by TChris

Remember when Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and other right wingers dominated the political best sellers list? Those days are gone. Recently, book buyers have been interested in alternatives to the whacky ideas advanced by the Bush administration and its apologists.

Richard Clarke's new book, Against All Enemies, (discussed in TalkLeft here) was released yesterday. It had an impressive first printing of 300,000 copies, and another 100,000 have already been ordered. And it's not alone among hot sellers that take a critical look at the President.

Against All Enemies was ranked No. 1 on Amazon.com's list of best sellers as of Tuesday afternoon and has raised sales for other works attacking Bush, including Kevin Phillips' American Dynasty and Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyalty, a collaboration with former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.

Anti-Bush books have been popular since last fall, when liberal pundits Al Franken, Joe Conason and Molly Ivins were among those with best sellers. Now the best sellers are being written by historians such as Phillips and former Bush officials such as Clarke.

Neil Nyren, the publisher and editor-in-chief of Putnam, says that conservative books still sell, but that liberal books now occupy the spots that books by the likes of Coulter held during the Clinton administration.

More books that Bush would rather you not read will appear later this year.

Books unfavorable to Bush will continue coming out, including Worse Than Watergate, by John W. Dean, a former aide to President Nixon, and The Politics of Truth, by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, who has criticized the White House's uses of intelligence before the Iraq war.

If he finishes writing it, President Clinton's autobiography will also appear this year.