PREDICTING THE NEXT PRESIDENT: THE KEYS TO THE WHITE HOUSE 2012 by Allan J. Lickhtman

Allan J. Lichtman, Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White House 2012 (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2012).

Also available on Kindle and Nook.

The title of the 2008 edition is The Keys to the White House: A Sure Fire Way of Predicting the Next President.

(NONFICTION)

Recommended by Wilda Morris

Ignore all the polls. They won’t tell you anything meaningful about the outcome of the popular vote for president. That’s the word from Allan J. Lichtman who studied all the elections from 1860 to 1992 and, with the help of statistician Vladimir Keilis-Borok, came up with 13 keys which correctly predicted the outcome of the popular vote in each of the five elections since. [Ken Decell co-wrote the first edition; the later split between Lichtman and Decell is described by Martin Gottlieb in his book, Campaigns Don’t Matter: How the Media Get American Politics All Wrong (iUniverse, 2006).]   By 2010, Lichtman was confident that Barak Obama would win the popular vote in 2012. And of course, he was correct. In 1988, when George H. W. Bush was trailing Mike Dukakis in the polls by 20%, and the pundits believed the Democrat would win, Lichtman correctly called the election for Bush. Polling data is ignored in Lichtman’s predictive system.

The keys, he says, do not predict the Electoral College vote, so he cannot be 100% sure about who will actually win the election. (This means that the title of the 2008 edition is overstated.) “The fact that the outcome of every election is predictable without reference to issues, ideology, party loyalties, or campaign events allows us reasonably to conclude that many of the factors most commonly cited in explaining election results count for very little on Election Day,” according to Lichtman (p. 5).  When five or fewer of the thirteen keys go against incumbent party, its candidate will win the popular vote. If six or more go against the incumbent party, it will lose.

Four of the keys are “political keys” gauging the strength of the incumbent party, such as the results of the previous midterm election and whether the incumbent president has serious opposition for the nomination. Keys 5-11 are “performance keys, measurements of achievements and failures of the president in power. This includes the condition of the economy, effectiveness in making policy changes, scandal of certain kinds which are recognized as serious across party lines, and success or failure in foreign policy or military affairs. The last two keys relate to the charisma of the candidates themselves.

I confess that before I read anything else, I went to the last chapter and read Lichtman’s prediction for the 2012 election. Yep, he got it right.

Lichtman is Distinguished Professor of History at American University (my alma mater). Unfortunately he was not on the faculty during my days as a student there. I heard him briefly on the radio after the 2012 election. He compared these keys to shifting in tectonic plates – which is a better predictor of earthquakes than anything visible on the surface. In other words, they have a predictive power not evident in presidential polling.

PODKAYNE OF MARS by Robert A. Heinlein

Podkayne of Mars [NOOK Book] by Robert A. Heinlein

This book was first published in 1963. Twenty-six editions are listed at http://openlibrary.org/works/OL59735W/Podkayne_of_Mars.

 

 

(SCIENCE FICTION, JUVENILE)

Reviewed by James Kauzlarich

 

This book is, in my opinion, unfinished.

Now, it IS true that I read it as a child, so it is possible that a more mature reader may find the book more engaging. But it's also true that I was reading at least 3 books a week at the time, and actually had MORE patience then, so maybe not.

To me the book is written as if it's all one long prologue. It's written completely in the third-person, as Podkayne's diary entries. I kept waiting for the action to start, but the book ends before that ever happens.

I believe that this was an experiment by Heinlein, and a failed one at that. My evidence: he never wrote another book in the third person.

The story it describes would have been very good—it IS a Heinlein book after all—but there is no suspense, no action, and no adventure, because the action and adventure is always presented as something already completed because of the diary, and third-person format.

I really felt cheated by this book, so unless you want to read all of Heinlien's work, I'd skip it. My biggest Heinlein disappointment.

INHERITANCE by Christopher Paolini

Christopher Paolini, Inheritance (Knopf, 2011).

Read by Gerard Doyle (Listening Library, 2011). Also available on Kindle and Nook.

(NOVEL, FANTASY)

Recommended by Kevin A. Penrod, Jr.

I recently finished reading the book Inheritance, the long anticipated final installment in the series which started with Eragon. In the book, Eragon and his dragon Saphira finally confront the evil king Galbatorix who years before had betrayed and killed the Dragon Riders who were peace keepers in the land of Alegasia. This book was extremely well written by Christopher Paolini who, if I remember correctly started writing the series at the age of 15.

This was quite an amazing read. It is filed with epic battle scenes, one of which lasts for almost 200 pages. But it doesn’t only have epic battles between good and evil. Christopher also does great job on going into detail about the characters and their inner conflicts and feelings towards each other. To anyone who likes fantasy and straight up great writing and storytelling I highly recommend this series.  The ending was just as good as—if not better than—the beginning.