This week, Russ Baker joins us at Book Club for discussion of his book Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America. The book is a portrait of the presidencies of the two Bushes that questions the family's connections and insistence on secrecy. Baker is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Village Voice and Esquire.

From Baker's first post:

The two George Bushes, different as they appeared to be, both presided over administrations whose hallmark was extreme secrecy and the aggressive projection of military might to secure, among other goals, commercial opportunities for their friends and allies. This was no accident. As I make plain in Family of Secrets, the Bush policies were but the ultimate expression of a powerful if largely obscured current running through our country's history. Once we begin coming to terms with the real history of this country and the influences that shape it, we will have a better sense of the difficulties faced by Barack Obama, and the tremendous pressures upon him to continue serving those narrow interests, rather than the public good.

Joining the discussion are Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher and author of Why Obama Won; Greg Anrig, vice president of policy at The Century Foundation and author of The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing; and Craig Unger, author of The Fall of the House of Bush and House of Bush, House of Saud.