That is another question I was asked yesterday, here are a few nominations:
2. James Madison and John Adams, for the latter Discourses on Davila.
3. Some of Richard Nixon, scattered.
4. Ulysses S. Grant.
5. Tocqueville, J.S. Mill and some other political writers were also politicians of a sort but I am not counting them as I do not view their contributions as stemming so directly from their political experience. Along these lines, you could try John Kenneth Galbraith's book about being ambassador to India.
6. Winston Churchill is a beautiful writer and important historian but I am not sure how insightful he is about politics.
7. Denis Healey, Time of My Life.
8. I've yet to read the new book by Zhao Ziyang.
9. Willy Brandt, My Life in Politics.
My knowledge is weak in this area (here is a list of Canadian political autobiographies and I know not a single one) and Google is surprisingly unhelpful; what else am I missing? And why are there not more? Are politicians so drunk with self-deception that they cannot write insightful books?
/Are politicians so drunk with self-deception that they cannot write insightful books?/
Why should we be so hard on politicians? I think it would be just as hard to find a good list of books on economic methodology written by economists.
Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, though that is a collection of transcribed speeches rather than a “written” book. But it reads like a very insightful collection of essays about machine politics. Are you counting books written by authors before they became politicians, like Vaclav Havel?
Ben Franklin? Marcus Aurelius? War Diaries of Harold Macmillan?
Vaclav Havel, Jan Maseryk…
I like The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
The writings of Amos Sawyer are pretty amazing.
I highly recomend the books written by brazillian former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Cardoso is one of the key brazillian sociologists and was president of Brazil for two terms (1994-1998 and 1999-2002), during the countrie’s great modernization. Very deep, knowledgeble and insightfull:
- The Accidental President of Brazil: A Memoir
http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-President-Brazil-Memoir/dp/158648429X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245861888&sr=8-1
- A Arte Da Politica (The Arts of Politics)
http://www.livrariacultura.com.br/scripts/cultura/resenha/resenha.asp?nitem=1337512&sid=2017145111624496604154946&k5=34C3E8BE&uid=
Although similar, the two books are different (not traslations), with the one in portuguese being more deep.
Edmund Burke.
i’d recommend Gerald Ford’s “A Time it Heal”
Um … CICERO?!
Henry Kissinger, On Diplomacy and Xenophon come to mind–there are a lot more, though.
“6. Winston Churchill is a beautiful writer and important historian but I am not sure how insightful he is about politics.”
He was insightful enough to be elected to the House of Commons in his twenties and have an enormous career in politics, constantly bouncing back.
I’m not sure how insightful Raymond Chafin is, but “Just Good Politics: The Life of an Appalachian Boss” provides quite a bit of insight on amazingly corrupt small town politicians and how they can interact with and affect larger political concerns.
Perhaps, MACHIAVELLI and BURKE?
Tacitus and Cicero were politicians. Perhaps, Tucidides counts too.
Guizot, Constant
Humboldt, Wilhelm
Locke, John
The Audacity of Hype, by Bushama?
I’ve never read it, but heard good things about Metternich’s Political Confession of Faith. Then there’s also Joseph de Maistre. I suppose politics in their day was much different though.
Although not a politician but a famous Canadian political observer and one of the more famous books (and short!) in the realm of Canadian Political Science is George Grant’s Lament for a Nation.
One to stay away from is Michael Ignatiff’s new book…BAD BAD BAD
For a book on regulation by a regulator, try “You Say You Want A Revolution: A story of information age politics.”
Thucydides, Xenophon.
But surely Edmund Burke should take the prize.
Robert MacNamara, “What Went Wrong”.
Hm, I question Cicero. Revelatory when it comes to understanding American politics, but often deeply naive about his own political surroundings. (I adore the man, but not for his perceptiveness.)
Bastiat?
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