“Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.” —Pablo Picasso The news media can’t help but leave out a certain personal element from every story. Reading fiction gives us the freedom to envision unlikely connections between characters, overhear conversations in bedrooms and on neighborhood streets, focus in on a child’s thoughts, and linger in unfamiliar places. Politically Inspired is a collection of thirty original short stories, cartoons, and illustrations that illuminate many of the political events and questions of our time. Each of these inventive fictional worlds offers a new perspective on today’s politics of fear, desire, and destruction. We see the President of the United States wake up as a fifth-grader in Minneapolis, peek into a classroom where young boys wear burqas, and read an endearingly eccentric letter to a girlfriend on a hijacked plane. Both highly imaginative and deeply relevant, Politically Inspired reveals the myriad ways in which politics shapes our daily lives. All royalties from Politically Inspired will benefit Oxfam America’s humanitarian response in Iraq.