Grover Norquist's new book, “End the IRS Before It Ends Us: How to Restore a Low-Tax, High-Growth, Wealthy America” (Center Street), says much about U.S. taxation past, current and future. But its initial buzz stemmed from its author's contention that the IRS cost Mitt Romney the 2012 presidential election because its scrutiny of tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status deliberately suppressed their ability to swell the ranks of GOP voters.

“The Tea Party didn't fall down the stairs. It was pushed. Pushed by the IRS,” Norquist writes.

He cites a study that found tea party groups brought out 3.2 million to 5.8 million additional GOP voters for the 2010 U.S. House elections, in which Republicans retook control of that chamber. Norquist says the IRS targeting prevented a similar effect in 2012 that would have been enough to deny President Barack Obama his second term. And he maintains that Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the center of that scandal, was following orders to blunt tea party influence.

Known for signing candidates to no-tax-hike pledges as president of Americans for Tax Reform, Norquist also reviews the expansion of taxation and government throughout our nation's existence, the effects of such expansion on the economy and Americans' lives and how limited government, individual liberty and economic growth can be restored.

Norquist advocates greater government transparency and discusses how such ideas as the “FairTax,” a flat tax and pro-growth tax reform, along with forcing government to compete and the budget blueprints offered by Paul Ryan and Rand Paul, can help. He also suggests a dozen ways that individual Americans can reduce their own tax burdens.

Norquist also covers the role of state taxes and how the existing tax system is an economic burden in itself and how it's driving U.S. corporations to relocate to more tax-friendly places overseas.

In his view, the fundamental issue underlying taxation's burden — expanding liberty vs. expanding government — is the same as it was in Colonial times: “This struggle and this division within the United States continues today.”

CHURCHILL & HIS TEAM

“Ministers at War: Winston Churchill and his War Cabinet” by Jonathan Schneer (Basic Books) — Abraham Lincoln, FDR and Winston Churchill were singular wartime leaders yet had something in common: managing teams of sometimes cooperative, sometimes fractious advisers drawn from across the political spectrum of their times. In this book, a Georgia Tech history professor shows how, despite Churchill's wartime brilliance in rallying the British people against the Nazis, his focus on fighting World War II and increasing discord among his team led to his resignation as prime minister. Despite victory being assured, war-weary Brits, wanting welfare-state programs that Churchill's Conservatives opposed, made Labour Party leader Clement Attlee his successor in 1945's general election. Churchill “had reached the nadir of his arc. And yet what had just happened was a testament to him,” Schneer writes before quoting Churchill on his electoral defeat: “This is a democracy. This is what we've been fighting for.”

SINKING'S CENTENNIAL

“Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania” by Erik Larson (Crown) — This author's latest best-seller aims to recount the May 7, 1915, sinking of the Lusitania off Ireland's coast in a way that maintains suspense despite readers' knowledge of the great ocean liner's fate. Putting the Lusitania in historical and social context amid World War I and America's Progressive Era, Larson follows the liner and the German U-boat that torpedoed it along their paths to their deadly encounter, portraying their captains and life aboard each vessel. He delves into such enduring questions as what caused not one but two explosions on the Lusitania and how the liner figured into the wartime calculations of the British Admiralty. Larson draws details from such archival materials as code books, intercepted telegrams and first-person accounts that include the war log kept by the U-boat captain and legal depositions recorded after the sinking.

IN THE PIPELINE

Forthcoming titles from both ends of the political spectrum:

Conservative

• “The China Dream: Great Power Thinking and Strategic Posture in the Post-American Era” by Liu Mingfu, foreword by Liu Yazhou (CN Times Books, May 5)

• “No Better Friend: One Man, One Dog, and Their Extraordinary Story of Courage and Survival in WW II” by Robert Weintraub (Little, Brown and Co., May 5)

• “No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Global Forces Breaking All the Trends” by Richard Dobbs, James Manyika and Jonathan Woetzel (PublicAffairs, May 12)

• “The Dadly Virtues: Adventures from the Worst Job You'll Ever Love” edited by Jonathan V. Last (Templeton Press, May 18)

• “The Divided Era: How We Got Here and the Keys to America's Reconciliation” by Thomas G. Del Beccaro (Greenleaf Book Group Press, May 26)

Liberal

• “Ecosocialism: A Radical Alternative to Capitalist Catastrophe” by Michael Lowy (Haymarket Books, May 5)

• “A Socialist History of the French Revolution” by Jean Jaures, translated by Mitchell Abidor, introduction by Henry Heller (Pluto Press, May 15)

• “American Hysteria: The Untold Story of Mass Political Extremism in the United States” by Andrew Burt (Lyons Press, May 15)

• “If We Can Win Here: The New Front Lines of the Labor Movement” by Fran Quigley (ILR Press, May 19)

• “The Hidden Structure of Violence: Who Benefits from Global Violence and War” by Marc Pilisuk and Jennifer Achord Rountree (Monthly Review Press, May 22)

Alan Wallace is a Trib Total Media editorial page writer (412-320-7983 or awallace@tribweb.com).

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