How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This forceful, sarcastic, and often hilarious book offers tips on arguing with liberals, which include the following: don't be defensive, always outrage the enemy, and never apologize to, compliment, or show graciousness to a Democrat. Welcome to the world according to Ann Coulter. Ever combative, Coulter is unafraid to court controversy or confront her detractors head-on, whether they are mainstream journalists and talk-show hosts who have misquoted her without apology or "weak and frightened conservatives" craving liberal approval. Though the writing is often over-the-top, the book if full of one-liners that will delight conservatives, such as "the best way to convert liberals is to have them move out of their parents' home, get a job, and start paying taxes." But there is more here than just insults and countless jabs at Bill Clinton, and even her most devoted readers will find much new material in the book. Largely a collection of her syndicated columns from the past decade, How to Talk to a Liberal also includes columns that were never released or were rejected by editors--in Coulter's words, "what you could have read if you lived in a free country." --Shawn Carkonen

Amazon.com Exclusive Content

Ann Coulter on Election 2004
Ann Coulter has become a fixture among the country's leading conservative pundits with her take-no-prisoners approach making for controversial headline copy. She speaks out about Election 2004 in our exclusive interview.

Ann Coulter's Significant Seven
Ann Coulter kindly agreed to take the life quiz we like to give to all our authors: the Amazon Significant Seven. Read her answers here.

From Publishers Weekly

Never mind this book’s title; from the writings collected here, it sounds like Coulter has never talked calmly with anyone, much less "liberals." In her view, "liberals" aren’t even "sentient creatures." Rather, they are conspiracy theorists and "street performers" who "traffic in shouting and demagogy." Following her previous bestseller, Treason, this book reprints installments from the last five years of Coulter’s syndicated column. Her modus operandi is to "start with the maximum assertion about liberals and then push the envelope, because, as we know, their evil is incalculable." If the title isn’t clue enough, the "we" in that quote demonstrates her assumption that the reader is as angry as she is, which frees her to make any accusation, whether grounded in reality or not. Coulter’s favorite target, hands down, is the New York Times, which she claims distorts the truth, ignores the facts or gets them wrong altogether. Her proposed solution for the 2001 incident in which China’s "three-foot-tall dictator" held an American flight crew hostage: "give us the Americans and we’ll let them keep any New York Times reporters." Not surprisingly, she was in favor of attacking Iraq, and many of her columns dating back to the first months of the invasion sound exceedingly out of touch now ("The rebuilding in Iraq is going better than could possibly have been expected"). Besides previously printed columns, the book includes a few new pieces on Coulter’s pet peeves (like Democrats’ "double standards"), as well as articles rejected by editors at magazines like the National Review and Good Housekeeping. Frequently funny, if only for its sheer audacity, this book will gratify "cranky conservatives" and outrage everyone else.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Crown Forum; First edition (October 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400054184
• ISBN-13: 978-1400054183
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (711 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #122,422 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It really depends, doesn't it?, December 27, 2008

By	R. Carney (Kernersville, NC USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you like Anne Coulter, you'll enjoy this book. If you don't, you won't. That's about the long and short of it.




P.S. I LOVED IT.

55 of 81 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I am not a liberal, December 12, 2004

By	Diane C. Rogers "Ramachandran" (del mar, california United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

First off, I'd like to make it clear that I am not a liberal. To be fair, I'm not a conservative either. I'd classify myself more as a political spectator, who occasionally takes sides based on certain policies. Regarding Miss Coulter and her newest book, I am adamant in my dislike. I have nothing against the fact that she's a conservative. I know many intelligent, rational people who are conservatives, and I consider them to be good, honest people who happen to align themselves with a certain ideology. That's what America is about: accepting that there's a difference, and meeting in between. Miss Coulter fails to realize this. Her attacks are based entirely on personal belief and she expects readers and the United States government to take this belief as their moral dictum. Miss Coulter oversteps the boundaries of individual authority. By claiming that we (the US) should "convert them to Christianity" she disregards the selfsame freedoms and liberties that she personally advocates in this book. First and foremost, then, Miss Coulter contradicts herself: in defense of her own position, she claims that the state is obligated to give its constituents freedom of belief, but at the same time argues that liberals are just plain wrong, that their beliefs should be disregarded, and that they are (because of their beliefs) enemies of the state.

59 of 87 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Nobody Ever Won a Debate the Way This Book Was Written, October 15, 2005

By	Stacy (Tokyo, Japan) - See all my reviews

I am _still_ waiting for a review that isn't partisan: Could someone in the center please read this book? I feel like the only ones who read it do so either so they can agree with everything she says or solely so that they may hate her even more than before.

I suspect, however, that someone who is completely non-partisan would say that though the book is funny, it is funny in a way that is insensitive and low-brow; valid points about liberals may exist, but the amount of ad hoc insults and exaggerated vituperatives she uses tends to discredit her to a point where she seems incapable of reasonable thought, convictions aside.

I also think too many of her opinions are based on Christianity. Conservatism isn't exclusive to that religion.

Further, compromise is not a sin; personal integrity regarding one's opinions is admirable but stubborn close-mindedness is not.

Coulter refuses to put _any_ fault with conservatives (aside from those who supposedly cater to liberals); that is ridiculous. It is seldom that one side is totally innocent.

Frankly, this book is childishly opinionated -- as a graded essay, I suspect it would receive a very low score. She presents no counter-arguments. She insults. She replaces colloquy with contumely. It is very difficult to read, like a many-paged internet rant.

And all of my own personal reactions aside, I have heard it said that the number of fabrications and inaccuracies in her books is rather unbelievable -- and that her publishers refuse to correct them. I don't know it that's true or not. I haven't the inclination to do counter-research.

From a literary stand-point, I would call the writing amateurish, but that's nothing unusual for a political book.

I think this book is too radical and near-sighted to be appealing to anyone who doesn't already believe what Ann Coulter says... I doubt she's doing any converting. It takes reasoned argument to do that.

Political orientation nothing: I would give this book as bad a review as one by Michael Moore. The only compliment I would give either is that each presents their propaganda in forms which are _meant_ to be opinionated -- as opposed to journalists, who are supposed to be non-partisan. (And that goes both ways, despite what Coulter says: The newspapers may be liberal, but television is conservative. More people watch television, anyway, so I don't know why she's complaining.)

I may have to rescind even that compliment, however: Both seem to present to the unsuspecting and uneducated public what they would have dubbed "facts." Readers don't seem to know better.

I do not recommend reading this book.