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The presidential debates are the "Super Bowl of politics": the democratic centerpiece of the election season. These quadrennial confrontations-broadcast to tens of millions of Americans-are the only decisive political discussion between the candidates to which an ever-increasing number of unaffiliated voters may look. Yet the two major parties dictate almost every aspect of the event, stifling broad electoral choice.

In No Debate, author and lobbyist George Farah uses the lens of the presidential election, an event he argues is singularly important to our electoral democracy, to examine just how open America's elections may or may not be.

Central to his argument is the national debate sponsor, the Commission on Presidential Debates, an ostensibly nonpartisan group which Farah exposes as an arm's length organ of the major parties to keep out viable third parties. In this meticulously researched expos, Farah finds a determinedly collusive commission, its board boasting some of the most powerful partisans in the country, through which tax-deductible corporate political donations to both major parties are funneled.

Along the way, Farah examines the backroom maneuverings and political calculations of the major parties: from Ross Perot's strategic debate invitation in 1992, to his exclusion in 1996, to the treatment of Buchanan and Nader in the 2000 election. With startling clarity No Debate documents a grievous institutional rigging of the electoral process, wherein glorified news conferences pass as debate and the two parties call the shots at the electorate's expense.

George Farah is the founder and executive director of Open Debates, a Washington-based nonprofit focused on reforming the presidential debate process. His articles have appeared in Harvard Law Record, Extra! and Princeton's Progressive Review.

"This is the most important book to come out of Brazil in this decade, perhaps in the last 30 years."

—Choice

From 1964 until 1985, Brazil was ruled by a military regime that sanctioned the systematic use of torture in dealing with its political opponents. The catalog of what went on during that grim period was originally published in Portuguese as Brasil: Nunca Mais (Brazil: Never Again) in 1985.

The volume was based on the official documentation kept by the very military that perpetrated the horrific acts. These extensive documents include military court proceedings of actual trials, secretly photocopied by lawyers associated with the Catholic Church and analyzed by a team of researchers. Their daring project—known as BNM for Brasil: Nunca Mais—compiled more than 2,700 pages of testimony by political prisoners documenting close to three hundred forms of torture.

The BNM project proves conclusively that torture was an essential part of the military justice system and that judicial authorities were clearly aware of the use of torture to extract confessions. Still, it took more than a decade after the publication of Brasil: Nunca Mais for the armed forces to admit publicly that such torture had ever taken place. Torture in Brazil, the English version of the book re-edited here, serves as a timely reminder of the role of Brazil's military in past repression.