Campaign Boot Camp: Lessons from the Campaign Trail for Candidates, Staffers, Volunteers, and Nonprofits

Christine Pelosi has written a primer on How To Run. (Also, on how NOT to run, when that's the right thing to do.) She's got the background and experience to know the lessons of how to go about running for office, the first-hand experience of training people to do it, and a wealth of voices who back up her practical advice with their first-hand stories of why they ran and what they learned. Practical. Solid. Essential for the first-time campaigner, the twenty-year incumbent, the journalist, and the woman on the street who wants to get an understanding of How It All Works.

Look here! Christine Pelosi is someone who has been getting dirt under her fingernails in grassroots politics since she was in the stroller. "Boot Camp" is not the result of just another pundit or academic writing about politics. Christine really gives you both the promise and blessings of fighting for something you believe in while she also tells the truth about the planning and hard work it takes to succeed. She should know because there are at least three generations of Pelosi's who have risen to the top of the political ladder -- a grandfather who was mayor of Baltimore, a mother who is Speaker of the U.S. House, and herself as a 10-year elected veteran of the Democratic National Committee from California. Practical is what the Pelosis know and live; commitment to cause is what fuels them. Anyone who wants to win an issue or office should put this on their early reading list.

Step aside, Colbert - Christine Pelosi has a real strategy for running for office, and anyone, she says, can do it. I listened to Pelosi on the radio the other day and she was so exciting, I checked out her book the same afternoon. She makes practical and worthwhile suggestions for being politically active - and her advice is valuable for anyone. I'm just a copy editor but I feel like even Clinton's senior staffers could learn a thing or three from "Campaign Boot Camp."