A few New River Voice contributors made suggestions for some recent books that would make for great holiday gifts.

The Fall of the House of Bush: How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America’s Future, meticulously referenced by journalist Craig Unger. The work highlights what the administration knew and when they knew it in the looming Iraq nightmare. Unger exposes the fable of Bush’s supposedly being “saved” at the right hand of Rev. Billy Graham. And he provides deep background on the adventures and misadventures of the zealot hegemons trying to take over the world, privatize resources across the globe, and tear down the walls between church and state from the White House and right-wing think tanks.

Equally provocative is Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Klein details how followers of an ideological band of Chicago School of Economics privateers have preyed upon the struggles and suffering of the developing world and exploited them, snapped up their public resources, and claimed them as their own, or the possessions of major corporations.

Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone gives a vivid description of the first year after the fall of Saddam Hussein when the United States was the “legal” occupying power. Rajiv Chandrasekaran tells of the phenomenal ineptitude and cronyism that ruled the Green Zone.

Jeffrey Toobin’s The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court proves interesting because few books about the antics of current Supreme Courts ever go to print. Most are retrospectives printed well after many members of the court have retired or died.

When New River Voice Editor Tim Jackson first stepped foot on the University of Alabama campus to start work toward a journalism degree, he met Jan Crawford, who was Editor of the campus newspaper. Jan Crawford Greenburg has been covering the Supreme Court for several years and also has a book. Like The Nine, Supreme Conflict explores the secrets of the highest court in the land.

Winkie by Clifford Case is a too-twisted examination of that pesky Islamo-facist-terrorist-threat thing in our country, as told by—here it comes—a teddy bear.

And sticking with twisted is the always-twisted persona of Stephen Colbert, who writes I Am America (And So Can You) as the arrogant, conservative know-it-all that he plays on TV.