Down for the Count explores the tawdry history of elections in the United States-a chronicle of votes bought, stolen, suppressed, lost, miscounted, thrown into rivers, and litigated up to the U.S. Supreme Court-and uses it to explain why we are now experiencing the biggest backslide in voting rights in more than a century. This thoroughly revised edition, first published to acclaim and some controversy in 2005
as Steal This Vote, reveals why America is unique among established Western democracies in its inability to run clean, transparent elections. And it demonstrates, in crisp, clear, accessible language, how the partisan battles now raging over voter ID, out-of-control campaign spending, and minority voting rights fit into a long, largely unspoken tradition of hostility to the very notion of representative democracy.
Down for the Count is a multifaceted, deeply researched, and engaging critical assessment of a system whose ostensible commitment to democratic integrity often falls apart on contact with race, money,
and power. In an age of high-stakes electoral combat, billionaire-backed candidacies, and bottom-of-the-barrel campaigning, there can be no better time to listen to this troubling and revealing book.

In the early morning of April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh drove into downtown Oklahoma City in a rented Ryder truck containing a deadly fertilizer bomb that he and his army buddy Terry Nichols had made the previous day. He parked in a handicapped-parking zone, hopped out of the truck, and walked away into a series of alleys and streets. Shortly after 9:00 A.M., the bomb obliterated one-third of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people, including 19 infants and toddlers. McVeigh claimed he’d worked only with Nichols, and at least officially, the government believed him. But McVeigh’s was just one version of events. And much of it was wrong.

In Oklahoma City, veteran investigative journalists Andrew Gumbel and Roger G. Charles puncture the myth about what happened on that day–one that has persisted in the minds of the American public for nearly two decades. Working with unprecedented access to government documents, a voluminous correspondence with Terry Nichols, and more than 150 interviews with those immediately involved, Gumbel and Charles demonstrate how much was missed beyond the guilt of the two principal defendants: in particular, the dysfunction within the country’s law enforcement agencies, which squandered opportunities to penetrate the radical right and prevent the bombing, and the unanswered question of who inspired the plot and who else might have been involved.

To this day, the FBI heralds the Oklahoma City investigation as one of its great triumphs. In reality, though, its handling of the bombing foreshadowed many of the problems that made the country vulnerable to attack again on 9/11. Law enforcement agencies could not see past their own rivalries and underestimated the seriousness of the deadly rhetoric coming from the radical far right. In Oklahoma City, Gumbel and Charles give the fullest, most honest account to date of both the plot and the investigation, drawing a vivid portrait of the unfailingly compelling–driven, eccentric, fractious, funny, and wildly paranoid–characters involved.

Once just another unglamorous urban university, Georgia State University has become a place of miracles and wonders in the heart of Atlanta, the city that spawned the civil rights movement. GSU is a living experiment in the education of lower income students and a crucible in which the promise of social advancement through talent and hard work, the essence of the American Dream, is being rekindled in an age of deep inequality and political crisis.
More than any other institution in the country, Georgia State has overturned the assumption that poorer students are doomed to fail. Won’t Lose This Dream describes how the architects of Georgia State’s success harnessed the power of evolving data technologies, a “moneyball” strategy that helped them recognize and remove the obstacles that have held poor students back. Veteran journalist Andrew Gumbel uncovers the human stories behind these innovations, tracing real students as they realize lifelong dreams of graduating from college.
Today, a Georgia State freshman who arrives homeless and hungry is no less likely to succeed than the daughter of a billionaire. African American, Hispanic, and low-income students now graduate from GSU at rates equal to or higher than those of other students.