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Enzo knows he is different from other dogs: a philosopher with a nearly human soul (and an obsession with opposable thumbs), he has educated himself by watching television extensively, and by listening very closely to the words of his master, Denny Swift, an up-and-coming race car driver.

Through Denny, Enzo has gained tremendous insight into the human condition, and he sees that life, like racing, isn't simply about going fast. Using the techniques needed on the race track, one can successfully navigate all of life's ordeals.

On the eve of his death, Enzo takes stock of his life, recalling all that he and his family have been through: the sacrifices Denny has made to succeed professionally; the unexpected loss of Eve, Denny's wife; the three-year battle over their daughter, Zoë, whose maternal grandparents pulled every string to gain custody. In the end, despite what he sees as his own limitations, Enzo comes through heroically to preserve the Swift family, holding in his heart the dream that Denny will become a racing champion with Zoë at his side. Having learned what it takes to be a compassionate and successful person, the wise canine can barely wait until his next lifetime, when he is sure he will return as a man.

A heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope, The Art of Racing in the Rain is a beautifully crafted and captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life . . . as only a dog could tell it.

“Fascists,” “Brownshirts,” “jackbooted stormtroopers”—such are the insults typically hurled at conservatives by their liberal opponents. Calling someone a fascist is the fastest way to shut them up, defining their views as beyond the political pale. But who are the real fascists in our midst?

Liberal Fascism offers a startling new perspective on the theories and practices that define fascist politics. Replacing conveniently manufactured myths with surprising and enlightening research, Jonah Goldberg reminds us that the original fascists were really on the left, and that liberals from Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Hillary Clinton have advocated policies and principles remarkably similar to those of Hitler's National Socialism and Mussolini's Fascism.

Contrary to what most people think, the Nazis were ardent socialists (hence the term “National socialism”). They believed in free health care and guaranteed jobs. They confiscated inherited wealth and spent vast sums on public education. They purged the church from public policy, promoted a new form of pagan spirituality, and inserted the authority of the state into every nook and cranny of daily life. The Nazis declared war on smoking, supported abortion, euthanasia, and gun control. They loathed the free market, provided generous pensions for the elderly, and maintained a strict racial quota system in their universities—where campus speech codes were all the rage. The Nazis led the world in organic farming and alternative medicine. Hitler was a strict vegetarian, and Himmler was an animal rights activist.

Do these striking parallels mean that today’s liberals are genocidal maniacs, intent on conquering the world and imposing a new racial order? Not at all. Yet it is hard to deny that modern progressivism and classical fascism shared the same intellectual roots. We often forget, for example, that Mussolini and Hitler had many admirers in the United States. W.E.B. Du Bois was inspired by Hitler's Germany, and Irving Berlin praised Mussolini in song. Many fascist tenets were espoused by American progressives like John Dewey and Woodrow Wilson, and FDR incorporated fascist policies in the New Deal.

Fascism was an international movement that appeared in different forms in different countries, depending on the vagaries of national culture and temperament. In Germany, fascism appeared as genocidal racist nationalism. In America, it took a “friendlier,” more liberal form. The modern heirs of this “friendly fascist” tradition include the New York Times, the Democratic Party, the Ivy League professoriate, and the liberals of Hollywood. The quintessential Liberal Fascist isn't an SS storm trooper; it is a female grade school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore.

These assertions may sound strange to modern ears, but that is because we have forgotten what fascism is. In this angry, funny, smart, contentious book, Jonah Goldberg turns our preconceptions inside out and shows us the true meaning of Liberal Fascism.

Barack Obama’s run for president touched something profound in America, awakening a civic engagement, pride, and passion that many had perhaps given up on. In the course of his campaign, Obama inspired millions of Americans - young and old, rich and poor, rural and urban, and from every racial and ethnic background.

These images, by the only photographer who covered his entire campaign from start to finish, pay heed not only to the man who would be President, but also the people who came to see him, hear him, and vote for him. Yes We Can is a rich portrait of Obama’s historic campaign — a campaign that is as much about Americans and their hopes and dreams as it is about the man that gave them voice.

A Look Inside Yes We Can: Barack Obama's History-Making Presidential Campaign with Photographer Scout Tufankjian

The first time I photographed Barack Obama, I really didn’t want to go. I knew who he was and was interested in him, but I had plans for that weekend — plans that did not involve driving five hours to New Hampshire to photograph what I assumed would be a deadly dull event. But when Kelly Price, my editor at Polaris Images, told me the German newsmagazine Stern would pay me to make that five hour drive, I canceled my plans, climbed into my Camry, and drove up to Portsmouth. It was probably the best decision I ever made. To some extent, my predictions had been accurate. The book signing was a photographer’s nightmare. The building was huge, dark, cavernous, and impossible to find. I showed up late and in a panic. Looking around, I was convinced that there was no way I was going to be able to make a decent picture in that room. When Obama walked into the room, my aesthetic issues with the room became immediately irrelevant. The crowd was transfixed. Hell, some of the other news photographers were transfixed. And this was New Hampshire! New Hampshire photographers are not impressed by politicians. Ever. Immediately after the event was over, even before filing my pictures, I called Kelly and told her that I was going to cover the Obama presidential campaign. I did not offer her a choice. The fact that he wasn’t technically running yet was immaterial. I knew that this was going to be important and I wanted to be there. Despite my complete lack of “on-the-bus” experience, the national editor at Newsweek took a huge risk and assigned me to cover Barack Obama’s announcement tour. For the first two days of the campaign I would be a part of the traveling press corps. I would have to learn fast. And I did. For the next twenty-three months, I followed Obama from event to event, only heading home for quick breaks to meet with editors and to remind my boyfriend what I looked like. I followed him into coffee shops and diners, auto manufacturing plants and bowling alleys. I followed him in a rental car and I flew in his charter jet. I photographed Obama wooing potential voters in huge, expensive houses and on poverty-stricken Indian reservations. I covered small events, where I was the only photographer present, and I covered massive rallies with more than 75,000 people in cities like Denver and Berlin. Even as the campaign stretched from one year to two, and as I marked my third winter photographing the Senator, I have not lost interest in this campaign and the people that have supported it. Whether the audience included a skeptical old farmer from Tama, Iowa, who was surprised to slowly realize that he had something in common with this young black politician from Hawaii or an eight-year-old boy from LA who couldn’t stop saying “He is going to be President! He looks like me and he is going to be President!” the people’s reaction to the Senator and his campaign have fueled my work. The looks on their faces, the questions on their lips, and the ways that they hang on his every word, are a constant reminder of how lucky I have been to document this moment in history. -Scout Tufankjian The Journey of an American Icon: Excerpts from Yes We Can

Raised in a wealthy, influential, Islamic African family, Midnight enjoys a life of comfort, confidence, and protection. Midnight's father provides him with a veil of privilege and deep, devoted love, but he never hides the truth about the fierce challenges of the world outside of his estate. So when Midnight's father's empire is attacked, he sends Midnight with his mother to the United States.

In the streets of Brooklyn, a young Midnight uses his Islamic mind-set and African intelligence to protect the ones he loves, build a business, reclaim his wealth and status, and remain true to his beliefs.

Midnight, a handsome and passionate young man, attracts many women. How he interacts and deals with them is a unique adventure. This is a highly sensual and tremendous love story about what a man is willing to risk and give to the women he loves most. Midnight will remain in your mind and beat in your heart for a lifetime.

Mystery is an aspiring Toronto magician who charges $2,250 for a weekend pickup workshop. He is not much to look at: a cross between a vampire and a computer geek. But by using high-powered marketing techniques he's turned seduction into an effortless craft--even inventing his own vocabulary. His technique sounds like a car salesman's tip sheet: his main rule is FMAC--find, meet, attract, close. He employs the "three-second rule"--always approach a woman within three seconds of first seeing her in order to avoid getting shy. Other tricks: Intrigue a beautiful woman by pretending to be unaffected by her charm; also, never hit on a woman right away. Start with a disarming, innocent remark, like "Do you think magic spells work?" or "Oh my god, did you see those two girls fighting outside?" And finally, the most important characteristic of the pickup artist--smile.

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What Friedman means by "flat" is "connected": the lowering of trade and political barriers and the exponential technical advances of the digital revolution that have made it possible to do business, or almost anything else, instantaneously with billions of other people across the planet. This in itself should not be news to anyone. But the news that Friedman has to deliver is that just when we stopped paying attention to these developments--when the dot-com bust turned interest away from the business and technology pages and when 9/11 and the Iraq War turned all eyes toward the Middle East--is when they actually began to accelerate. Globalization 3.0, as he calls it, is driven not by major corporations or giant trade organizations like the World Bank, but by individuals: desktop freelancers and innovative startups all over the world (but especially in India and China) who can compete--and win--not just for low-wage manufacturing and information labor but, increasingly, for the highest-end research and design work as well. (He doesn't forget the "mutant supply chains" like Al-Qaeda that let the small act big in more destructive ways.)

Friedman has embraced this flat world in his own work, continuing to report on his story after his book's release and releasing an unprecedented hardcover update of the book a year later with 100 pages of revised and expanded material. What's changed in a year? Some of the sections that opened eyes in the first edition--on China and India, for example, and the global supply chain--are largely unaltered. Instead, Friedman has more to say about what he now calls "uploading," the direct-from-the-bottom creation of culture, knowledge, and innovation through blogging, podcasts, and open-source software. And in response to the pleas of many of his readers about how to survive the new flat world, he makes specific recommendations about the technical and creative training he thinks will be required to compete in the "New Middle" class. As before, Friedman tells his story with the catchy slogans and globe-hopping anecdotes that readers of his earlier books and his New York Times columns know well, and he holds to a stern sort of optimism. He wants to tell you how exciting this new world is, but he also wants you to know you're going to be trampled if you don't keep up with it. A year later, one can sense his rising impatience that our popular culture, and our political leaders, are not helping us keep pace. --Tom Nissley

Where Were You When the World Went Flat?

Thomas L. Friedman's reporter's curiosity and his ability to recognize the patterns behind the most complex global developments have made him one of the most entertaining and authoritative sources for information about the wider world we live in, both as the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times and as the author of landmark books like From Beirut to Jerusalem and The Lexus and the Olive Tree. They also make him an endlessly fascinating conversation partner, and we've now had the chance to talk to him about The World Is Flat twice. Read our original interview with him following the publication of the first edition of The World Is Flat to learn why there's almost no one from Washington, D.C., listed in the index of a book about the global economy, and what his one-plank platform for president would be. (Hint: his bumper stickers would say, "Can You Hear Me Now?")

And now you can listen to our second interview, in which he talks about the updates he's made in "The World Is Flat 2.0," including his response to parents who said to him, "Great, Mr. Friedman, I'm glad you told us the world is flat. Now what do I tell my kids?"

The Essential Tom Friedman

From Beirut to Jerusalem

The Lexus and the Olive Tree

Longitudes and Attitudes

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