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Scribner will release a medical memoir from former Vice President Dick Cheney next fall, a book written with the politician’s cardiologist, Jonathan Reiner, M.D..

Attorney Robert B. Barnett negotiated the deal with Susan Moldow. Scribner senior editor Shannon Welch will edit. Cheney will donate “a portion of the authors’ net proceeds” to charity. Here’s more about the book, from the release:

the vice president will tell the very personal story of his 35-year battle with heart disease, from his first heart attack in 1978 to the heart transplant he received in 2012.  Dr. Reiner will provide insight into the incredible technological and medical breakthroughs that have changed the face of cardiac care in the last four decades, giving hope to the 80 million Americans suffering from heart disease.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In his new memoir, In My Time, former Vice President Dick Cheney talks about a secret letter of resignation that he wrote only two months into office. Worried about his health, he wrote the letter in March 2001 and locked in a safe.

The Huffington Post has more: “I did it because I was concerned that — for a couple of reasons … One was my own health situation. The possibility that I might have a heart attack or a stroke that would be incapacitating. And, there is no mechanism for getting rid of a vice-president who can’t function.’”

Below we’ve linked to other news stories exploring this highly anticipated memoir. The book comes out on Tuesday from Simon & Schuster. The hardcover sells for $19.25 on Amazon and the eBook edition sells for $16.99.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he looks at Holder’s decision to conduct investigations on the CIA. See his previous OUPblogs here.

Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to conduct investigations on the CIA presents a serious dilemma for the Obama White House, which was at pains to point out that Holder’s decision was independently made. I think the White House is being honest here, because these investigations will only be a distraction from health-care reform. The bigger problem thrown into sharp relief here, however, is that democracies’ commitments to justice and the politics necessary to deliver electoral and governing solutions do not always sit happily together.

The pursuit of justice (which is state-sanctioned retribution) is inherently a backward looking process. It most look to the past in order to establish that a wrong was committed. And to put things bluntly, even when properly meted out, justice often offers only cold comfort to whom injury was inflicted. Especially in politics, such returns are slow in the coming, if they come at all.

If the pursuit of justice pulls us back in time, the conduct of politics pulls us into the future. Power today is a derivative of the anticipated store of power tomorrow, which is itself a function of whether today’s promises are fulfilled tomorrow. Politicians (in active service) don’t have time for the past, for they must protect their future. President Obama is looking ahead to the health-care battles to come in the Fall, and he does not want (nor does he need) to be pulled back to rehash a contest with the last administration in which voters already declared him a winner in 2008. Justice and Politics do not go well in this moment, and Obama knows full well that he has more to lose than he has to gain in Holder’s investigation. To stay in office, he must offer a politics of solutions, and not the politics of redemption that his liberal base wants.

Strangely enough, Dick Cheney is on the side of liberal Democrats on this one, at least in the sense that he understands that democratic countries are bad war-makers. The difference of course, is that Cheney believes that democratic ends can be met with undemocratic means (while some liberals believe that war is sport of kings, not democracies). In Cheney’s own words on Meet the Press in 2001: “We have to work the dark side, if you will. Spend time in the shadows of the intelligence world.” Cheney’s thorough-going ends-justifies-means philosophy is revealed in his interview with Chris Wallace. “They looked at this question of whether or not somebody had an electric drill in an interrogation session — it was never used on the individual,” Cheney said of the inspector general’s report. “Or that they had brought in a weapon — never used on the individual.” This cavalier attitude towards undemocratic means stems largely from a very sharp line differentiating “us” and “them” in the neoconservative world-view, a line that takes off from a commitment to protecting the demos in a democracy and a characterization of all others as outsiders to our social contract. This line is imperceptible to the liberal eye fixated on universal justice, which presumes the basic humanity of even a terrorist suspect.

Democrats really want to go for Cheney, but they will have to settle for the CIA; Cheney wants to protect his legacy, but he will have to settle for a proxy war. The politicization of justice and the justiciation of politics are reifiying the turf battles between CIA and FBI, the very cause of the intelligence failures that led to September 11 in the first place. The mere fact that we are airing our dirty laundry in public is already having a “chilling” effect on CIA agents and both Cheney and Holder are complicit in this. Justice and Politics are friends to democracy individually, but we are better off without one of them in this case.

In news that did not take the KidLit/YA community by storm, Dick Cheney is writing his memoirs. In late June, the Associated Press carried the story of Cheney’s $2 million-ish deal with Theshold Editions, a conservative subsidiary of Simon and Schuster. It included this great quote at the end:

“He knows he’s called Darth Vader,” said Simon & Schuster’s Carolyn Reidy. “He’s aware of how he’s been portrayed. But I didn’t feel any defensiveness when I met with him.”

1. “Of course, I was wearing a necklace of garlic, holding a cross, and carrying a gun with one silver bullet just in case.”
   
   
2. “I did, however, feel like I’d never be happy again, as if every good feeling and memory were being sucked out of me leaving me with nothing but my worst experiences.”
   
   
3. “I will say that I’m glad I had Febreze, because it was extremely helpful against the lingering stench of evil.”
   
   
4. “And after he left, I had the strangest sense of a cleaner mind as if it had been washed in some way. He’s a powerful man who is right in every opinion he holds.”

May I presume that Mr. Cheney will be remunerated in his customary way: a gunnysack filled with unblemished human heads?

Words can hurt every bit as much as physical abuse. I should know. Throughout my vice presidency I was painted by opponents as a warmonger who controlled the President’s every move. They said that I usurped power from Congress, lied to the public about the threat from Iraq, gleefully greenlighted torture of suspected terrorists, and trampled on the Constitution. Yes, I bear the scars of many malicious words. The purpose of this memoir is to set the record straight: In fact, I have the heart of a liberal. It’s in a jar on my desk.

Don C. Barnett presents a teaching plan called Censorship: Drawing The Line. The page is hosted by the University of Saskatchewan College of Education and it appears to be at a high school level. It is of value since it covers Canadian issues.

The purpose of the lesson is: "To explore the issue of censorship through the values question: To what extent should society censor citizens' expression of thoughts?" Included are some great questions and activities for students, as well as suggested ways of evaluating. Unfortunately, a number of links such as the Canadian Censorship Time Line are outdated. Other than that, this is a great resource for Canadian Secondary School Teachers and it could be modified for younger students.

This is Banned Book Week in the U.S.

Novel Journey presents an interview with Rebecca Zeidel, Program Director for American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. The web log is part of Christian Women Online.

Zeidel responds to the following questions:
What is Banned Book Week?
What is the goal of Banned Book Week?
What percentage of books are challenged or banned because of moral content? Political content? Racial content? Violence? Other (please explain)?
Who suffers the most if a book is challenged?
How can novelists support Banned Book Week?
Which states or regions are more likely to jump on the banning band wagon?

Zeidel identifies the Howell, MI banning of 5 titles in a response to this question: What is the most appalling situation you've seen or heard of regarding a challenged book?

In February, five books were challenged in Howell, MI for sexual themes and profanity: Black Boy by Richard Wright, Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, and The Freedom Writers Diary by Erin Gruwell. The books were challenged in Howell High School in by members of the Livingston Organization for Values in Education (LOVE) with assistance from the Michigan chapter of the American Family Association.

The American Family Association represents and stands for traditional family values, focusing primarily on the influence of television and other media – including pornography – on our society.