Ten of the best political campaign classics

David Masciotra is the author of Working On a Dream: The Progressive Political Vision of Bruce Springsteen. He is at work on his second book, Faith That Won’t Die, a work of literary journalism about life in the rust belt.

At The Daily Beast, he named ten of the best political campaign classics, including:

Hartsburg, USA
by David Mizner

Mizner uses his experience as a political consultant and speechwriter to write a more hopeful novel than Vidal’s Washington D.C. Hartsburg, USA chronicles a school-board race in a small Ohio town between two clichés of the culture wars—a liberal atheist who once worked as a Hollywood screenwriter and a fundamentalist Christian woman from the nearby megachurch. Mizner wrote the book before Sarah Palin became a household name, but his Republican candidate for school board is the literary Palin if there ever was one. The way in which the novel depicts the personal details of each character’s family, and the way in which he leaves hope for unity, uplifts the reader into remembering, or at least believing, that the distance we see between us and our political opposites is often imaginary. Considering that Obama versus Romney is one of the most negative races of recent history, Mizner’s smart and moving novel may act as an anodyne.

Read about the other books on the list.

The Page 69 Test: David Mizner's Hartsburg, USA.

--Marshal Zeringue