THE GERMAN CONNECTION

Washington Post's Howard Kurtz ""Media View Kitty Kelley's Bush Book With Caution." is fair warning. The book is expected to be full of lurid allegations, and judging from the glee from blogger KOS, the Kelley book is bound to appeal to the unhinged Left. But not everyone is happy.

Recently, blogger and journalist Melanie Phillips on vacation in the U.S. was stunned by the hate filled books she saw on sales in a Borders store. She's not the only one who finds the current crop of political books hate filled and she isn't the only one stuck by the phenomenon. There is something disturbingly alien in such books. They are not political discussions so much as full length hit pieces, and if they offend our American sense of fair play, they should. A lot of them are German:

BERTELSMANN is a privately owned Germany conglomerate. These are a few of the books they published recently. All are wholly owned Bertelsmann publishing companies.

4 From DOUBLEDAY - Bertlesmann owned

The Real Story of the Bush Family,
by Kitty Kelley
(In the U.K. it will be published under Transworld, another Bertelsmann publisher. )

Sore Winners : (And the Rest of Us) in George Bush's America
by John Powers

4 From RANDOM HOUSE - Bertlesmann owned

Bushwacked
by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose

Intelligence Matters
By Bob Graham and Jeff Nussbaum

4 From CROWN - Bertlesmann owned

The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception
by David Corn Washington editor of leftwing publication, The Nation.

4 From PANTHEON - Bertlesmann owned

In the Shadow of No Towers
by by Art Spiegelman. Pantheon.
"The book is a visceral tirade against the Bush administration ("brigands suffering from war fever") and, when least expected, an erudite meditation on the history of the American newspaper comic strip, born during the fierce circulation wars of the 1890s right near the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan."

- From Amazon site Publisher's Weekly review

4 From ALFRED A. KNOPF link - Bertlesmann owned

Obliviously On He Sails : The Bush Administration in Rhyme
by New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin

Who Let the Dogs In? : Incredible Political Animals I Have Known
by Molly Ivins

Checkpoint, a novel that discusses the reasons to assassinate President Bush
by NicholsonBaker (deplored by Victor Davis Hanson)

4 From ALFRED A. KNOPF - Bertlesmann owned
(Rewarding politicians and journalists.)

My Life, Bill Clinton (Expatica notes that My Life has given Bertlesmann's earnings a boost.)
Big Russ and Me By Tim Russert
Why Courage Matters John McCain
Skywriting: A Life Out of the Blue by Jane Pauley
The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokow
Fat Man Fed Up : How American Politics Went Bad by Jack Germond, Baltimore Sun journalist.
Reason, Why Liberals will win the Battle for America by Robert Reich
"Reason is a guide to confronting and derailing what he sees as the mounting threat to American liberty, prosperity, and security posed by the radical conservatives–Radcons, as he calls them–whose agenda has dominated public discourse and radically affected government action since the election, by a minority vote, of George W. Bush. "

LINKS FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
Joe Klein, Clinton's Asst. Attorney General becomes CEO of Bertelsman U.S. operations.
More on Bertelsmann. Here
Here
Here
Timeline of acquisitions.
Here
Groupe Bruxelles Lambert S.A. owns 25% of Bertelsmann AG.

And those are only a few of the recent publications. Tomorrow publisher Georg von Holtzbrinck, owner of St. Martin's Press.