The Beltway Bible

“We do ourselves a disservice when we dehumanize Washington and reduce its processes and people to a few superficial talking points. Checks and balances, lobbyists, pork barrel spending, the electoral college, filibusters, Dick Cheney’s bimonthly virgin sacrifice upon a marble altar in the Heritage Foundation’s basement to placate the icy god of darkness and ward off the eternal sleep of death for another moonturn, yadda yadda yadda…If there’s one thing to keep in mind as you read The Beltway Bible, it’s this: the problems affecting our government are more complicated, more muddled, more difficult to pinpoint, more … human than your civics textbook or favorite cable news show might make them out to be.”

The inspiration for Political Arena, game creator Eliot Nelson’s 2016 book is a hilarious, A-Z insider’s guide to everything that makes our politics work, with entries on subjects big (how bills are passed), small (where lobbyists and White House staffers get drunk after bills are passed). Nelson also looks at D.C.’s less-well-known power structures: the internal pecking order of White House aides, the high school cafeteria power struggles behind party invites and the petty congressional arguments over how highway on-ramps are named. The Beltway Bible is every citizen’s must-have owner’s manual.