My Brother's New Book

Now on sale at Barnes & Noble

I'm reading my brother Eric's new book and am enjoying it so much. As I hold it in my hands, all 280 pages, I can't believe he wrote it. But this is Eric's second book; his first, Lapdogs, How the Press Rolled Over for Bush was published in 2006, so I should be accustomed. You can watch Eric on CNN here.

His latest book is titled Bloggers on the Bus in a take-off on the seminal book about political journalists by Timothy Crouse called The Boys on the Bus. Eric's book is about how liberal bloggers affected and shaped the 2008 presidential election. It's published by Free Press, and division of Simon & Schuster, and you can buy it here, or at your local Barnes & Noble, as I did. TD designed the book cover -- didn't he do a good job?

What I find so interesting about it, and I think my blogging friends would too, is that it's the first account I've read of what it feels like to be a blogger. Eric writes about bloggers who started doing it because they wanted to say something, and then get fairly obsessed with it. They blog outside of their jobs, at home, into the wee hours, happy that they have found on outlet for their views and passions. And Eric is right, you read very little about blogging in the press, I guess because the press is afraid of the rising competition. Anyone interested in the changing landscape of the media would like this book.

The bloggers that Eric writes about are trying to use the internet to make a difference, make the world better or more beautiful in their own way. I certainly think that applies to my blogging friends who focus on style and art. As one blogger in Eric's book says, "Am I going to use this for good, or evil?"