Dear Reader,
While Barack Obama is something of an oddity in the English-speaking world for writing his memoirs before coming to power, putting your name to 350 pages of Weltweisheiten is almost a compulsory qualification for the top table of German politics (that or plagiarizing a PhD).
Left-wing pop-politician Sahra Wagenknecht’s latest tome - the Self-Righteous - is currently ranked No. 4 on the Spiegel non-fiction bestseller list. It’s a rallying call to the left to stop following lifestyle trends and start listening to ordinary voters if it wants to beat the populist right.
Green co-leader Robert Habeck spent the pandemic writing Von hier an anders (From now on differently) - a book that asks why the left has failed to stop the rise of the populist right.
Foreign Minister Heiko Maas’s 2017 book Aufstehen statt wegducken (Take a Stand, Don’t Duck Away) was a prescription for (can you guess?) how the left should stand up against the pseudo-arguments of the populist right.
While all of …
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