Projo Politics Blog

There was a wait of an hour and a half at the Barnes & Noble bookstore on Bald Hill Road last Thursday when former U.S. Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee signed his new political memoir, Against the Tide: How a Compliant Congress Empowered a Reckless President.

“It was very gratifying,” said Chafee, whose mother, Virginia, was among those who waited in the long queue to get their books signed.

The book, remarkable for its candor, is a window into how Republican and Democratic members of Congress took the U.S. to war in Iraq without questioning the Bush administration’s premises for the military action. Chafee was the only Senate Republican to vote against giving President Bush the authority to invade Iraq. He was joined by 22 Democrats, including Rhode Island’s Jack Reed.

Chafee’s book is starting to gain national traction. The Nation, a liberal antiwar weekly, featured a review praising the work and the former GOP senator is scheduled to talk about the book on Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC show on Wednesday. And Chafee will be signing books tomorrow evening at the Brown Bookstore, on Thayer Street in Providence; the C-SPAN cable network will cover that event, he said.

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