cheap or free. Just because a city that you are visiting has a Starbucks or some other well-known Internet café does not mean that’s your best source of Internet access. Blogger Mike Elgan has written of finding that Starbucks in Greece was charging $660 per month for Internet access, only to discover that “right next door is a better coffee joint where a month of Wi-Fi costs you zero.” If you are staying somewhere more than a day or two, a little research to find the “best” connection available should be well worth the time. To find Internet coverage while you are traveling inside or outside the U.S., www.jiwire.com is a helpful resource. To check on Kindle wireless coverage areas, just navigate to http://www.showmycoverage.com/IMPACT.jsp and enter zip codes or other information to see mapping of Sprint wireless coverage areas anywhere in the United States.

With a daily downloading blast to your computer followed by a USB transfer to your Kindle, you will easily be able to use your Kindle to keep up with books, newspaper and magazine subscriptions, blogs and other content and read them offline at your leisure during your trip. Just log in to your Amazon account and have your content sent to your computer via the Internet. If you need to receive documents, manuscripts, memoranda, or PDF files while you are abroad, just have them sent to your you@free.kindle.com email address and you can transfer them to your Kindle each morning with ease.

In a pinch, if you have a smartphone data plan like the AT&T Unlimited Domestic and International Data Plan, you might even be able to tether your laptop to a Blackberry or other device. The economics of such a solution are compelling; the only problem is that tethering appears to be outlawed under such a plan.

Checking Sprint Wireless Coverage for the Kindle

Just navigate to http://www.showmycoverage.com/IMPACT.jsp and enter zip codes or other information to see mapping of Sprint wireless coverage areas anywhere in the United States. To find Internet coverage while you are traveling inside or outside the U.S., www.jiwire.com is a helpful resource.

The Kindle and GPS – Intriguing but Frustrating

Okay, let’s not get carried away here. The idea that the Kindle comes with any built-in GPS functionality is such a cool notion that it is easy to overstate what you can do with it. My general warning is that if you are going to depend upon your Kindle’s GPS to help you navigate while mobile, there is a fair chance you will end up lost. The main reason for this is that the device relies on Google Maps for its GPS-like services, and Google Maps is not visually optimized for the Kindle. If you’ve ever switched to a larger font while reading content on the Kindle, there is a good chance that you will be frustrated trying to read street names on the Kindle’s representation of a Google street map. I’ve also found that Google Maps often does not “read” the address information that the Kindle transmits regarding its location, so that if, for instance, I am using the Alt-3 command to find a nearby restaurant, I have to delete the data that my Kindle has transmitted to Google Maps and replace it with a street address, zip code, or both.

That being said, these features represent some tentative baby steps in a pretty cool direction — not to mix metaphors. Once you are in the Kindle’s Web Browser, clicking on Alt-1 will provide a Google Maps representation of your current location. Alt-2 will help you find nearby gas stations, and Alt-3 nearby restaurants. I am anticipating more fun, and a better viewing experience, with Kindle 2.0 or 3.0.

Copyright © 2008, Stephen Windwalker and Harvard Perspectives Press.