Red, White, and Oh So Blue: An Autobiography of Political Depression

Blakely decisively links the personal to the political, as when she discusses how she was rejected by three major health insurance companies because she had a ""preexisting condition"" (irregular brain waves following a coma). A longtime activist in the civil rights, women's, peace and green movements, she deftly skewers what she sees as the hypocrisy of Rush Limbaugh, Patrick Buchanan, the religious right and a national mass media that decontextualizes news stories, stigmatizes the poor and renders invisible working mothers, children and the homeless. From her vantage, Americans inhabit a manufactured ""virtual reality,"" a sound-bite culture that anesthetizes the human longing for love, peace and meaning, so that most Americans don't know, much less care, that the U.S., by far the world's largest exporter of weapons and missiles, contributes to untold deaths in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Author of two previous memoirs (American Mom; Wake Me When It's Over), Blakely offers an irreverent, funny, punchy breath of fresh air, a potent antidote to political apathy. (Sept.)