This week, we'll be covering the Democratic National presidential nominating convention, better known as the DNC. The convention starts today until Thursday, the 20th and is being held at the Wisconsin Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Next week we'll be covering the Republican National Convention, so there will be something for every side of the political spectrum.

Every day of the convention has a different theme. Today's theme is We The People: "This country is confronting a series of monumental challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic continues its rampage, tens of millions of people are out of work, and America is confronting the racial injustice that has marginalized too  many people. Throughout our history, when we stand united, we can overcome anything."

Many of the people you will hear speaking at the DNC this week have written thought provoking books. As we head straight into election season, we'll all be looking to learn more about the people who our guiding our government.

Books by Monday's Speakers:

Bernie Sanders

Where We Go from Here

In Where We Go from Here, New York Times bestselling author Bernie Sanders reveals the blueprint for his 2020 presidential run by chronicling the day-by-day struggles that he and his progressive colleagues have waged over the last two years in the fight against Donald Trump's reactionary agenda and for a government that works for all, not just wealthy campaign contributors.

At home, Sanders has helped lead the fight for Medicare for all, fought for workers desperate for higher wages, and supported immigrants in the DACA program and children affected by gun violence. He has stood with the people of Puerto Rico devastated by Hurricane Maria, as well as veterans, teachers, the incarcerated, the persecuted, and all those who are too often ignored by Washington. Abroad, his voice has been clear that we need a foreign policy that strives for peace--not war--and international cooperation to address the crisis of climate change.

The good news is we're making progress. People all across America are standing up to the most dishonest and reactionary president in our history. They're taking on establishment politicians who've turned a blind eye to the concerns of everyday citizens. They're fighting back against the oligarchs of Wall Street, who would happily see our children do worse than their parents so long as the Dow does better. And the general public continually demonstrates that we are more united than the media would allow us to believe, and what we agree on are largely progressive ideals.

Maintaining a vibrant democracy has never been easy, and in these dangerous and unprecedented times, it has been more difficult than ever. Bernie Sanders shows, however, that we can repair the damage Trump has done--and create a nation based on the principles of economic, social, racial, and environmental justice.

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Andrew Cuomo

The Contender

A no-holds-barred biography of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Andrew Cuomo is the protagonist of an ongoing political saga that reads like a novel. In many ways, his rise, fall, and rise again is an iconic story: a young American politician of vaunting ambition, aiming for nothing less than the presidency. Building on his father's political success, a first run for governor in 2002 led to a stinging defeat, and a painful, public divorce from Kerry Kennedy, scion of another political dynasty, Cuomo had to come back from seeming political death and reinvent himself.He did so, brilliantly, by becoming New York's attorney general, and compiling a record that focused on public corruption. In winning the governorship in 2010, he promised to clean up America's most corrupt legislature. He is blunt and combative, the antithesis of the glad-handing, blow-dried senator or governor who tries to please one and all. He's also proven he can make his legislature work, alternately charming and arm-twisting his colleagues with a talent for political strategy reminiscent of President Lyndon Johnson. Political pundits tend to agree that for Cuomo, a run for the White House is not a question of whether, but when.

John Kasich

It's Up to Us

We all want the same things. We want to live a life of purpose and meaning. We want to leave a legacy for our children and grandchildren. We want to leave the world a better place. And yet we spend so much time wringing our hands over what's wrong and not nearly enough time fixing those things within our control.

John Kasich has walked the corridors of power both in the politics, as a former leader of Congress, governor of Ohio, presidential candidate, and in the private sector, as an in-demand public speaker, best-selling author and a strategic advisor to businesses and large non-profits. Yet he's seen that the most powerful movements have started from the bottom up. Rather than waiting on Washington, the solutions happen once we become leaders in our own lives and communities. The strength and resilience of our nation lies in each of us. That's what this book is about.

In It's Up to Us, Kasich shares the ten little ways we each can bring about big change. Taken together, they chart a path for each to follow as we look to live a life bigger than ourselves. Taken one-by-one, they can help to lift us from a place of outrage or complacency or helplessness and move us closer to our shared American dream.

Doug Jones

Bending Toward Justice

Bending Toward Justice chronicles the decades-long fight to avenge the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, culminating in Doug Jones' prosecution of the last living bombers. On September 15, 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL was bombed, killing four young girls. It was clear that white supremacists were responsible. The community activists who gathered at the church had recently succeeded in desegregating Birmingham public schools, and this was an act of revenge.

The girls did not die in vain; the public outrage brought on by this senseless tragedy was crucial to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But who were the perpetrators? Alabamians would have to wait a long time to find out. Due to reluctant witnesses and racial prejudice, the FBI closed the case without any indictments.

But as Martin Luther King, Jr. famously claimed, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." When William Baxley became state Attorney General years later, he reopened the case, ultimately convicting one of the bombers in 1977. Another suspect passed away in 1994, and author Doug Jones himself prosecuted and convicted the final two perpetrators—a correction of an outrageous miscarriage of justice that was nearly forty years in the making.

Bending Toward Justice is a detailed account of this key moment in our national struggle for equality and the long road to prosecuting those responsible for the tragedy, related by an author who played a major role in the investigation. It is destined to become the next addition to our civil rights canon.

Doug Jones is the first Democrat to win a US Senate election in Alabama since 1992. As US Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, Jones prosecuted two Ku Klux Klan members for their roles in the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, a racially-motivated act of terrorism that claimed the lives of four young girls and helped turn the tide in the struggle for civil rights. He also secured an indictment against Centennial Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph.

Amy Klobuchar

The Senator Next Door

One of the U.S. Senate's most candid--and funniest--women tells the story of her life and her unshakeable faith in our democracy

Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar has tackled every obstacle she's encountered--her parents' divorce, her father's alcoholism and recovery, her political campaigns and Washington's gridlock--with honesty, humor and pluck. Now, in The Senator Next Door, she chronicles her remarkable heartland journey, from her immigrant grandparents to her middle-class suburban upbringing to her rise in American politics.

After being kicked out of the hospital while her infant daughter was still in intensive care, Klobuchar became the lead advocate for one of the first laws in the country guaranteeing new moms and their babies a 48-hour hospital stay. Later she ran Minnesota's biggest prosecutor's office and in 2006 was the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from her state. Along the way she fashioned her own political philosophy grounded in her belief that partisan flame-throwing takes no courage at all; what really matters is forging alliances with unlikely partners to solve the nation's problems.

Optimistic, plainspoken and often very funny, The Senator Next Door is a story about how the girl next door decided to enter the fray and make a difference. At a moment when America's government often seems incapable of getting anything done, Amy Klobuchar proves that politics is still the art of the possible.

Michelle Obama

Becoming

An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States.

In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America--the first African American to serve in that role--she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare.

In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her--from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world's most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it--in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations--and whose story inspires us to do the same.

Jon Meacham

Soul of America

Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called the "better angels of our nature" have repeatedly won the day. Painting surprising portraits of Lincoln and other presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson, and illuminating the courage of such influential citizen activists as Martin Luther King, Jr., early suffragettes Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt, civil rights pioneers Rosa Parks and John Lewis, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Army-McCarthy hearings lawyer Joseph N. Welch, Meacham brings vividly to life turning points in American history. He writes about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the birth of the Lost Cause; the backlash against immigrants in the First World War and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s; the fight for women's rights; the demagoguery of Huey Long and Father Coughlin and the isolationist work of America First in the years before World War II; the anti-Communist witch-hunts led by Senator Joseph McCarthy; and Lyndon Johnson's crusade against Jim Crow. Each of these dramatic hours in our national life have been shaped by the contest to lead the country to look forward rather than back, to assert hope over fear--a struggle that continues even now.

While the American story has not always--or even often--been heroic, we have been sustained by a belief in progress even in the gloomiest of times. In this inspiring book, Meacham reassures us, "The good news is that we have come through such darkness before"--as, time and again, Lincoln's better angels have found a way to prevail.
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We'll be updating with more books and speakers every day this week!